What if there was no storm?
Relating to this question: Explain the exploding pipe in The Shawshank Redemption. In that scene Andy is timing his strikes on the sewage line to the match the lightning strikes (shouldn't it be the thunder he waits for?).
What would he have done if there was no lightning?
He has already followed his plan to a point that he couldn't just slip back into his cell and replace everything. So he needed to crawl out through the pipe, but he hadn't made a hole in it already or even weakened the pipe in any way. I always assumed it was the pressure in the pipe that kept him from making a hole before, like he had in his wall, but "Explain the exploding pipe" shows that it was a drama effect only.
He needed to go out that pipe, he had only a short amount of time to escape and if the storm hadn't come through he wouldn't have been able to make so much noise breaking into the pipe.
Andy is meticulous, so I don't believe he would have left this detail to such a great chance as a lightning storm (even if he checked for a storm before he switched the books there would be no guarantee of lightning); so how else would he have gotten the pipe open within the limited time frame he had to do it?
Best Answer
My guess is that he would have had to go ahead and break the pipe anyway (as you point out, he has already carried out his plan past the point of no return). The thunder provided a way to mask the sound and give him more chances to open the pipe, but if there had been no storm, he probably would have still broken open the pipe and hoped that either no one figured out what the sound was or that it would take the guards too long to figure out where the noise was coming from.
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What happens if there are no storms?
Without thunderstorms and lightning, the earth-atmosphere electrical balance would disappear in five minutes! We aren't really sure what would happen if this balance wasn't maintained. But thunderstorms are not the only way the atmosphere conducts electricity \u2013 the solar wind and ionospheric wind play a role too.Can it rain without a storm?
Thunderstorms are usually accompanied by rain. However, not all thunderstorms are wet and this seemingly weird weather phenomenon is called dry thunderstorm. Let's see how this happens. Dry thunderstorm refers to thunder and lightning that occur without bringing rain to the ground.Is there a place on earth with no thunderstorms?
This planet's only thunderstorm-free locations would be areas close to both poles \u2014 the interior of the Arctic Ocean and the interior of Antarctica.What do you call a storm with no rain?
A dry thunderstorm is a thunderstorm that produces thunder and lightning, but most or all of its precipitation evaporates before reaching the ground. Dry lightning refers to lightning strikes occurring in this situation.Stranger Things | What if the Storm Ends?
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Answer 2
In many parts of the country, thunderstorms are common—even predictable some days in advance.
If it was where storms are random, or if a storm hadn't materialized, presumably he wouldn't have smashed his way in, but instead broke it less noisily: perhaps weakening the pipe with grinding and scratching and then breaking the remainder with some sound insulation like towels, blankets, etc. Whatever he did, there is great strategic significance to making noise during instants when it is masked by other noises: showers running, garbage truck activity, sirens going off, riots, etc.
As for the explosion, I always assumed that was due to concentrated sewage methane. Maybe I should look at the other question.
Answer 3
He could have had the tunnel complete for a long time, and just waited for the right night with a thunderstorm to actually escape. There was no reason to escape on that particular day, he was just sat waiting for the right time. It was only once the pipe was broken that he had to act fast, because then somebody would have been down to investigate the leak and would have seen the tunnel, so he had to escape there and then as soon as the pipe was broken. However the bigger plot hole is that a) sewage is unlikely to explode, b) it wouldn't explode enough to create a hole big enough to get into, and c) at that high pressure, it would never have drained that quickly. But all in all it's a good film and probably doesn't require this much attention to detail.
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