Haha, perhaps. I must disagree though. I think bad writing often clings to the unrealistic to force it's conclusions. Why, after throwing the explosives-laden coat but a few feet away did they not run? They had time to run, but didn't. Why not throw it in the pool?

Would it not have heightened the dramatic tension, and in the process been decidedly UN-boring if they had run away, only to find themselves in Moriarty's clutches once more? I found the whole "mexican stand-off" to be quite contrived, and threw away the menace that had been created in the rest of the episode. I get that the writers wanted to get where they ended up (by the pool, in the moonlight, Holmes and Moriarty, with a side of Watson), but I think they painted themselves into a corner.

My two cents.

Mattlocked wrote:

It would have been so boooring! For drama-reasons. Obvious.

But that assumes that SH & JW would be thinking clearly and considering all of things. Regardless of where they put the explosives, or how tired they are, if you'd just managed to get explosives off of you, you'd run. The fight response is intense. 

Plus sliding a coat of explosives across the floor could just as likely cause it to explode.

Swanpride wrote:

Running away would have been dangerous...the assassins might have misinterpreted this as them trying to follow Moriaty and might have shot. And throwing explosives in the water isn't exactly the all around solution as which it is presented normally in movies. Throwing it into the water might have caused the explosion they wanted to avoid, and with that much explosive, it would have still be dangerous to stand beside the detonation, water or not.

Well I might be a little naive but I think it's completly understandable how they behaved. Moriarty had just left and they only knew him for five minutes so how could they know he'd change his mind and come back? And I think, too that the vest was probably quite stabel because if it wasn't and one of the victims would accidently make it explode it would have ruined the whole game and Moriarty would try to avoid that.

equiraptor wrote:

It'd be reasonable to expect John to have some experience facing situations of this nature. Even if not identical, a similar situation is enough to avoid the irrational responses. As to Sherlock, well.. with his intentionally different personality, assuming he is better at managing that kind of situation than most is reasonable.

An explosive so delicate it would detonate from sliding across the flooring in there would be at a risk for detonation from the wearer's movements. That's not really practical for that sort of vest. There are very stable explosives that could be chosen (such as C4 - though since they're in the UK they might get PE4 instead). While there's a possibility a pulled wire could cause an issue, that's relatively unlikely with the flooring in there. However, water can interfere with circuits and cause the trigger to fire, which would then set off an otherwise more stable explosive. It's not that the explosive would respond to being wet, but the wiring. Being immersed in water is rather different from having water (sweat, rain, whatever) fall on the wiring, so a different response from the device is reasonable.

 
I agree, I think that, because of they wires, they couldn't have thrown it into the pool or it would have short-circuited and the bomb would have been set off. As to why they didn't run, it's actually only a matter of seconds before M changes his mind and John would obviously need at least that after his ordeal. Even with the history as a soldier, he would have been close to a mental break-down!