History Main / ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics

* ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games almost avoided this trope -- if your nuclear plant melts down, the surrounding buildings are left undamaged (except for a small risk of fire), but the fallout is scattered around the surrounding area, rendering it uninhabitable. In retrospect, they probably should have put a ''containment dome'' over those reactors or something. ''[=SimCity=] 4'' plays it dead straight though: an exploding nuclear plant creates a huge blue mushroom cloud, a massive crater and a big shockwave that can flatten half your city.

** Considering every episode opens with Homer taking off his radiation suit in the middle of a supposedly radioactive environment, getting a radioactive isotope of some sort jammed in his shirt, then casually tossing said piece of radioactive material out on the street, its safe to say that realism is not high on the list of priorities for the writers.

** Marine Harriers attack a trio of nuke-carrying trucks. One of them asks for confirmation that the missiles won't set off the nukes, and Schwarzenegger's character assures them that they won't. His expression to his partner after he says this, however, indicates he isn't as sure of this as he sounds. Since he is telling them to go ahead, he probably is aware that even if it ''is'' possible, it's extremely unlikely, and a chance well worth taking, weighed against the potential harm of the trucks getting away.
** It should be noted that about a minute before the bomb detonates, law enforcement officers told people not to look in its direction, and the pilots of the Harriers landed their planes and shut down the engines, while Schwarzenegger holds his hand over his eye so he could not see the blast in his peripheral vision.

* ''Literature/ForAllTime'': In this CrapsackWorld where, among other things, the NuclearWeaponsTaboo never existed, plenty of countries have their own nuclear stockpiles and toss them around like snowballs. A united communist Korea, however, takes the cake when it successfully completes a bomb called the Glorious People's Revolutionary Hammer in 1970, which has a yield of '''250,000 megatons''' or 250 gigatons. This is virtually impossible to achieve from a logistical and engineering perspective. In OTL the largest nuclear device ever built was Tsar Bomba, which had a maximum theoretical yield of 100 megatons but was detonated with a yield of 50 megatons. If every nuke ever constructed were detonated at once, it would only yield about 4.8 gigatons. Even Edward Teller's theoretical Backyard Bomb, which would be powerful enough to destroy entire countries, would only reach 10 gigatons.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In one episode, Data crash-lands on a planet with a pre-industrial society and develops android amnesia, so he doesn't know the metal in the box he's carrying is dangerous, or even what the word "RADIOACTIVE" printed on it means. Thinking it harmless and grateful to the local village for helping him while he suffers his memory loss, he sells the plain-looking, gray pieces of metal to their merchants, who then sell it as jewelry, and people all over the village begin getting sick with radiation poisoning. With no memory of how such things work but with his capability to learn intact, Data spends the rest of the episode investigating the sickness and learning that the nondescript metal actually gives off dangerous, invisible energy. The realism takes a drop near the end when he cures the town with a liquid medicine akin to Rad Away in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}''.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' franchise is built around Fifties-era mad science tropes, so the universe's nuclear physics and nuclear-powered devices [[ScienceMarchesOn don't match the real world]].

** Another story, the already ridiculous "Aunt May almost marries Doctor Octopus" story, climaxes with Hammerhead confronting Doctor Octopus in front of a breeder reactor. "The slightest vibration could set off a chain reaction!", Octopus exclaims. Hammerhead doesn't listen, and charges at Ock headfirst -- the next page depicts a mushroom cloud, of course. A later issue (which reveals that both villains had survived this) shows that the "chain reaction" was caused by Hammerhead getting his cranium stuck in a control panel. Never mind that the biggest danger with a breeder reactor is fire, not everything going kaboom.

*** "Literature/TheEncyclopedists": Mayor Hardin requests Lord Dorwin (representative of the Galactic Empire) to explain the accident on [[NumberedHomeworld Planet V]] of Gamma Andromeda from a year ago. In the original story, there was an explosion, whereas the [[OrwellianRetcon updated story]] calls it a meltdown. The Imperial representative doesn't know details, pointing out how [[UsedFuture the quality of technicians and technology has gone down]]. Concern about nuclear power plants exploding like a nuclear bomb was common in TheForties.
*** "Literature/TheMayors": Sermak and Bort discuss the accident in the Thessalekian Temple power plant from two months ago. In the original story, it exploded and took out five city blocks with it. The [[OrwellianRetcon updated story]] only describes radiation leaks contaminating the city. It had been caused by someone deliberately tampering with the controls. Concern about nuclear power plants exploding like a nuclear bomb was common in TheForties.

* ''Film/HostileWaters'' (based on a real life incident involving the Soviet sub K-219) features a Soviet submarine which is leaking seawater into one of the missile tubes. The chief engineer informs the Captain that enough seawater mixed with the rocket fuel will cause an explosion and that the warheads will detonate. While an explosion (which did occur in real life) would be catastrophic, there is no chance that the warheads will go nuclear. In real life, submarine was brought to a nuclear safe condition (as a result of the nuclear reactor not shutting down properly) at the cost of a sailor's life, but the explosion itself caused the submarine and its nuclear complement to sink to a depth of about 18,000 feet.

** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E742 42]]'', when characters get possessed by the living sun, their body-mass is stated to convert to blazing hydrogen to match it. Except that's exactly the ''opposite'' of what a sun does. Stars are mass in fusion, not fission. So they're decaying into a lighter element in order to... mimic a process of creating heavier elements?

** In ''[[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E742 42]]'', when a character gets possessed by a living sun, his body converts to hydrogen to match it... except that's exactly the opposite of what a sun does. Stars are mass in fusion, not fission.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon Aliens of London]]"/"[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree World War Three]]", the villains' plan is to spark a nuclear war to reduce the Earth to radioactive chunks they intend to sell as fuel. However, nuclear detonations don't make the ground itself radioactive. The radioactivity is the result of particles from the fissile material in the bombs being spread around by the detonation.

* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' surprisingly got things mostly right -- the plutonium fission primary is removed from a 1950-era hydrogen bomb by an Iraqi military officer with electronics experience, using the notes of a physicist, both from 2004. The main misrepresentation is to have the primary be a small gun-type bomb rather than the larger implosion primaries used in fusion bombs of that period; so that characters can carry it around in a backpack. However, [[spoiler:given all the time travel, who knows when that bomb design actually came from]].