In last night’s CSI, a pipe bomb was fastened to a car, and connected to the car’s digital clock, timed to explode at 8:30 (or something like that).
I know nothing about bomb-making, but I have a problem with this concept: is there anything in a digital clock that you could connect to externally, that would “know” when it’s 8:30? There’s nothing mechanically going on, like there would be with an old-fashioned analog alarm clock–which were (in movies, at least) always used as the timer in a bomb.
Well, there are digital alarm clocks so there is certainly something in some digital clocks that you could connect to externally for setting off your bomb. (And there have been mornings where my alarm didn’t wake me up but a bomb might have worked. But I digress.)
A digital clock in a car may or may not have an alarm setting but, given that digital clock chips are probably pretty standard, there is a good chance that it had the capability of having an alarm. All you would need to know is which lead from the chip triggers the alarm and how to set it.
A bit of a stretch maybe but certainly much more plausible than some of their plots.
Yes, as tanstaafl says, it’s easy! All you have to do is expose the alarm clock circuitry to reach the alarm-set wires, short these appropriately to set the alarm, and then connect a wire unobtrusively to the buzzer wire to run to the bomb. This last part shouldn’t require anything more difficult than removing large parts of the dashboard, so it’s a piece of cake. Certainly much easier than buying a $5 travel alarm clock, as I’m sure any Bond villain would agree.
I think I’ll get the no-clock option on my next car, just to be on the safe side.
Seriously, though, my guess would be that the little inserted-in-dash digital clocks wouldn’t have any vestigial alarm circuitry, except maybe in the one IC buried inaccessibly beneath the epoxy blob on the board. Circuit boards are easy to redesign.
Hey, I only found the other day that the lyric of the theme song was “Who are you”, and I learned this becuase it came up as a TV trivia question on Beat the Geeks.
All this time, I thought the high-pitched voice guy was singing “Blue water”.
I also giggled like hell the first time I reflected on the choice of those two theme songs in context with the allegations against Pete Townsend last year.
Yeah, my soul is as pure and white as a bar towel after last call.