Question? (MINOR SPOILER)
Kidman said to bring the bomb into the chapel to contain the radiation. If the bomb was radioactive wouldn't the villain carrying it through Manhattan have gotten poisoned?
shareI believe she was talking about the radiation from the explosion, not the bomb itself. If I remember correctly, he wasn't carrying a dirty bomb (which would poison the carrier) but a refined, weapons-grade atomic bomb with minimal leakage. Not having seen it for a long time, I could be wrong, but I remember that this was a weakpoint in the film----a chapel containing and holding-in a nuclear explosion and such.
share"a chapel containing and holding-in a nuclear explosion and such. "
It was a bomb in a bomb...and aparrently she managed to defuse the "nuclear" bomb, and the other bomb (probably a c4?) made BOOM in the church... I'm not sure, but that's what I've understood...
You understood wrong.
Nuclear weapons come in many varieties. The type they were working on takes a subcritical mass of plutonium and "squeezes" it into a critical mass. To do this, a spherical explosive package is placed around the subcritical mass. The explosion caused by the explosive package needs to be almost perfectly symmetrical for the plutonium to reach critical mass and the nuclear reaction to start.
What Kidman's character did was pry off one of the explosive panels in the explosive package. This prevented the critical mass from forming, and stopped the bomb from going nuclear. However, Pu would have been scattered all over the place.
So she didn't defuse the bomb - she merely stopped it from making the really big bang it should have made.
Oh, and yes, this is possible.
In fact, it looks like it is actually a thermonuclear device -- a hydrogen bomb. Notice when she is trying to defuse it that there are little tubes or pipes coming from the plutonium sphere. Those tubes guide the heat and pressure from the atomic blast into the tritium tank.
An H-bomb is three bombs in one: the conventional explosive (the little hexagons of TNT or whatever) that compresses the plutonium core into supercriticality, the supercritical core that becomes an atomic bomb, and a tank of tritium that becomes the hydrogen bomb. The conventional explosive compresses the core which goes critical. The heat and pressure from the atomic blast compresses the tritium which causes it to undergo hydrogen fussion, i.e. the thermonuclear reaction.
-Tic
Wow...did you use to work at Lawrence-Livermore or Groom Lake? Very interesting analysis...tell me...what did you think of the movie?
shareI really liked the movie! Kidman's good in it, Clooney is excellent, it's non-stop action from the start. The movie begins with a crooked Russian soldier stealing the warheads from a MIRV and blowing one up to cover his tracks. It ends with a bomb going off in St. Patrick's Cathedral. What's not to like?
This was one of the first or maybe it was THE first DreamWorks motion picture; directed by Mimi Leder who put her audience to sleep with "Deep Impact." (By the time the asteroid hit you wished it would hit you and put you out of your misery!) Peacemaker is a pulse-pounder.
By now the Serb/Croat/Bosnian terrorist plot is a little dated, but last week's attacks in London showed that the terrorism thread is very real indeed.
The chemestry between Clooney and Kidman is kinda like that between Jack O'Neill and Samantha Carter on SG-1 -- very believable and very professional in a pass-me-another-clip sort of way without becoming too coy like Mulder and Scully. At the beginning neither has much use for the other but you see the mutual respect build over the course of the movie.
And did I mention the action? Great use of military hardware. I thought the army, FBI, and NEST seemed a little too prepared, a little too Tom Clancy when they descend on New York in a well-coordinated response. As we've seen here in the Washington DC area, the federal response is a lot more like Keystone Kops going on whenever someone flies their Cessna too close to downtown and I suspect the odds of our Homeland Security having their sh*t together as much as was evident in this film stretches credulity. But if you're willing to suspend your disbelief on that point, I think it's a hell of a ride.
-Tic
Tic: I completely agree but as you have probably read in other posts, many Bosnians and Serbians really hate the movie. They are galled by the movie's presumption that if there is a nuclear explosion anywhere in the world that isn't explained immediatly, then it's up to the Americans to go anywhere/do everything to find out the facts and "arrest" those responsible.
I think Clooney hanging from the helicopter is quite "boss."
Nicole Kidman in her swimsuit...looking good!
Cmdr: I can see their point. On the other hand, the US is the world's only superpower and as such more is expected of us in all areas -- foreign aid and disaster relief, political leadership, and even as the cop on the global beat.
This last item requires a delicate balance. Did Clinton go far enough in prosecuting the war against al Qaida? Did Dubya go too far by invading Iraq?
The role of the US in policing the security of WMD materials like precursor chemicals, biologicals, and especially fissionable material, and the proliferation of delivery systems (short/long range ICBMs) should be an ongoing discussion both here and abroad. Probably the smartest thing we ever did in this regard was the Nunn-Lugar program to buy up nuclear material from the former Soviet Union states. It was a voluntary program, it pumped some hard currency into some shakey economies, and it took some very bad stuff off the market. We could probably do with more efforts like this and then we wouldn't have to (potentially) go barging into other people's countries looking to crack heads.
If Serbs, Bosnians, and others don't think we should go investigating rogue nuclear "events," then who do they propose should go in our place? I'm okay with the UN doing compliance inspections, but do we really have time for the Security Council to hash out a regime for dealing with the situation (embargoes, trade restrictions, authorization of force) in the hours after a nuke gets loose? If the world is unhappy with the US as the global cop, the world (ie the UN, NATO, ASEAN, OAS, OAU -- whoever) needs to start building a framework for an appropriate force to deal with such international crises.
In the mean time, for better or worse, the world is stuck with us.
-Tic
Tic: I've enjoyed reading your views. You bring up an angle I hadn't thought of...a large premise of the movie...that Kidman/ Clooney and team swing into action ASAP with everything the US govt can deploy...is based on the Nunn-Lugar official policy. It's assumed by US movie audiences that our global reach in this area of concern is nearly unlimited...that our helicopters are near enough to the southern Russian border (in Turkey?) to crash and dash the frontier in chase of the terrorists. It's completely logical to us.
From what I've read of Serbian ethnic threads on IMDB about the movie, the movie plot is a prime example of our chauvenistic imperialism. The moviemaker's sincere efforts to "understand" how educated foreigners, like the piano teacher politician terrorist, could (and do) hate our guts with such depth of feeling, are lost on many of these Serbs and others. One has complained that the actor's accent while speaking Serbian in the movie is all wrong! They throw up their hands watching this entertaining (to us) picture and do the slow burn inside.
Many Americans believe that hatred of America in the world is irrational..perhaps even insane. After all, aren't we the GOOD GUYS? What could be more obvious to the rest of the world! How could college educated people (like Muhammad Atta), having received a classical western education, embark on an inspired campaign against us (like the character depicted in the movie)? What is the explanation that the piano teacher, with the profound sense of feeling for Chopin "Nocturne in F Minor/E Flat Op. 55", contemplate the destruction of NYC? He must be insane....right? Or...is it us with the blinders on? The movie bring up the question via Kidman. Terrorism, after all, is ultimate political theater by men without other means.
Either way, I hope we have some smart people thinking about all of this on our end...or the war against bin Laden's curse will be, at best, a stalemate or worse.
Just my opinion...thanks for reading.