Goofs

After spraying the chain link fence with the chemical agent, Clark pulls the section of fence toward him and drops it. When the guards find the hole in the fence, the section is on the other side.

When Ryan tries to summon help after his helicopter crashes, he reaches into the cockpit and turns a knob on the radio transmitter. The film has been flipped and the word "frequency" under the knob is clearly spelled backwards. This would also explain why Ryan reaches through the cockpit window with his right arm, but it's his left hand that adjusts the radio frequency.

There are at least two different "Tail Numbers" shown for the President's aircraft - a four digit (42xx) tail number is used when the aircraft is on the ground, and later a five digit (7xxxx) number is used when the plane is flying.

As Ryan's helicopter crashes after being hit by shockwave, you can see one of the crewmen almost get thrown clear off the chopper's right front window. When Ryan climbs out of the destroyed aircraft, the crewman is nowhere to be seen; later on, when Ryan reaches for the radio, the crewman's body is farther inside the aircraft.

When Mason is loading the crate containing the bomb into his truck, the forklift pallet is clearly still attached to the bottom of the crate. When Mason reaches the stadium and unloads the crate, the forklift pallet is missing.

When the American planes are attacking the Russian airbase, they are all using their anti-collision lights, something that would never be done on an actual combat mission.

It is next to impossible to get radiation poisoning from skin contact with plutonium.

The effects of the chemical attack on Chechnya are described as resembling "acute late-stage cerebral palsy." Cerebral palsy is a birth injury, not a progressive disease, and therefore does not have stages.

The Presidential motorcade is not only short an ambulance, it is also missing a large portion of police presence, at least 3 times less than there would be there in reality. Also, if not directly above, there should be a chopper near by.

When the nuclear bomb detonates, its shock wave is strong enough to flip the presidential limousine in the outskirts of the city over. It would have to have a yield of at least 1 megaton to do this, but news broadcasts describe the explosion as being smaller than that of the Hiroshima bomb. The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 15 kilotons.

The Baltimore Forum has a dome in the opening shots of the football scene but it disappears later in the high aerial shot.

All of the shots of the football stadium are at night -- fireworks, National Anthem, lighting on the players, cheerleaders, and fans. All of the shots just before, during, and after the explosion -- aerial view of "Baltimore", or wherever it is (Maryland is usually mostly green, not brown), windows outside the hospital, helicopters, cars and trucks on the road, and everything else -- are in bright daylight. When Ryan calls Cabot to warn him about the bomb, Ryan is in daylight but Cabot is taking the calls at night, even though they're both in Baltimore.

When the President arrives at the football game it is broad daylight. When the President leaves the game and the subsequent explosion occurs it is also broad daylight. The scenes of the actual football game however, are either at night or inside a lighted, dome stadium. A satellite view of the city just prior to the explosion shows only an open air stadium, (which appears to be empty) again in broad daylight. The dark, lighted scenes of the football game do not match any of these other accompanying daylight scenes.

At 1:46:48, when President Fowler (James Cromwell) asks his Secretary of State Sidney Owens (Ron Rifkin) for a second confirmation on the order to strike Russia, Owens calls him 'Bob'. The president's first name was William/Bill.

An extra's shadow can be seen moving across the greenscreened background in the hospital corridor window before the Nuclear Flash.

In the end, when Dressler's car in Vienna blows up, the car next to his has an Austrian license plate that starts with "WV", which is not a real license plate code used in Austria.

When the shock wave tears off the tail rotor of the helicopter, the helicopter dives in level flight, whereas in reality, without the tail rotor to counteract the effect of the main rotor, the fuselage would begin to spin.

Early in the film, there is a satellite view of CIA Headquarters in Langley with a title slide - "Headquarters" is misspelled as "Headquaters."

Early in the movie when the bomb is removed from the crater the truck, a 30 year old half ton, does not move despite lifting several hundred pounds of dead weight.

Spelling error - in the initial scene when a text says Israel and Syria made a "suprise [sic] attack" on Egypt.

The map of Russia on the NEACP display screen is the map of the Soviet Union using Soviet borders.

The email on Mason's computer is dated November 2002. When the aircraft carrier attack happens afterward, the date on the screen is given as September 2002.

The city Arzamas-16 was renamed Kremlyov in 1991 and since 1995 its official name is Sarov. It is possible that officers use the old name out of habit but that doesn't explain mistake in the forced subtitles.

The comment about the domed stadium not pictured later is not completely accurate.

The area the presidential motorcade is driving through when the bomb explodes is semi-desert, which is not found in Baltimore or anywhere in the East.

In a cabinet meeting, someone proposes to send support to Chechenia from Turkish airports, and somebody objects that this will involve a violation of the Armenian air space. Yet, not Armenia, but Georgia is located between Turkey and Chechenia.

In the dead of winter, during the F-16 attack on the Russian airbases in the Arctic Circle, the sun is shining brightly overhead.

As the president's motorcade is shown driving towards the Baltimore Forum (located in the inner harbor) we see a helicopter shot of the motorcade headed out of town on I-395 and turning east to go directly through the Ft. McHenry Tunnel, away from the inner harbor.

The scenes in the Golan Heights are obviously not shot in the Golan Heights, a relatively mountainous and forested area.

The Israelis would surely have known that their plane carrying a nuclear bomb had crashed in the Golan Heights and would have scoured the entire region to locate the site of the crash and what remained of the bomb before it was found by any civilians or hostile military personnel. Yet there is no evidence that any such search was made. or that Israel ever informed the USA that it had lost a nuclear bomb that the Americans had provided to them.

A bomb that created the damage shown in the film would have been so large that it would have not been survivable given the time between the evacuation and the detonation. The President is shown being rushed from the stadium in a motorcade and the bomb detonates what appears to be a few minutes when the motorcade is on the road near enough to experience the blast effect.

If the bomb were indeed large enough to damage a motorcade fleeing the target area, then it would have been large enough to destroy that motorcade and its occupants.

One of the cabinet secretaries refers to the Russians gassing the capital (i.e. Grozny) of another country (i.e. Chechnya), however, Chechnya was/is not a country.

Cabot travels with Ryan within and outside the Capitol alone and meeting Clark alone. CIA Directors are senior intelligence officials and have Protective Staff Agents surrounding them even when meeting other CIA officials. No agents were present with the President only US Secret Service Agents.