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Geocaching Shuts Down British Town
DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly writes "Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure in an urban space as one geocacher found out in England after the police cordoned off the center of a small West Yorkshire town and the Bomb Squad was called in. From the article: 'It was a normal busy Friday morning in the small West Yorkshire market town of Wetherby when someone working in a café spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street. He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"
People need to lighten up. This is getting out of hand.
Often times caches specifically state "DO NOT SEARCH IN VIEW OF MUGGLES". "Muggles" being those unfamiliar with geocaching. This is a perfect reason why to heed those words.
no, honestly, this is dumb. the terrorists have won.
Isn't this the very goal of terrorism? To disrupt our daily activities with irrational fear?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I wonder what was actually inside O.O
Stupidity. That's the only thing to blame here.
Utterly retarded extreme drooling idiocy.
Guys, there's so much awesome stuff in the UK. Why do you let it degenerate into an Idiocracy? You don't have to, you know? It's your choice.
That study that showed that today, people score only an IQ of 70 at a test from the 70s, sounds waaay to me right now.
Save your country! It's awesome! (At least it was, and can become again.)
Make the right choice. Now.
Really? A bomb... that's a danger to people on the street... yet small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand? Is shrapnel really considered a terrorist threat nowadays? Or did he think its antimatter explosion would eradicate the entire city block?
Bomb scare!
I'm sure there are dozens of other instances of this happening around the world since the whole geocaching thing started.
FTA:
He also questions putting caches in urban areas.
"If you feel as though you have to do that, then perhaps contact the police, let us know where it is, give us a description and perhaps a picture and a contact number would be very useful."
Had this been the US, anyone still considering this would probably just be arrested for supporting terrorism.
This used to happen a bunch, until the public became familiar with geocaching, and years ago geocaching guidelines changed to encourage clear plastic containers rather than the more robust menacing ammo cans that were favored initially (far more weather tight).
Ironically, letterboxing is an activity that has been popular across the pond for decades, and involves the exact same process of hiding a container somewhere publicly accessible.
But, you still will get over zealous officials who want to play with their toys and blow tupperware up, rather than look at the note on the container, or, you know, investigate.
Link to the archived geocache listing (for which you need an account to view)
Particularly troubling is this quote from the cache owner referring to the finder, "When I asked as to his fate, the policeman said it would be wrong to tell me what had happened to him but that he had been dealt with without going to court, but it would likely affect his future career. Read into that what you will."
I could see considering arresting the woman who called emergency services over nothing, then releasing her give her honest mistake. But doing more than questioning the finder and placer? Preposterous.
So was the small plastic box in his hand the phone he was talking on, or did he 'appear' to have something in both hands?
How would he have fiddled with the box with both hands full? Or was he fiddling with the phone? He must have fiddled with the phone in order to fiddle with the box, as if he wasn't talking on the phone when fiddling with the box he would have to fiddle with the phone afterwards in order to dial a call. Which would call into question the recorded sequence of events. It would only seem likely that he hid the box, then placed a call, and walked off while the call was going through.
The most likely hypothesis however is that the deed was carried out by a three armed perpetrator, holding the box in one hand, talking on the phone with the other, and using his extraneous appendage to "fiddle with the box".
Obviously a sign of an alien borne geocaching mind control conspiracy, the clued-in CIA and NSA providing a stand in human fall guy should it draw attention from the local bobbies.
wow, I didn't know about geo-caching. And now that I know, I don't see myself participating, ever! This doesn't even have to do with fear of terrorism - picking up a box with unknown contents, packed by a stranger - why do people do it?
You should be afraid of everything!
On my daily walks with the dog i one day spotted something in a silver box near the path and found it was a small aluminium box. I personally did not think that it could be related to geocaching at all and called the local polica station and asked them what to do, as in this case it was me who was afraid to touch or open it because i thought this is a bomb ... Well, one of the first things this police officer said was
"i bet this is one of those geocaching boxes, that is not uncommon these days" :-)
So i asked him: "shall i really open it"
officer: "yes, open it"
"and what if it is a bomb and i blow up?"
officer: "then i will keep my ears shut!"
of course there was nothing interesting in this box and no bomb at all. but i really had to laugh about this quite cool and funny officer
Lord "not Gargamel's Cat!" Azrael
... after all, she goes around hiding strange packages every year.
While some disgust was expressed over a local ad campaign called, "report the suspicious, not the strange", it is essentially correct: we should be reporting suspicious activities, but there is a definite role for discretion.
Sometimes you can even ask the person what they're doing and discover, "hey, this geocaching thing is cool."
He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"
Why attack a flower box? I had heard the terrorists wanted to take us back to the Dark Ages, but, in this case, the assumption appears to be that they are trying to take us all the way back to the Triassic, before the dawn of angiosperms.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.
Why attack a flower box? I had heard the terrorists wanted to take us back to the Dark Ages, but, in this case, the assumption appears to be that they are trying to take us all the way back to the Triassic, before the dawn of angiosperms.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
This is not an over-reaction. Here in the UK, terrorism on such a scale used to happen pretty regularly- for example, see the children killed in the second attack here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrington_bomb_attacks. Political agreement in Northern Ireland mostly halted the war, but one positive thing that came out of September 11th was the extinguishing of monies and good-will from the US for any sort of terrorism.
The headline should be "Terror paranoia shuts down british town", geocaching was only involved by random chance. If you write about it, name the real culprit.
Why was he given a police caution ? He did nothing illegal, nothing that police had previously been asked to be told about, so why a caution ? Yes what he did accidentally caused some disruption; but this was not intended.
Boston has massively overreacted to so much innocuous stuff over the past few years I had fully expected it to be them again.
This time it was the U.K., go figure...
Don't adjust your hat in your neighbour's orchard.
Police and terrorism, sucking the innocent fun out of life since forever.
Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure
Unfortunately no one will be thinking twice before re-enacting their own version of chicken little and calling the police for every little thing.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
I may have been living under a rock...
but yeah understandably if someone leaves a 'bomb' you'd take precautions.
I've cached for a number of years, and learned the benefits of having a quick chat with local businesses before planting full-on urban caches. Not only could it put them at ease, but it's also another group of people that would be "in the know" should someone unfamiliar with the sport panic about it.
The main thing that I found was that, in nearly all cases, local businesses were thrilled with the idea of a dedicated group of people actively travelling to an area near to their business! Many went so far as to pass a few coupons along to hide in the cache, or offer a 'cacher discount' if people mentioned the cache when paying up at the counter.
Found one GC1WPTQ that has a note from July 3 "Disabled at the request of the police ..."
The best thing is the previous find where the player wrote "My word this took some finding - amongst the trying to look natural as muggles walking doggles streamed by"
And what's to stop a bomber writing 'geocache - contents harmless" on their bomb?
Must.... resist..... argh can't hold back:
DUH!
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Around here, we use ammo boxes for geocaches. Of course, these are usually in the middle of the woods, not next to anything more interesting than a small, wooden bridge for 1 person to cross or a fallen tree. Only foot traffic areas.
In urban settings, we deploy "micro-caches" - the size of a shotgun shell or smaller. I think the most harm something that size could cause is like an M-80 explosive (firecracker). Some of the most fun caches are found using magnetic cases under things in the middle of popular tourist locations - monuments, statues, etc.
Those were quite popular in my days.....and being surrounded by a bunch of idiot kids proud to have a copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook. God, I hated high school.
MORE people need to GEOCACHE .. this is probably the best promotion for it ever!!! .. whoot!
Taking the attitude of "It's probably harmless" could lead to dangerous situations in the future if people expect that all containers like this are perfectly safe. It is quite possible that this could have been a hazardous container.
Is it the People's Front of Judea, or the Judean People's Front?
SPLITTER!!!!
We are no longer free to play games outside. Either because of fear we end up as victims of terrorist attacks or because we are seen as terrorists ourselves (Who else would have reason to be outside? You can be attacked by terrorists!)
When normal people doing normal things are submitted to suspicion and police action, we are no longer a free society, and yes September 11th. help that on the way.
I never saw it stated somewhere officially but my own experience points to the conclusion that indeed Berlin police checks on Caches listed on geocaching.com. There is one in Berlin (http://coord.info/GC2XDG3) by the name "BrandVerein" which would translate to FireAssociation. The name actually is a hint to the cache's location, if you go there, it's obvious.
Still, that name hit a spot with the police since for some years there is this series of expensive cars burning at night and lots of pressure on the cops for not being able to stop the serial igniter(s).
So, the first day the cache was published 2 searchers there found themselves under surveillance when they followed the gps compass. An officer stepped out of the car, to the exact koords of the cache and told them to go on searching. When they found the box, the officer took a look, approved it for being harmless, wished them good luck and left the scene.
Cool and efficient
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
No wait! Romani ite domum.
FTFA: Although this appears to be an episode executed in good faith from all sides, it left traders in a busy town out of pocket and the last geocacher to find the box outside Karen's café with a police caution.
Exactly what offense did the geocacher commit in this case? Is acting in a manner somebody might possibly find suspect now a crime in the UK?
This is getting silly. Irrational fear and bankrupting countries is their goals. They are winning on both fronts.
Terrorism isn't something new. It's been around for eons and how its been dealt with has just changed. There is a reason why we see uniformed armies, its to distinguish the fighting forces of a nation from the civilian population. Why is this important for reasons other than not to hurt civilians? It's important because it shows that if you conquer a nation, you don't have to commit genocide, the people will go along with whomever is in charge.
Now in the modern era, we have become "civilized" but this comes at a high price. Our populations have to deal with the continued threat of reprisals from groups that are only encouraged to do more reprisals. Governments thrive on this because frankly, these days governments derive their power from fear.
In America, our history shows how to deal with "terrorists". The native, aboriginal Americans, aka Indians, fought gorilla warfare against us and by modern definition would be considered terrorists. We responded with genocide, and containment. Had we not done this, we would still be fighting skirmishes with them, and people living in the countryside would be worried about getting scalped. Sure, your inner hippie can be repulsed by this, but the mechanics of it are pretty sound.
But the modern world and all of its "civilization" give us impossible to win scenarios. The IRA situation is only on hold, we all know they will cycle back to violence eventually. The Palestinian situation will never resolve its self, even if they get their own country, they will still be wanting to blow up Israel. Enormous amounts of resources will be spent and innocent lives will be lost and in the end, we will still be in the same spot we are now.
You can't play the "civilized human game" if only one side will play it. Take the United States for example, you couldn't beat our military and expect to take over this country. We are an armed camp here that would rather die fighting than live a second under foreign rule. (at least we used to be like that, we might be a bunch of pussies now) If you were an invader, you wouldn't turn your back on any of us for a second, even old women would be trying to kill you somehow. Nor would you engage us with any traditional sense of warfare rules. We shot all the conventional rules of warfare in the head during our Revolutionary War, and I am sure that 99% of all Americans would laugh at the Geneva Convention Rules of Warfare if it came down to a war on our own country. Not only that, you couldn't just pack up and leave, we would follow you home and kill every last one of you, then dance on your graves.
Effectively, the IRA should have brought genocide to their country. If you kill every last one of them down to every man, woman and child. The problem is solved, you don't have terrorists popping up out of a population if they are all dead. Again this is back to why uniformed military are important for civilization and why adhering to this is a must unless you are willing to gamble the lives of EVERYONE in your country.
The United States understands all of this. Why do you think we "over reacted" to 9/11? We have had to fight terror with terror. We had to show the world if you come blow up buildings here, we will come blow your country to utter hell. You can't hide from us just because you don't wear a uniform. If you hide in some dipshit country who is dumb enough to harbor you, we will blow that entire country to hell. If we think that you are squirrelly and MIGHT pull some bullshit like some terrorist actions, we will blast your asses all the way back to the stone age. Consider yourselves lucky you have something we can use, like oil, or we might just nuke you off the planet. The thought we pound home with bombs is this; "don't go fucking around with America or they will come kill us all." And yes, I think the world is finally getting the point. Fuck you and your "America is a paper tiger" theory.
Oddly though, we have some kind of weird guilt about this, and when others try to do it, we get excited about it. Frankly you ca
Take the Red Pill.
I think we have a perfect 10!!
Here in the US, at least the National Park Service is enough aware of goecaching that they ask (it's not even required by law, they just ask) to be informed of where caches are placed in a park. This simple notification would prevent the problem in TFA - but only if it had happened in a national park.
No, you've only committed the crime of using a "hoax device" if you've put something somewhere intended to scare people. That doesn't mean that you won't be accused of the crime for doing something that somebody freaked out about, especially if they called the police who freaked out even more, and you might even be convicted of it, but that's a different question.
In England's case, there's enough history of Irish terrorism that there are actually some legitimate reasons people might freak out, unlike, say, the Mooninite invasion of Boston.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Fuck you!"
I read a news item a few years back? It was a commentary by a UK newspaper about when the IRA bombings first started up. People were all talking about it, of course, and it was the hot news item of the day.
One reporter went up to an elderly gentleman and asked him what he thought of the IRA bombings.
"Fuck you," he replied. "I've been bombed by professionals!"
How quintessentially British.
And how wonderfully appropriate for our times. We, as a race, need to learn how to say "Fuck you!" to the terrorists, whether they carry a holy book or a law book. When someone comes up to us, shoving a microphone in our face and asking us, all a-twitter, "ARE YOU SCARED?!? ARE YOU AFRAID?!?"
We should simply say, "Fuck you! Of course I'm scared, but I'm not going to stop living my life?"
"Fuck you."
It's a phrase we humans need to use more often.
[End Of Line]
My new claim to fame, my brother in law sparks a bomb scare.
Even better, he was watching out of his window when all of this was going on ( he can see the site of the cache from his kitchen - he likes to see who's using it ), ringing my wife in a blind panic asking what he should do. My wife was very helpful and gave him advice about not dropping the soap. He didn't laugh.
The NPS does not allow the placing of physical caches in National Parks. The only caches allowed are Virtual/Earthcaches.
Look, it was a mistake. It happens. The police need to walk it off and be glad it wasn't something more serious instead of handing out bogus cautions that do not sound very legal. Misuse of police power is just as bad as terrorism, besides, at the end of the day that's the wrong message we should be focusing on. Let the thoughtless geocaching jerk off with a warning instead of giving him a questionable caution so he can slink away into obscurity and we can concentrate on the real hero.... the guy who reported it. Now more than ever It's good to look out for one another. It was harmless this time, next time it could save someone's life. That guy is awesome.
Just my two cents.
"He was hiding some small container in a flower box, so naturally I assumed it was some kind of surveillance device." The three FBI agents surveilling him arrested him on the spot.
Fandroids hate facts.