re: #104 goddamnedfrank

Modern high explosives are laced with identification taggants that make tracing origin fairly easy for the FBI, so if they weren’t used that doesn’t really mean it’s not a trained expert. Expertise comes into play with the detonation circuitry, which reportedly was fairly sophisticated.

I’ve always wondered what “fairly sophisticated” means.

If I have a pipe bomb rigged with a wooden dowel between a firing pin and a detonator, connected to a monofilament line that is pulled aside when the box is opened, releasing the spring-loaded pin onto an empty 25-caliber cartridge epoxeyed into the end of the pipe, is that “fairly sophisticated”?

How about if I take an old mercury thermostat switch and a 9-volt battery, safe it with a plastic collar stay, and also connect that with monofilament to a hole in the outside of the box? Then when I pull out the collar stay and clip the mono, the circuit is complete and as soon as someone lifts the box and the merc switch moves, the circuit closes and pops the electric detonator. Is that “fairly sophisticated”?

The world wonders.