Perpetrator behaviour.
Let me be very clear: I am not going to tell you how to blow up a car. So if that’s what you were looking for, please look elsewhere. Unfortunately there are plenty of internet resources for this, with generative AI adding its own two cents and helping/not helping (depending on your perspective). If you’re dumb enough to try to make explosives based on what a chatbot tells you, then you’re beyond my ability to help.
I will, however, tell you how not to blow up a car or, more specifically, why many of the car explosion methods we see in film and TV are unrealistic or impractical. Yes, as always, I’m going to ruin some of your favourite films and TV programmes.
Because there’s a bit of meat to this topic, I’m going to split it over two posts. Today we’re going to look at how TV terrorists make their jobs needlessly difficult. Next week we’re going to look at the reality of car assassinations using explosives, and talk about how intended targets really ought to behave (vs. how they do in films).
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Overview and nomenclature
I’ll structure this post into two sections. In the first, I’ll talk about how TV terrorists use far too much explosive in their car hits. In the second, I’ll talk about (and rate) the various ways baddies trigger cars to blow up in films.
Before I start, though, let me clear up some nomenclature. I’m deliberately not using the term “car bomb” to describe an assassination using explosives in a car. In my understanding, a car bomb is a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED1), i.e. a car (or van, or truck) packed with lots of explosives, designed to destroy large numbers of people and/or lots of property. Some sources (e.g. Wikipedia) use “car bomb” for both types, but I think it’s helpful to keep them as very separate concepts in your mind. I’ll go into more detail below, but just wanted to get that out of the way. Here’s an example of what I mean (with spoilers):
As a rather obvious aside, that scene from Lethal Weapon 3 makes the former bomb disposal operator in me cringe… there are no words to describe how bad this is. Well, maybe there are ~2,000 words that could describe it someday, let’s see.
Secondly, and conversely, I’m using the term “terrorist” in a looser manner than normal style would dictate. Many vehicular assassinations are carried out by criminals rather than terrorists, even more so in media than in real life. This is probably due to my own military bias, where we see terrorists as a more sophisticated and dangerous enemy than “mere” criminals, and tailor our tactics accordingly. Of course, this is not always the case, especially when it comes to bombs in or on cars. So please forgive the loose terminology.
Blast size: Too much of a good thing means problems for bombers
When a TV baddie wants to kill someone, they don’t take half measures. They pack way more than the required amount of explosives into the car, then they add a bit more for safety, then they double it:
You might assume from examples like this that they don’t just want to kill the driver, but most of the people on the street as well, and maybe a few folk the next town over.
Why is this a problem? Well, there are two things at play here. There’s terrorists over-egging the pudding for dramatic effect, and then there’s Hollywood’s explosion inflation ratio, where small charges make big, fiery blasts (which I’ve covered before). But if we focus on the terrorist, then we should ask why they would want to put more “bang” there than is needed to kill? You might argue that they want to send a message, or to be sure of getting the job done, and these are fair enough. But they have three big reasons to keep it small:
- Explosives are hard to come by, so you won’t want to waste them in overkill. Bear in mind that you don’t just need enough “bang dough” to kill the one target who is the focus of this movie, you need enough to kill all of your targets, plus all the practice efforts required to perfect the device and rehearse the attack2.
- More explosive means a bigger device, which is harder to conceal and takes longer to emplace3, raising the risk level for the bomber.
- Killing bystanders is usually not the aim of an assassination, and only tends to alienate the criminal/terrorist organisation, depriving them of much-needed local support.
Despite TV terrorists’ over-ambition, of course, we still see characters surviving what should be lethal explosions (e.g. Casino below), but that’s just the Hollywood hero armour we’ve come to expect.
Initiation methods: Realistic ways to make it go bang
The car ignition method brings challenges
It’s one of the most recognisable death scenes in film: a character gets into their car, puts the key in the ignition, twists it, then has a sudden premonition of doom (maybe we get a close-up of their shocked face) before the shot cuts to the car exterior and we see it blow up spectacularly in a ball of flames. It’s iconic, it’s dramatic, it’s terrifying, and it’s not how I (or probably any terrorist nowadays) would choose to kill the driver of a car.
Before we get into the whys and wherefores, let’s consider a few examples of this “vanilla” initiation method from film and TV:
Before we dive into some criticism, let’s take a moment to appreciate the old-school special effects in Casino: you can see where they replaced Robert De Niro with a dummy just before the explosion/fireball.
Okay, using the car’s ignition to set off the bomb: let’s be positive and start with the pros—why would a terrorist use this method?
- Firstly, every IED needs a power source to initiate the detonator, and every car has a battery, so there is a lovely and deadly symbiosis here.
- Secondly, turning the ignition is something which you know the target will do. They have to do it to start the car. Therefore it’s something you can target = a “targetable action”. Remember this phrase, we’ll come back to it next week.
- Thirdly, and most importantly, by using the car’s ignition, we’re relying on the target to set off the bomb. In military parlance, this makes it a “victim-operated” IED. This means that the bomber, after planting the device, can scarper and be out of physical and legal harm’s way when the device actually initiates.
Unfortunately, that’s it for the pros of using car ignition initiation. What are the cons?
- Firstly, and this is honestly the biggest one for me: you need access to the inside of the car4 to plant the bomb. You need to find ignition wires, hook up your detonator to these (while praying you haven’t connected to a live wire accidentally—see the next point), then conceal your actual bomb somewhere close by, then hide the bomb, the wires, and all evidence of your tampering. If you already have the car keys, then there may be better ways to kill your target. You could mess with the brake lines or the steering, or even just hide in the backseat and strangle them once they get in5.
- The second reason not to rely on car ignition is safety. You, as the bomber, need to emplace the device while breaking into the target’s car, which is probably in their driveway or a car park. At any moment you might be found out, so you’re under pressure. You’re also working in a cramped space. All of this is to say that the potential for connecting the wrong wire is there. Unless you’ve practiced beforehand on the same make and model, or tested the wire first with a multimeter, you will have a brown-trouser moment when you first hook up that detonator, hoping you got the right wire. Not a good idea. Self-safety is an issue with all victim-operated IEDs, but especially in this case.
- Thirdly, and for the same reasons as above, using the car’s ignition will be less reliable than using your own pre-prepared power source in a pre-prepared and pre-tested device.
- Fourthly, with a pre-prepared device, the time taken to emplace it will be much shorter. You can just attach it underneath the driver’s side door with magnets and be on your way (this is the preferred approach for modern terrorists). This is much easier and less stressful than messing around with wires in the engine compartment or driver’s footwell.
- Fifthly, and finally, there are other, potentially better targetable actions that you can use, especially if you have the keys of the car. You could target the lifting of the door handle, for example, or the weight of sitting on the car seat. Although it’s played for laughs, the scene in Wise Guys where Danny De Vito, as the “junior man”, is starting the boss’s car, gets this right:
A final quibble with this method is that some scenes show the victim trying to start the car, and the engine turning over a few times before the bomb detonates (e.g. The Pelican Brief) If the link to the car battery is what does it, then the very first instance of turning the key will have the desired effect (albeit being a bit less dramatic).
Remote control is a riskier proposition for the perp
A sophisticated criminal or terrorist might add some spice to their car assassinations with remote control detonation, as in the film examples below:
Remote control gives a strong sense of the terrorist being in control, like a spider at the centre of a web, pulling all the strings. In technical terms, blowing up a car via remote control is a special example of a command IED. The advantage of command IEDs is the level of control they give the bomber: they choose exactly when the device initiates. The disadvantage is that the terrorist needs to be nearby, so it’s riskier than a victim-operated device. This scene from Scarface shows the advantage and disadvantage of command IEDs:
There are two minor issues I’ll take with the above clip: firstly, the lump of plastic explosive under the car just seems to be smushed onto the underside, whereas the receiver unit is attached with magnets. There is no way you would trust the stickiness of plastic explosive (which, in any case, isn’t particularly sticky) to not fall off as soon as the car hit bump. Secondly, the baddies are a bit too close to the target car for their own safety and for making a clean getaway afterwards.
In general, though, this type of initiation can be plausible, but only if you account for the extra work and risk to the terrorist. For example, in The Dark Knight, the judge seems to be killed by a command device controlled by someone who can see when she looks up (that’s how it looks to me, but I’m keen to hear other hypotheses). This means that the Joker, or someone from his organisation (?) is sitting in a bush or another car nearby, waiting for the judge to get in, open the envelope, and look up. Why? Just for cool points? We know that the Joker is all about this, but we, the audience, are the only people who get to appreciate this coolness! The only person who is in the car and who reads the piece of paper gets immediately atomised.
Command detonation is car assassinations isn’t unheard of, but it takes a sophisticated criminal or terrorist enterprise and lots of coordination. The bomber needs to be there, or somewhere close nearby. So you’d better have a good reason for doing it that way (like they did in Scarface, for example).
Before I wrap this section, a special mention must go to The Transporter 2. Not since The Expendables have I seen such a silly scene (thanks again Jason Statham). The sheer idiocy of this scene might merit its own blow-by-blow takedown sometime. Watch this space.
Timed devices warrant a (brief) mention
Before finishing, we’d better say a little bit about the third way that terrorists can initiate an IED, which is probably the simplest method: the passage of time. Timed IEDs are very common (insofar as IEDs themselves are common). They can be much simpler than the victim-operated or command IEDs described above, and are the usual way of setting off VBIEDs, i.e. large car bombs (remember the distinction I drew above between a car bomb and a bomb in a car). However, one place we don’t often see timed IEDs is targeting somebody in a car. There’s a simple reason for this: the success of a timed IED lies in knowing exactly where your target will be at a given time, and it’s very hard to predict where somebody’s car will be at an exact time, since people move and cars move.
On the other hand, if your target is a building (these don’t move), or a military base (these don’t move quickly), or civilians out shopping (they move, but you don’t care which people you kill, provided you kill some), then a terrorist might use a timed IED.
With that caveat, and just for completeness, let’s see two examples where a timed IED might have been used to target somebody in a car:
For Michael Collins, the first thing we need to say is that this never happened. The IRA6 of the 1920s did not use bombs in cars (or car bombs, for that matter) in a way that the IRA(s)7 of the 1970s-90s very much did. However, for our purposes, let’s take the film at face value and try to figure out how they have managed to carry out this assassination. We know they have at least one man on the inside of Dublin Castle, but it stretches credulity to think that Ned Broy (Stephen Rea’s character) managed to plant it and would willingly choose to be so close when it exploded. In any case, what triggers the bomb? It can’t be the ignition, because the car was started before the target got in. It explodes before the car moves, but after the targets sit in and visibly move the car with their weight. It couldn’t have been a command IED, which only leaves a timed device. This is also implausible, because it would assume that the bombers knew exactly when the target was due to get into the car. I’ve included it under “timed” more so to argue the point, and maybe to illustrate why this isn’t a great fictional addition to an otherwise great film.
In The Godfather, we see Fabrizio running away just after planting the bomb which was supposed to target Michael, but kills his wife Appolonia instead, since she decided at the last minute to move the car. This could be a victim-operated IED, designed to initiate when the car moves. It could also be a timed device, however, and I suspect this is more likely, but with the same caveat: how did Fabrizio know that Michael was going to be in the car at that exact time? I suppose you could argue that he didn’t, and that’s reflected in the fact that poor innocent Appolonia gets killed instead. This is a very real issue with all IEDs, but timed ones in particular: they are indiscriminate. As an aside, I think that this explosion is done very well. It seems to emanate from the back of the car and is a very large blast, which would make sense if the bomb was in one of the suitcases which Fabrizio loaded immediately prior. The shockwave is quick and deadly and very obvious: there’s none of the slow-mo jumping away from explosions which we often see on screen.
Conclusion
As usual with these posts, I’ve ended up somewhere different to what I expected when I started. I thought it was going to be primarily about the car ignition method of setting off a bomb, but my research8 revealed the amount of on-screen car assassinations that used different triggering methods. Moreover, I have never in my career heard about an IED which was wired into a car’s ignition, but found two real-life examples while researching this post: one from 2007, and the other from 1978, a mob killing. So, although I stand by my critique of it as a method, it’s clearly included for a historical reason in some films.
What I did find, however, was that regardless of the initiation method chosen, films use a car explosion as a shorthand for nefarious ability. Blowing up cars with little visible effort or preparatory work is the preserve of a certain level of baddie. A good example of this is Law Abiding Citizen:
Gerald Butler’s vigilante character is an ex-CIA killer, which (in Hollywood logic) means he has the know-how and resources to turn anything in a bomb, including (among other things) the cars in the clip above. Not only can he initiate the cars from his prison cell9, but he also manages to lock the doors so that people can’t get out as cars around them explode.
If I can sum up Hollywood’s understanding of terrorists, it’s as a sort levelling-up character in a role-playing game. Once a character becomes badass enough, killing people via car IEDs is just something that comes naturally:
In fact, blowing up cars is never easy, can go wrong in so many ways for the terrorist, and is a lot messier and less flashy than the films usually show.
This week we focused heavily on the terrorist, the criminal, the bomber, the perpetrator—the person behind the attack, whatever he’s10 called. We discussed the various options open to a terrorist who wants to carry out car assassinations, and why many of the on-screen depictions are unrealistic. In most cases, this boils down to a simple fact: blowing up a car is (thankfully) a complicated thing to do, and films don’t put enough thought into how and why a terrorist will go to such an extent of trouble to get their target, aside from the cool visuals.
Next week we’re going to stay on the topic of car explosions, or UVIEDs, to give them their technical term. We’re going to look at the grisly reality of car assassinations and then compare this reality to how Hollywood targets seem to act (spoiler: not very believably). While film baddies get an easy ride, making their bombs with no difficulty, film targets do little or nothing to make life difficult for the terrorist. We’ll discuss in more detail next week.
Until then, thanks for reading! As always, your support means a lot, and I’d love if you could hit “Like”, subscribe, and spread the word by sharing this with anyone you think might enjoy it.
Featured image: The Godfather, Paramount Pictures (1972)
- I apologise in advance for the heavy use of abbreviations in these posts. ↩︎
- Oh, you’re going to pass on practice devices and rehearsals? Well then, good luck. Let’s see how that goes for you. ↩︎
- This seems like a normal word to me, but my diligent copyeditor has suggested “place” instead. Maybe I’m too used to the military jargon, but “emplace” has a narrower, more specific meaning to me, which is more appropriate when we’re talking about IEDs. Forgive the jargon. ↩︎
- Or potentially the engine compartment, but since this needs to be opened from the driver’s side, it amounts to the same thing. ↩︎
- Granted, neither of these approaches is ideal from a reliability point of view, and bring their own problems. But they are a lot simpler than an IED. ↩︎
- Irish Republican Army. ↩︎
- Provisional IRA, Real IRA. These groups were notorious for their terrorist attacks using VBIEDs and UVIEDs during the Troubles. I’ll write about real car-based IEDs in more detail next week. ↩︎
- This is a very generous term for watching clips of action movies. ↩︎
- And we may well ask how, now that we’ve discussed different methods of initiation. It can’t be by a timed device, because he doesn’t know to the second when the targets will leave the building. Nor is it victim-operated, because not every car moves before blowing up. Command would be the most plausible option, if he snuck out of the cell to blow up the cars, but the fact that the scene cuts to him inside his cell goes against this (or else the director is deliberately and unfairly misleading us). Within the logic of the film, I think the most plausible option is a victim-operated device, but one with a short timer on it post-triggering. ↩︎
- I think the gendered language is justified here, but I’m open to correction if anyone can find me an example (real or fictional) of female bombers. ↩︎
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