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This Is What a Real Bomb Looks Like
szczys writes: You see them all the time in movies and TV shows, but is that what an actual bomb looks like? Probably not... here's what a real bomb looks like. This story stems from a millionaire gone bust from gambling addiction who decided to extort riches back from the casino. He built a bomb and got it into the building, then ransomed the organization for $3 million. The FBI documented the mechanisms in great detail — including the 8 independent trigger systems that made it impossible for them to disarm the thing. The design was so nefarious it's still used today as a training tool.
Since this is something that seems like it would be difficult to defuse or even work on, what would be the best way to handle the situation where it's found in a location like this? The linked article indicates that attempts to diffuse the bomb failed and it left a five-story crater in the building where it was located, which is probably less than ideal.
The only thing I can really think of would to try to build some kind of reinforced blast cage around it in order to minimize the amount of damage it can do or perhaps try to direct the explosion to minimize hard, much like a gun directs the force of a blast out of the barrel.
Also, would scanning it even be safe as what's to stop someone from building some kind of trigger that would respond to x-ray exposure? Even if there weren't such a trigger, could anyone even call that bluff?
Cutting open the case to get to the wires would have cause the aluminum foil to complete the circuit. The only option was the cut open the case and the wires simultaneously. To do that required a shaped charge. This is the only detonator that the FBI has come accost that couldn't even be disarmed by its creator for a reason. The ransom was just for the switch code to disable the tilt switch so they could move it to a safe place to explode.
I used to be a security officer and I had training on IED identification.
You're completely correct. And that's assuming you can see the thing in the first place. Sometimes the IED winds up under something. I heard of one case where a guy lost his leg kicking an IED that was hidden under a fried chicken bucket.
The only thing you can do is to look for something that has what appears to be the requisite components to be an explosive device.
What people don't realize is that the easy part is making a device that will explode, the hard thing is making it explode when you want it to.
A real bomb has an explosive.
The kid's circuit had no explosive and was plain to see it wasn't a bomb as a result. Everybody knew it wasn't a bomb. Everyone treated the thing as "not a bomb" but treated the kid like a terrorist anyway.
Plain out-and-out racism and denying this kid his civil rights. I hope his family makes the school system's taxpayers sweat over this.
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BMO
When I'm working around live wires I will frequently test the circuit, trip the breaker and then re-test the circuit just to be sure. And even after all that I still will occasionally brush wires to frame to make sure I haven't over looked something. I'll readily admit to a bit of irrationality where all that is concerned.
That said I can't imagine buttoning up all that Rube Goldberg contraption, transporting and then setting it to armed without a lot of trepidation that it would just go boom. Maybe the tilt mechanism got stuck in the contact position, maybe there was a short somewhere, maybe maybe maybe.
I'm really curious what his heart rate was the second he threw the switch. Did he have 100% confidence in the design or did he flinch.
And thousands of Black men were lynched, but only one resulted in a Supreme Court trial.
You want a world of equal results? Good luck.
I won't say for a second that authorities didn't overreact in each of those cases - there's an obvious lack of intelligence/discretion on the part of the schools/authorities. It's fantastically beyond how any reasonable person should have responded. That being said, in all those cases, the kids in trouble were imagining / play acting a fictional situation that, if true, would have been cause for alarm. Also, none of the kids demonstrated any level of ingenuity - they were just kids being kids.
In this current situation, the kid presented the clock as a clock, and insisted the whole way through that it was a clock. If he had brought it in, and pretended it was a bomb - then yes some reaction would have been warranted. Also, he was demonstrating an interest in learning, and demonstrated a level of technical proficiency in building a clock.