10 Scientific Errors In Movies That Really Need To Stop

2. Cool Guys Not Looking At Explosions

The Lonely Island wrote a whole song about it but, whilst their advice is usually totally sound and scientifically accurate, we need to take umbrage in this particular occasion. Yeah, walking away from an explosion in slow motion looks totally badass, and it's a good way of getting across - using the non-verbal grammar of the moving image - that the character in question must be a pretty cool customer to not be affected by the searing heat and amazing sight that's happening immediately behind them. They just don't give an F. They're way too awesome to be taken in by such trivial matters. Except that, in real life, it's not like that at all. Get caught close to a huge detonation, and it's more likely to be...like this bit from another, different film that's mainly pretty unrealistic itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNZZhTXw72M The Other Guys joke notwithstanding, there's a lot about explosions that Hollywood has been getting completely wrong for years. 21 Jump Street has also made jokes about, specifically, the fact that car crashes barely ever result in towering infernos: the mix of fuel and air in the tank is too rich. This one actually does have some negative, real-world consequences because people see this trope so often in movies they're often reluctant to rescue people who have been in such accidents, worried they might end up blown up themselves. One last scientific snafu you see in films all the time: you know how awesome it is when people toss a lit cigarette on a trail of petrol, or a pile of kindling, or into a gas-filled room, serving as the ignition for a big old fireball of death that will usually consume a load of bad dudes? Also rubbish. Lit cigarettes actually don't put out enough heat to do such a thing - in fact, rather than igniting gasoline on fire, they're more likely to be snuffed out by it. Who knew?