Grumpy Scot

28th May 2003

Broken Arrow (1996)

Factual error: Despite what movies keep telling us, you cannot manually arm a nuke taken from a missile or bomb. A device called an accelerometer measures the speed of the flying/falling weapon and arms the warhead. It cannot be done on the ground. The warheads are specifically designed to make stealing a warhead and arming it by itself impossible. Deakins is a pilot, not a nuclear technician. He would need to disassemble the nuke and rebuild it completely to make it detonate. These features are designed so that bypassing/disassembling them DISABLES the nuke completely, making it completely unusable for just this reason.

Grumpy Scot

28th May 2003

Broken Arrow (1996)

Factual error: Hale uses coaxial cable from the antenna to swing down into the boxcar. A single length of coaxial cable would not hold Hale's weight, much less his own and the dead body he used for a counterweight.

Grumpy Scot

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.