No, you turned it on …
“…but I turned it off, I deliberately entered the wrong code three times. Its a failsafe mechanism designed to protect the payload.” The lieutenant punched the wall in frustration. “Its still hot and clicking.”
Joshua took a deep breath. “Bradock’s extremely clever, he’s thought of
this already. He must have used uncoded circuit boards and reversed
polarity.” His voice tailed off as he registered the appalling truth. His
face drained of color. “You’ve just activated a nuclear warhead, my
friend.”
Like an edict of Fate, the main panel came to life and scarlet digits began their inexorable descent towards oblivion. 30.00 … 29.59 … 29.58 …
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It’ll be fine- Bond will crash through the armour plated door and find a way with 0.001 seconds to spare. (I hope)
Great action piece which would slot nicely into a bond/Bourne style movie.
You might have guessed, I do like those movies, and dare I say it, all those directed by John Woo! It shows doesn’t it? ;D
And you’re right, I should have used Bond and Blofeld in the storyline. Ah well, next time …
Terrifying.
And unfortunately, not too far fetched. I think weapons technology reacts very badly to false passwords, as the assumption would be that it’s fallen into the enemy’s hands…
You’re right, the whole device should have shut down and the circuitry fused but the bad guys been too clever and anticipated their failsafe. Oooops!
A wonderful tale.
Why are these failsafe mechanisms never failsafe?
Not to worry, as Anna above says, James Bond will save the day. Won’t he?
Its been tampered with and the wires crossed. The failsafe should have worked but instead activated the nuke. Had he actually put the correct code in to arm the warhead, it would probably have shut down. But he wasn’t to know that. Ha ha ha.
I bet they are all thinking “Oops!” (or words to that effect) right now. And knowing how your evil little mind works I’m not convinced that Bond or Bourne or anyone like that is coming to help. They’re going to have to sort this mess themselves or (more likely) die trying.
Yeah, blow them up and city as well! Actually, the warhead could be on some island atoll, be a clever fake or be disarmed by Braddock himself. The whole episode might even be a scene from a video game being played by some kid in his bedroom. But that would be an unsatisfying cheat. I think joshua is at least as clever as Braddock and fixes the timer to loop indefinitely so it never goes off until the NEST arrives to disarnm it, so it count downs to zero and then resets. That would be dramatic.
Un oh…..
Quite!
It’s all downhill from here, I fear. A clever piece, nicely constructed.
Agreed. What must be going through their heads?