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Art Project Causes Atlanta Police To Close Highway and Call Bomb Squad
McGruber writes: Yesterday, a ridiculously huge commotion and massive traffic jam occurred when Atlanta Police closed the downtown connector (Interstates 75 & 85) and called out the bomb squad to detonate a "suspicious device" taped to a bridge. Today, Georgia State University officials announced that the suspicious device was a student camera, "one of 18 used by students in an art project and deployed at various locations in the city." PetaPixel has additional information about Solargraphy, the style of pinhole photography apparently being done by the Georgia students.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
Who thought it was a good idea to mount something that looks like this on top of a bridge overlooking a heavily trafficked highway?
http://i.imgur.com/wSIN2fp.jpg
You're obviously not a photographer - because pinhole cameras can look like literally *anything*. A cardboard box, a wooden box, a soda can, potato chip can, an oatmeal box, a piece of Tupperware... literally anything. There's a group that turned an entire aircraft hangar into a giant pinhole camera. There's also a guy who rebuilt the back of a van into a pinhole camera.
A pinhole camera doesn't look like a specific thing - it's just a light tight container with a pinhole on one end and a way of holding film more or less flat inside it.
Image of the "device.". Yes, it was an overreaction because it was not a threat, but I don't see a note there... perhaps there's one in the shadow. If you suspect it's a bomb, are you supposed to get close enough to read the note on it?
Hindsight is 20/20... deciding what to do in situations like these is very difficult, but there's no way that, looking at that picture, you can't call it suspicious.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
And what if the duct tape package was filled with a nerve agent that could be dispersed by the explosion genius?
Blowing it up is just reckless. Either they didn't evaluate it correctly, or they realized it wasn't a bomb and just wanted to see a boom (which is irresponsible)
This is the reason why there's a bomb squad, and we don't just issue cops C-4 to take out anything that they decide is dangerous. Before actual detonation you should verify a) the device is explosive b) it needs to be detonated because it can't be safely dismantled c) detonation won't cause any bad effects like dispersing a nerve agent and probably a thousand other things I don't know because I'm not in a bomb squad.
I was a combat engineer in Iraq, and my job was disposing of roadside bombs.
It looks like it could be an explosive device. I would think that the guy who placed it was an idiot, as its too small to do much, and way to obvious. I still would have assumed it was such a device.
That sounds like an appropriate response, if one is in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any other conflict zone where IEDs are a regular, or even unusual occurrence. Here in the US, we seem to have about one bombing or bombing attempt every two years (half of which are FBI "sting" operations) despite having 10 times as many people. In that environment, it seems appropriate to put a little more credence in the note explaining the art project.
If you're out on the lake, and it quacks, it's probably a duck. If you're in a cubicle at the office and it quacks, someone probably farted.
I prefer bomb squads that can still count to 10 on their hands, even if you think that makes them look like an idiot.
So do I. But let me ask you: how many of the suspicious packages that bomb squads across the country have investigated and blown up have actually been explosive? In Atlanta, they investigate about one "device," abandoned briefcase, or discarded shopping bag a month, but the last actual bomb was in 1996.
If you're in Kabul, and you find a thing duct taped to the inside of a wrecked car, that has high bomb probability. If you're in a US city, 3 blocks from a college campus, and you find a thing duct taped with a clear view of traffic and an explanatory note, that has a high goofy college student probability.
I know this may run counter to a lot of the propaganda you've been fed, but THE US IS NOT A WAR ZONE