system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: In movies, there are many scenes involving a person cutting a certain wire on a timed bomb to defuse it. Is this accurate and how does it work in real life?
gpt
It can be, but every bomb is different and bomb squads typically opt to just blow up the bomb once everybody is clear rather than inspecting it.

There’s two primary designs of bomb - “fail safe” and “fail deadly”

In a fail safe bomb, the bomb will not explode unless it is triggered to do so.  In this design, cutting the trigger wire will disable the bomb.

In a fail deadly bomb, the trigger mechanism is *stopping* the bomb from exploding and removing it will still detonate the device.

The classic cut-the-wires scene wouldn’t help you with a fail deadly design, but those are quite rare.  They’re complex and dangerous to build/handle compared to the simple triggers of a fail safe design.