Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011, directed by Brad Bird)

Nuclear missiles

- Why did the main bad guy only order one nuclear missile to be launched from the submarine?  There is dialogue in the movie where he says something along the lines of We only need one to do the trick.  But the submarine has more than one to launch.  I don't know the exact number available but it's more than one.  (I think it's probably 12 or 16.)  Why not launch two?  Or three?  Or a better idea would be to launch all of them?  You want it to be the end of the world anyways, what are you saving those other missiles for?  This guys was a professor and strategist?  If he was really that smart then he'd launch more than one.  He doesn't know anything about statistics?  Did he not consider that something could go wrong with the one missile?  After all, it is rocket science. 

-  The United States has many satellites (again, I don't know the exact number) orbiting the earth whose purpose is to detect missile launches.  This is so that if a nuclear strike is launched against them, the US can launch its own missiles to retaliate even before the incoming missiles detonate on their soil and the US's capability to strike back has been hampered.  Do you think that the US is going to wait for the incoming missile(s) to detonate before they launch a retaliatory strike?  Well, the US protocols for the response to a nuclear attack are top secret so we'll probably never know.

- The missile launches from the submarine.  The missile goes into orbit and then comes back down again to hit San Francisco.  The missile then careens off of a building and then splashes into the ocean.  This is incorrect.  Nuclear ballistic missiles have MIRVs; Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles.  When the one big missile points back down towards SF and it's on its way back down to earth, the nose cone detaches and ten to 12 (don't know the exact number) MIRVs deploy.  The 10 or so MIRVs are now like 10 nuclear bombs free-falling towards the SF area.  There should have been 10 or so nuclear armed objects falling towards SF ready to explode, not just one.  And I don't know for sure because it's top secret but there's probably no way to stop the MIRVs once they're detached from the big missile.

Granted this is a Mission: Impossible movie.  There are technologies in the movie which do not exist yet (that the public is aware of) and so a lot of the gadgets aren't verifiable.  But the above issues concerning the missile are.  This is a techno-thriller so they have to get the tech correct.  It is unforgivable that they didn't.

I paid money to watch this movie and I wish I could get that money back.