When a terrorist bomb is discovered (or a suspicious package is spotted), often a “controlled explosion” is carried out.
How do they do this? I am assuming that explosives must be used, since you often hear about packages being blown up that turn out to be someone’s luggage, packed lunch or lazy friend.
James.
pretty much the way you described it…
they ‘blow-up’ the suspected bomb in a safe place. Sometimes they use explosives, but i remember seeing some sort of high-tech robot that caried a shotgun to do the job.
I’ve seen it done with a remote controlled robot which had a shotgun attachment.
There are several ways to handle this.
The practical one is to get the suspected bomb to a blasting pit, add a suitable charge to it and set it off. As you write, this sometimes lead to explosive destruction of some unknowing soul’s thermos bottle & sandwiches. Of course, if circumstances speak against moving the suspected bomb, you can opt for building a suitable barrier (sandbags) around the bomb, have your clearance robot or a guy with steady nerves put an additional charge on it and blow it up from a distance.
If there’s no way to build a suitable barrier around it before detonating it in situ, other methods come into play.
Some bomb-clearing robots will fire an oversized shotgun shell (some use water instead of pellets) into the suspected bomb, attempting to tear the explosive charge apart. Even if this should set off the bomb’s detonator, the detonation won’t propagate to the entire charge. That’s the theory, anyway.
Only if the bomb is of the huge-ass variety will attempts be made to defuse it on-site. (Here in Germany, this situation still occurs regularly when excavation unearths Allied WWII bombs. Noone wants to move a bomb that’s been rusting for 50-some years. Detonating it is rarely a possibility, especially not in urban areas. So some guys with really, really steady nerves carefully take it apart.)
S. Norman
NOVA episode about explosions and bombs had a segment on bomb disposal. The British have superior knowledge (from experience) on dealing with suspect packages and home-made bombs. One way is through the use of a robotic water cannon. This little RC fella’ works up to the suspected package with a video camera and a water canon. (and some have x-ray equipment) If the package is suspected or determined to be a bomb, the robot can shoot an incredibly high pressure blast of water at it. This often disrupts the circuitry and breaks the bomb abart without it exploding. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Another item in the BDU arsenal is something that looks like a kiln in shape, but is a bit bigger than the portable cement mixers towed behind trucks. (sorry, it’s the only size comparison I can make right now.) At any rate, this “kiln” is a very thick walled hollow cylinder about 4 feet tall and 3 feet in diameter sitting upright on a frame with heavy springs and shock absorbers. The cylinder has a lid with a hole in the top. The robot can put the suspected package inside the cylinder and lower the lid. Somehow (don’t recall how) the device is detonated (or an attempt is made). If the device blows up, the energy is channeled straight up and out of the cylinder, while some of the energy is absorbed by the cylinder changing its inertial state and some is absorbed by the springs, etc.
This latter method was used last week at the Pentagon when a suspicious briefcase was seen unattended. It wasn’t a bomb, and some GS-9’s soda and PB&J sammich got all messied up. It was also used in Bowie recently when a bunch of pipe bombs were found in a house.
Just two of the ways…