Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24812000-20170301003315/@comment-61022-20170322202212

Yeah, what ADuor said. I believe that both reasons for the explosion would work viably. Keeping in mind that Reed was unaware of any of the mystical aspects of the experiment, when he was looking over Doom's calculations he was doing so from a strictly scientific perspective. One could presume that perhaps the "flaws" that Reed saw was based on the lack of understanding of the mystical aspect (which would explain why Victor was so upset by Reed's snooping and later belief that Reed somehow sabotaged the experiment) In, Doctor Doom forces Reed to recreate the experiment (with Alyssa Moy and another explorer as stand ins for Doom) to prove who was right. In that story, regardless of what Reed did, the device still exploded (although he and his companions managed to get away). But that was more a case of Doom setting Reed up to fail because the device was already activated and Richards only had seconds to do something.

Later on in, Reed improves on Victor's design so he, Sue and Johnny could travel to Heaven and bring Ben back from the dead.

Based on that, my speculation on the matter would be this:

- Likely, the differences in equations between the two men had to do with the fact that Reed figured out what needed to be done through pure science, being that he was (a) unaware that magic was also being utilized and (b) he was untrained in magic anyway.

- Considering that, perhaps Victor's design would have worked with the scientific equations as they were and the real reason it all went kablooey was because Ben smudged one of the mystical symbols.

It certainly would explain why Ben feels responsible, why Reed and Victor were always at odds about whose calculations were correct, and why Victor blames Reed. Because as far as Doom knew, Reed was the only person who stumbled upon his secret project.

(Do I get a No Prize now?)