10 Giant Lies Told By Movies That Will Definitely Kill You

1. Bombs Are Easy To Disarm & Come With A Handy Timer

The Main Offender: Lethal Weapon 2

Movies have taught us that there's no need to worry if a bomb is discovered in your immediate vicinity, even if you're on the toilet, because chances are, the planter will have labelled it as helpfully as an Ikea catalogue. There will be a giant stop watch, with nice big numbers to let you know how long you have left before the kaboom, and all the wires will be colour-coded, for convenience. Someone will sweep in - even an untrained amateur in some cases - and disarm it, often by complete chance when they randomly choose a coloured wire without so much as a lick of evidence to suggest it's the right one.

The Reality Please, if ever you discover a bomb, run away from it, and leave it to the professionals. Between screams, perhaps inform everyone else around you to do the same. Anyone who is willing to make a bomb to take life isn't going to be that considerate, or that helpful. They will be sneaky, and devilish in their attempts to cause maximum damage, and the likelihood of them having a nice clock and colour-coded wires designed to help someone disarm them is slim to none.

Bomb-makers tend to be grand improvisers, who will adapt technology at their disposal to make a trigger (hence the use of mobile phones more recently) and unless they happen to be making bombs in a 1990s alarm clock factory, they aren't going to make anything like what you've seen in the movies. At the end of the day, disarming a bomb is pretty much the worst thing you can do to a bomb maker. They don't want it to happen, because that is their morbid reason d'etre.