Good information. In that case, it seems like he did a pretty crappy job if he intended to do damage to something other than the truck.
News reports that his wife had filed for divorce a few days earlier and that he was a Trump voter. He also reportedly shot himself before the explosion.
My wag is he was distraught and wanted his death to be big news. He also might have had a sense of betrayal after Musk’s immigration comments.
Today’s paper quoted an ATF source to the effect of, “The explosive was not as sophisticated as we would expect given his military experience.”
For part of my Army career I was a Combat Engineer. I have experience blowing shit up. I have extremely limited experience improvising explosives. Certainly not as much as a career Special Forces soldier. Even I know if you are using commercial fireworks you would need to deconstruct them and separate out the explosive material in order to make an effective bomb.
The main ingredient is usually black powder which is a low explosive. Any device has to take that into account so it goes boom instead of burning.
The local news here in Las Vegas is sticking with the “design of the cybertruck helped contain the explosion” narrative.
They seem to have done all of their reporting in the first few hours after the incident and have been repeating the same points over and over since then.
So the evidence would seem to say that he was trying to get attention, not destroy stuff.
Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.
News reported a Five-time recipient of the Bronze Star.
I’m going to let you in on a little military secret as long as you promise not to tell anyone.
Bronze Stars don’t mean much. All it means is that he deployed multiple times, didn’t screw up and was of sufficiently high rank to be approved for a Bronze Star.
The major exception is if it was a Bronze Star with a V for valor. Bronze Stars can be awarded for either merit or valor. Awards for valor are rare. Awards for merit are very common.
One of the five had a V.
His girlfriend reported that he has symptoms of TBI.
The one thing I never wanted associated with my name post mortem was anything along the lines of “For somebody in his biz, he sure sorta sucked at it.”
Our Green Beret seems to have sucked at it.
Or had had his psyche destroyed by the rigors of a supremely difficult job. I’ve seen that tragedy up close and there’s not enough money in tbe Treasury to bring back what those poor bastards gave up in service to their country.
Temporary Breast Implosion? Total Binocular Infravision? Technical Bariatric Intelligence? Tyrolean Brotherhood International?
Help me out here.
Traumatic brain injury
Causes include falls, vehicle collisions and violence. Brain trauma occurs as a consequence of a sudden acceleration or deceleration within the cranium or by a complex combination of both movement and sudden impact. In addition to the damage caused at the moment of injury, a variety of events following the injury may result in further injury. These processes may include alterations in cerebral blood flow and pressure within the skull.
He may have had damage to his brain over the years he was a soldier that were manifesting now. One cause can be having been in the vicinity of too many explosions.
Could be this was spur of the moment and he didn’t really plan it out.
Could be as a Master Sergeant his days of cross training with explosives were long behind him. I haven’t heard what his specialty was. It could have been medical or communication.
Or maybe he wasn’t trying for maximum destruction.
And, as noted in that Wikipedia article:
I think the point was, he wasn’t a military fuck up. And you confirmed it. Thanks!
It’s been the signature injury in wars for centuries we just didn’t understand it.
Quite true. From all reports he was an active member of a Special Forces Group. You don’t stay there if you are a fuck up.
CNN has some helpful reporting on likely reasons for his actions:
Sounds like just a modern spin on self immolation.