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Watching the old BBC show "Danger UXB" from 1979.
It holds up very well.
I am once again reminded about booby traps and gaming.
Any sort of trap, really.
The Type 17 fuse on the Luftwaffe bombs is a great example.
It's a time delay fuse and the Germans used several anti-tamper devices to make sure it was difficult to disarm once it was dropped.
If I let the clock run out while the player's character is next to it, I'll get accused of not giving them a chance.
Same for if they pull the fuse and the anti-tamper goes off.
Especially since there's no way to tell, from the outside, if the clock is close to running out or to see the anti-tamper device.
An SC250 does 6dx35[6dx3] cr ex. No bueno for standing next to when it goes all angry like.
As you said, a very good show. A very very good show. One where, realistically, the main characters get injured or killed. No heroic stopping the timer at 01 seconds. Nope. Failure is either ending or very painful.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Brits did the same thing to their bombs.
And the Americans, especially in Japan, also did the same thing with their bombs.
Everyone played the "Don't mess with the explosives" game.
Back in 1971, got to visit the Salvage Master's house at Pearl Harbor. A house with a basement with a very interesting item over the bar. A Japanese bomb from Dec. 7th. Seems the owner of the house had the bomb defused and the explosives steamed out of it. Made quite the startling conversation piece in my 11 year old mind. At the time the Salvage Master and his crew were still dealing with UXBs in the harbor and occasionally on land at Pearl.
The show had retired bomb disposal officer and author A B Hartley as technical advisor and the bomb defusing scenes were almost all based on actual jobs. Being blown up by British anti-invasion defenses was also very accurate. FWIW they still find WWII bombs and still use a refined version of the steam sterilizer.
ReplyDeleteOccasionally they find an old Civil War shell that washes out of a stream bank or something like that. Some idiots think they're harmless and take them home. Some of them are harmless. Others---aren't. The Park Service has a manual on how to ID and dispose of unexploded ordnance from that war. And I remember a Hogan's Heroes episode where a bomb fell in the middle of the camp and did not explode. At first the "Heroes" thought it was a mock-up...but then they realized that it wasn't. Hogan ended up disarming the thing, and for a "comedy" show, it was a very tense episode.
ReplyDeleteNormally inert iron cannon balls have been known to explode as well. Apparently if you store an iron ball on the bottom of the ocean for a hundred years or so, when it completely dries out the chemistry from the situation causes it to spontaneously shatter forcefully.
DeleteThen there are the Japanese ammo used in WWII that gets more volatile the longer it is in contact with salt water. Yet idiot tourists throughout the Pacific Theater area still manage to occasionally lose body parts even after long warnings full of graphic photos.
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