The Sum of All Fears

Deliberate mistake: When asked about the effects of a gas attack on a village in Russia, the president is told that the effects were similar to end stage cerebral palsy. One major problem - cerebral palsy is a chronic condition, not acute. The condition itself is not fatal.

Thisbe

Deliberate mistake: When Ryan is entering the Pentagon to use the hotline, he swipes Cabot's ID card multiple times until finally the gate opens. There are two problems with this. First, if the system beeps, as it did every time he swiped, that means the system saw the response from the card so he shouldn't have needed to keep swiping. Second, the entry to the Pentagon uses a two-factor system, meaning you need to swipe and then enter a corresponding PIN on the keypad that was quite visible in the scene. This is to prevent exactly what Ryan did, namely steal an ID card and use it to get into the Pentagon since the thief wouldn't know the PIN. Since the keypad was there, for the movie the director must have decided all the real steps were too hard to fit the kind of scene he wanted so left it out. (01:44:00)

jimba

Factual error: A force of Russian Tu-22 Backfire bombers attacks the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) by sneaking in under the ship's radar. This is all well and good except that carriers usually don't use their own radar, they have Airborne Early Warning aircraft (E-2 Hawkeye's) that can see much further and not give away the carrier's position (let alone the F-14s which would be patrolling too) not to mention the fleet of destroyers other ships guarding the carrier. The whole point is, the US Navy practiced and planned for such a "carrier versus Backfire" battle for years. I guess in the interest of furthering the plot Hollywood has to ignore the immense measures the USN takes to protect those multi-billion dollar assets, not to mention the 5000+ sailors that man them.

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Jack Ryan: General, the President is basing his decisions on some really bad information right now. And if you shut me out, your family, and my family, and twenty-five million other families will be dead in thirty minutes.

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Trivia: When Bill Cabot meets John Clark at the airport in the rain, it was Liev Schreiber's idea to have Clark waiting without an umbrella.

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Question: Now i don't know much about missiles and such, but in the scene where the Israeli fighter jet is carrying the nuclear warhead, and is then shot down, well wouldn't the bomb blast that destroyed the plane also detonate the nuke attached as well? correct if i am wrong.

Answer: Nope. A nuclear detonation requires a highly specific sequence of events to occur within the bomb - an explosion nearby wouldn't come close to producing those conditions. The construction of a nuclear bomb requires components to be placed in a highly specific configuration - damage to the bomb would disrupt that configuration and make it effectively impossible for the bomb to go off.

Tailkinker

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