Manual neutralisation techniques in Hollywood vs. reality.

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Hello again, and welcome to another instalment of explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) critiques, this time looking at “manual neutralisation” techniques¹ (MNT), which is a fancy way of describing operators cutting wires and disarming bombs by hand. It is one of the most specialised and advanced EOD skills and is reserved for the most extreme scenarios. Not that you’d know this from watching films and TV, however, where it is de rigeur. Any action hero worth their salt needs to disarm a bomb or two at some stage in their franchise career. Never mind that they’re not even basic EOD trained, let alone MNT operators.

We’ll look at this dichotomy between Hollywood’s idea of manual bomb disposal and the (somewhat less exciting) reality. Then we’ll wrap up by examining some of the common clichés we see on screen when it comes to manual techniques and EOD in general.

If you enjoy this, then you might want to check out my first instalment of EOD Critiques, which was on The Hurt Locker, a film which, if nothing else can be said about it, has given me loads to write about. And as always, if you like what you’re reading, please give me a “like”, subscribe using the link below, and share this on your social channels. Thanks!

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Hollywood loves EOD manual techniques…

It’s a classic Hollywood climactic shot: our hero stands before an improvised bomb², wire cutters in hand, staring down the mysterious mess of coloured wires set up by the nefarious baddie. No matter what’s happened in the story up until now, it all comes down to this moment: will our hero(ine) choose the correct wire to cut, or will they (and possibly many more people) meet a speedy end?

TV Tropes lists 37 instances of the cliché in movies, and another 91 in TV shows. There’s a “top ten” countdown of these scenes by WatchMojo.com:

Why are these scenes so popular?

• Character development. They’re a chance to show our main character being cool under pressure. This might be a redemption for some earlier skill or character failure in the film.
• Teamwork and trust. Often this is a chance for the hero to rely on the expertise of others, usually fed through a radio as they work on the IED. Do they trust the person on the other end? Does this person have the right information?
• Raising the stakes for the heroes. Success or failure comes down to a split-second decision. The audience gets a bated breath moment as the camera zooms in on the wire, followed by relief when the bomb is disarmed. This tension is higher still when the “which wire” decision is based on luck (extremely unrealistic, as we’ll see in the next section). Even when it’s based on skill, however, there’s always an element of uncertainty, and that’s what makes these scenes unrealistic.

…but the real EOD community does not

These scenes are unrealistic for three big reasons:

Reason 1: Humans don’t do this

As I’ve said here before, real EOD teams use robots⁴ to make the first approach to an IED and to attack it. A robot can be replaced much more easily than a trained EOD operator. A significant number of the “red wire / blue wire” scenes could (and therefore should) be handled remotely. Just make sure you don’t get a self-aware robot like in The Simpsons:

As another reminder, protecting life is the most important part of the EOD philosophy, and that includes the life of the operator⁵:

The EOD community has learned the hard way that putting lots of operators in harm’s way means some get killed, and that’s not a good thing. Now, that’s not to say that EOD operators are shrinking violets who always throw the robot at a problem so they can stay safe and warm in the truck. They just have a very strict set of rules about when they can and can’t put themselves and their team in harm’s way. They spend a lot of time and energy practicing all kinds of manual approaches, so are more than ready to step up if needs be. There are places where a robot can’t go and times when more than just property is at stake. These high-risk situations can justify an operator suiting up (or not—see below) and making the lonely approach themselves.

Reason 2: Disruption is better than “finger-fucking”

We covered this one before in our Hurt Locker post as well, but there we were talking more about “targetable actions” as a reason for why pulling and prodding at a bomb is a bad idea. There’s a simpler reason, however: it’s usually much easier, safer, and quicker to “disrupt” the IED. This is EOD terminology for shooting the device with a shotgun-like weapon. Here’s the basic idea, with a primer on how electrical (and therefore most IED) circuits work:

You can pick up the pieces and figure out how it works later on, when you’re not counting down the clock to being blown to smithereens. Don’t do what James Bond does here:

Reason 3: Never cut anything unless you know both ends

Don’t do anything unless you’re sure what the outcome will be. This is probably good advice for many situations, but especially for bomb disposal. In the Rush Hour clip above Johnson uses a nursery rhyme to help her remember which colour wire to cut (we’ll talk about colours below). In Juggernaut, the hero cuts the red wire, even though he’s told to cut the blue one, because he doesn’t trust the information. There are many examples where the main character is at best going off a hunch and, at worst, simply guessing.

Needless to say, an EOD operator will never do this. You need to have a full understanding of the device before taking any action. If it’s a simple device (and the vast, vast majority of them are), then this will be a simple enough task.

Here’s an example from Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris casually removes the power from the circuit and then takes the detonator out of the lump of plastic explosive:

It’s still not advisable to be manually disarming bombs (see “finger-fucking”, above), even if you’re Chuck Norris, but at least he can clearly see the parts of the circuit and knows what wire goes where. He knows what he’s doing, and it’s simple, once you know how.

Of course, there is one massive stinking caveat here. Sometimes the bomber is smarter than the operator (or the operator has a bad day), and the operator gets the device wrong. To be fair, this probably partially explains why movie bombs have so many wires (but not fully, as we’ll see below): they have made deliberately complex devices which are hard for an EOD operator to make safe. Lest you think that this is a great way to wreak havoc, it’s worth noting that complexity does not necessarily equal effectiveness.

John Birges build one of the biggest and certainly the most complex IED which the FBI ever had to deal with, and planted it in a casino in Nevada in 1980 as part of a bid to extort $3 million. It worked, insofar as the feds couldn’t disarm the bomb: it exploded in the attempt, causing $18 million of damage, but thankfully killing nobody (due to the evacuation, of which more below). It failed miserably in the bigger picture, though: Birges didn’t get his $3 million, but did get life in prison after being caught.

The Provisional IRA started building booby-trapped IEDs like this during the Troubles. One such example was the “Castlerobin” device, which killed a British EOD operator. It was designed with a hidden compartment which had an anti-lift and anti-tilt mechanism, i.e. if the IED was moved, it would initiate. The response to devices like this is simple: disrupt them (see above) from a distance and then pick up the pieces. Smart bombers and tragically fallen comrades is the reason why EOD teams have adopted robots and disruption as their go-to tactics, rather than snipping red and blue wires. Speaking of red and blue wires, this next bit is really going to blow your mind.

Don’t trust what you see on screen

It bears little resemblance to reality, as the three examples below will illustrate. There are more holes I could pick, but these were the most fun.

Fantasy 1: The colours of a wire are significant

In electric circuits, wires are single or multiple wrapped cores of copper, surrounded by a plastic coating. The copper carries the electricity, and the coating insulates the wire to make sure the electricity doesn’t go off in some silly direction. The colour of the plastic coating has no bearing whatsoever on what the wire does.

This is important because bombs in moves are usually improvised explosive devices. The bomber can use whatever colour he or she likes for the wires making up the circuit. In fact, they will probably use whatever wires they can find inside a spare appliance⁶. It doesn’t need to look pretty, it’s going to blow up.

True, there are some conventions when it comes to wire colours. If you’ve ever wired a plug, for example, you’ll know the colour convention for live, neutral, and earth conductors (at least in Europe):

But these are industry conventions agreed by committee and used by hundreds of thousands of people. Even so, I suspect few electricians would go snipping wires based on colour alone without first checking and isolating the power. For IEDs, there’s (thankfully) no international trade body and no agreed conventions on wire colours.

Fantasy 2: You can see the countdown

Picture a movie bomb counting down, and you are almost certainly picturing a digital clock face, almost certainly red, something like this:

The big red digital countdown is great for us audiences, but it’s also very useful for our heroes: they know exactly how long they have left. Needless to say, clocks like this are not a common feature of timed IEDs⁷ in the real world, since they serve no purpose for the bomber and would just be an added bit of unnecessary electronic circuitry.

Often, however, a clock is used as the actual triggering mechanism: when the hands reach a certain spot, or a beeper starts, then this closes the firing switch. In these cases, the clock will look like an actual clock:

If a digital clock is used, it might not be counting down, but might be set to alarm at a certain time, in which case it might not be immediately apparent to the EOD operator how long is left. Another common timing mechanism skips using a clock altogether and just uses an integrated circuit, in which case you definitely are not going to know how long is left:

Fantasy 3: The wires are ready for you to cut

When the goodie reaches the bomb, chances are it’s innards will be laid bare, ready for the surgeon’s knife:

This is very convenient for our heroes (or it would be, had they any clue about how electric circuits work). Unfortunately, real IEDs would not be so easy. Most bombers use a nifty trick called a container. You put things inside it, especially delicate things that might fall apart or get snagged, like trailing wires. This concept seems to be almost entirely absent from Hollywood. Aside from giving the heroes easy access to the IED’s circuitry, it also hugely raises the odds of the device failing because of a wire coming loose accidentally.

If you want to see examples of what I’m talking about, browse the IED gallery in CAT-UXO, a website dedicated to raising awareness of unexploded ordnance threats. You’ll see some examples of easy-to-attack wires, but the more sophisticated IEDs will have boxes or tubes or plastic bottles or tupperware containers where the innards of the IED’s circuitry are kept secure and together. The most challenging part of manual neutralization is getting into the container (which might itself be booby-trapped, like in this MacGyver clip or the real-life Harvey’s Resort Hotel IED mentioned above). This is no mean feat, and is what contributes to this being such a niche skillset, as we’ll discuss in the conclusion.

Conclusion: Manual techniques are niche and not the answer to every bomb

Manual neutralisation techniques for IEDs are the preserve of the most highly-trained and skilled EOD operators⁸. MNT operators need to carry out keyhole surgery on intricate devices, often while they’re dealing with a panicked hostage or an additional hazard such as chemical agent hazards. They are the folks who are called when there’s a grave and immediate threat to life.

These situations do arise. One infamous one was when the FARC militia in Colombia placed a gruesome “necklace” IED around the neck of Elvia Cortéz, a woman who had been outspoken against the group. The device detonated as an EOD operator was trying to disarm it, killing both of them and wounding several police.

A similarly gruesome case involved the death of Brian Wells in Pennsylvania in 2003. This murder was the subject of a documentary mini-series Evil Genius. The victim of the necklace IED died minutes before the Erie Police Department EOD team arrived on scene, and there’s probably little they could have done for him had they arrived sooner. The team were on scene within 20 minutes of being called, which is a remarkable response time for a team which covers 14 counties and has four members.

What should we take away from this? Most EOD problems don’t require people cutting wires. For those that do, it’s unlikely that the specialists will be close at hand.

In the absence of a highly-trained MNT operator, what’s a decent action hero to do? A good start (and I’ve harped on about this before) is to evacuate the area and put in a cordon. This might not apply in all the above situations, but it definitely does in some, like when John McClane and Zeus mess around with a bomb while people play in the park right next to them. Get those folks away! Then you can do your little riddles. Better again, run away yourself too and let the bomb damage the fountain.

It might even make for a more interesting scene than watching two men pouring water from one jug to another. But that’s just my opinion. What do you think? As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Please subscribe to the blog using the link below, if you haven’t already, and I’d love it if you shared this with like-minded movie pedants. Thanks for reading!

Featured Image: Juggernaut (United Artists, 1974).

1. Or “advanced manual techniques” in some quarters. ↩︎
2. In the jargon: Improvised Explosive Device (IED). ↩︎
3. Sigh. ↩︎
4. Some more jargon for you: Remotely-Operated Vehicle (ROV) or Remote-Control Vehicle (RCV). ↩︎
5. Especially so if the operator is a multi-talented action hero like John McClane or James Bond who has high immunity to bullets: they are an asset you want to preserve. ↩︎
6. Some people will try to use different colours for the “positive” and “negative” halves of the circuit, like the red and black illustrative colouring I put on the wires in my circuit diagram above. But this is also optional. The mock IEDs that EOD teams train with often use segments of twisted wire pair between the different components. This is 1) because twisted wire pair comes in a long reel which is easy to cut up, and EOD teams have these reels for doing remote detonations; and 2) because it can often make sense to separate components of an IED by some distance, and a twisted wire pair is the easiest way to wire this up. This doesn’t apply to the kinds of IEDs we see on screen, though. ↩︎
7. Remember from our Exploding Cars post that there are also command and victim-operated IEDs. You rarely see nail-biting defusing scenes with a command IED, although the Walker, Texas Ranger clip above seems to be of a radio-controlled (i.e. command) IED. Victim operated IEDs don’t get much of a look-in either, although you could argue that a booby-trapped bomb where butting the wrong wire makes it explode is, in fact, victim-operated. Which is true enough, but this is usually secondary to the big ticking clock, so time is the primary initiating mechanism. ↩︎
8. A cohort which never included me, by the way. ↩︎