Slashdot Mirror
Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch Provokes Bomb Scare
Bomb disposal teams were called in and a nearby pub evacuated after water company engineers mistook a Monty Python film prop for a hand grenade. After nearly an hour of examination by bomb experts, they counted to three. No more. No less. Three was the number they counted, and the number they counted was three. Four they did not count, nor two, except to proceed to three. Five was right out. Once the number three had been reached, being the third number, they declared that the grenade was actually a copy of the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" used in the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail. A police spokeswoman confirmed that the device was a toy and that it had been no danger to the public.
Add to that years of pandering to public idiocy and paranoia, and you wonder if a city couldn't be shut down overnight by putting little post-its with the word BOMB on it all over the place. "Well, we can't take the chance! We have to assume it is!"
Like this guy with a picture of a gun on his shirt.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
i call BULLSHIT on this story because nobody would mistake that for a real hand grenade i think the truth is more likely that they found a real grenade but dont want nobody to get afraid
It's a good thing the bartender didn't bring out the Chambord Liqueur.
They'd have decided he had an arsenal and he'd still be closed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This past September they had to evacuate a Philadelphia Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park because someone confused a fucking hot dog wrapper for a bomb.
Our government, schools, media, and society as a whole train us to be paranoid and live in fear, to dumb us down. Not to sound like a conspiracy nut but this is the world that we occupy.
http://cbs3.com/topstories/Philadelphia.Phillies.Citizens.2.824722.html
http://www.nj.com/phillies/index.ssf/2008/09/hot_dogs_create_bomb_scare_at.html
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Hot-dogs-cause-a-delicious-bomb-scare-before-Phi?urn=mlb,110486
Precisely, I work in security and the deal is that you don't know until you've examined the device whether or not it's dangerous. In some cases the bomb squad can't even be sure. Which is how things like hot dogs end up being blown up by experts.
While it's unlikely that such a device would be dangerous the reality is that things as harmless looking as a box of chocolates or a book can be deadly ordinance if rigged up properly. Assuming in retrospect that it was a dumb thing to be concerned with is a bit over the top.
the idiotic restrictions on liquids because of a fantasy threat that could never have been carried out
I think the airline restrictions are pretty stupid myself, but mainly for reasons you probably haven't thought of. However, having a military background, I can assure you that your belief that small volumes of fluids can't be used to cause catastrophic damage is sorely in need of a reality check.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.