The post about movie cliches made me wonder about actual bombs versus movie bombs.
For example, you often see someone slap a brick of C4 on something and then stick a little metal detonator with wires attached, into it. Is there any reason someone wanting to disarm such a bomb couldn't just pull the detonator out of the brick? Or cut both/all the wires going to the detonator at once?
In fact, why wouldn't that work with pretty much any relatively simple bomb? Just take all the wires going to the explosives and cut them all at the same time.
In the third Die Hard movie, they had bombs composed of two chemicals that would explode when mixed. Puncture one or both of the containers and drain the liquids into a couple of buckets.
Of course the part that always bugs me is that the hero cuts one of the sires going to the explosives and the timer stops. Why? Does the explosive also serve as a battery??? The timer should still count down to zero, just nothing happens when it does.
This sounds like questions that need to be answered by the Anarchist's Cookbook.