Corporations and government in the movies

[Perd Hapley]

This thread isn't political.

[Monkeyleg]

You're right. It's not, but I thought it would go that direction.

Moving to Round Table.

[Perd Hapley]

You want me to politicize it for you? 

[Monkeyleg]

Why, so I have to move it back again?

[Perd Hapley]

Job security. What if APS has to downsize, and you lose all the power and prestige?

[Monkeyleg]

You have far more power here than I do, Fistful. If you want people to do something, all you have to do is the opposite.

[sanglant]

Really?  Bones, Criminal Minds, NCIS, Numb3rs, White Collar not ringing any bells?  Most of those are shows about the FBI, with the exception of NCIS.

Pretty sure there are a few more out there I haven't listed.

the sheer amount of law braking(by agents/cops), and stupid computer databases. that don't only not exist, but would cost billions of tax payer's dollars to build, and be of little use, kind of weight them down.

[Gewehr98]

Locomotives have dead-man switches.

The end. (Unless you're in Hollywood...)

[Chuck Dye]

I wonder if the bias y'all see in these films, so many of which I have not watched (do I have bragging rights?),  is market driven, not politically or philosophically driven and a reflection of the quality of the audience as much as or more than Hollywood.  I know a few TV shows have supposedly been driven from the air by political pressures, The Smothers Brothers, That Was The Week That Was (TW3) come to mind (if you are old enough,) but, overwhelmingly, when someone bemoans the loss of quality programming, someone else quickly appears to point at the ratings.  By and large, we are fed what we will eat.

[BlueStarLizzard]

I would say the kingdom is a partial.

The politicritter and state dep. are bad guys, but fbi is good guys. The saudi side is split too, with the police being good guys and military being the snots. Their higher ups are just portrayed as idiots.

[erictank]

Locomotives have dead-man switches.

The end. (Unless you're in Hollywood...)

Not really - they actually accounted for that in the movie.

I watched 'Unstoppable' (and liked it).  The idiot at the beginning, who was tasked to move the train off the track it was sitting on and onto an unoccupied track, had moved it with disconnected airbrakes (which disabled the dead-man's switch braking) and a throttle which had slipped or been jarred out of idle with the engine governor at full power - just after he jumped out of the then-slowly-moving train to switch the tracks to the proper position, thinking he'd be able to throw the switch and get back in with no problem.  The second braking system, which was entirely manual, naturally was useless until they got someone into the cab of that train.

[Chuck Dye]

Locomotives have dead-man switches.

The end. (Unless you're in Hollywood...)

Locomotives have exposed and easily perforated fuel tanks. 

Out of fuel? End of ride!

[Boomhauer]

Locomotives have dead-man switches.

The end. (Unless you're in Hollywood...)

Besides the explanation above, a diesel locomotive really did escape from the yard back in 2001. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_8888_incident

[erictank]

Locomotives have exposed and easily perforated fuel tanks. 

Out of fuel? End of ride!

They had a scene in 'Unstoppable' in which some police department or other tried to hit an exterior-mounted "Emergency Stop" button located just above one of the fuel tanks.  They let off a bunch of rounds, missed the button, and stopped shooting out of fear that they'd hit the tanks and make the engine go boom.

Can you ignite diesel even with incendiary rounds?  ISTR the Mythbusters couldn't even ignite, let alone detonate, a car's gasoline tank using standard OR incendiary rounds, and gas is more volatile than diesel, IIRC.  Seems like Chuck's got a workable plan, there - punch a bunch of holes in the fuel tank, and watch the engine coast smothly to a stop within several miles, then run in another engine to cart the whole shebang back off to the yard.  Sure, you've got to clean up the spilled diesel, but surely that's better than cleaning up the large pool of diesel PLUS the tens of thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals, as well.

[BlueStarLizzard]

I hate to blow the 'shoot out fuel tanks' theroy.

But I was under the impression that train wheels are metel rolling on steel tracks. Not to mention exposed chains rattling about.
I bet trains cause a lot of little sparks that don't do anything normally, but would ignight puddles of fuel onthe tracks.

[Monkeyleg]

Ah, but you see, the police weren't using those special .22 rounds like those in "US Marshalls" (otherwise known as "Fugitive II") that put a hole in an airliner window that caused the cabin to explode and completely destroyed the aircraft.