City Of Boston Still Thinks Every Box Is A Bomb
from the kaboom dept
The city of Boston has done it again. Apparently it didn’t learn its lesson from its embarrassing overreaction to a silly marketing stunt that shut down the city, as the police force was brought out to blow up an unidentified box chained to a lightpost (via BoingBoing). It’s believed that the box may have been placed there by transportation authorities looking to monitor traffic patterns, but because the police weren’t sure, they blew it up just to be safe. What’s really interesting is that if you watch the news clip at the above link, you’ll find that the reporters don’t seem to find anything disturbing or strange about bomb squads being brought out in a situation like this. Then again, perhaps they shouldn’t think it’s weird; This is Boston after all, and this type of reaction is becoming very common. And if it turns out that the box was just for monitoring traffic, will transportation officials face fines and possible jail time for placing a hoax device in public?
Comments on “City Of Boston Still Thinks Every Box Is A Bomb”
Good lord, Menino is such and idiot. And I suspect that was pretty expensive piece of equioment. ANd now it goes on my tab. If I leave my briefcase behind, will they blow it up, too? Just because it MIGHT be a bomb? Anything might be a bomb.
OMFG
Fucking MORONS. Once again…
I think this time, the traffic officials should sue the city of Boston for ruining perfectly good, expensive equipment.
Menino is a….. ID 10 T.
HA! What a bunch of maroons. You won’t even have to leave your briefcase behind Matt. They will tackle you and take it and blow it up.
How much you want to bet they are over reacting to EVERYTHING so they can whine to get more Homeland Security money…
I’m still not sure how something, not intended to represent a bomb, can be considered a hoax of a bomb. I mean the very first definition of a hoax I find is:
“something intended to deceive; deliberate trickery intended to gain an advantage”
How can they keep miss labeling ignorance as hoax?
I see these boxes all the time….
Just think, next time I pass one, I could die.
Hey so If I put LEDs on lets say my mailbox, do they blow it up too? what do they really think Boston is, Baghdad? This is too hilarious.
stuff like this, is why the terrorist have won.
The Terrorist have won
…. in Boston at least.
silly jsut stipud
OMG i can not belive i took the time to read this. So far Boston is on a rool to being a stupid ass state. All my tax money is going to stupid ass shit like this each and every day ….
God Damn the USA once more for wasting money..
Suspicious package. I love it.
I’ve got your suspicious package right here baby…. in my pants!
Paranoia used to be seen as a mental illness.
where's my lunch?
“Where’s my lunch?”
“We blew it up.”
“Wha…?”
“It was suspicious.”
“But it was a Burger King bag!”
Boston. Ha.
Boston’s a bullshit city, or a bullshit state as number 9 seems to think. I bet terrorists have never even heard of it. The bomb squad’s probably been excited that they get to do something though.
Isn’t it dangerous just to go blowing up stuff like that. I mean it looks like they just put a small charge on the suspicious box and detonated it. I’m no expert of course but don’t they usually put suspected bombs in some hardened container and then detonate them? Seems like it that was a bomb the only thing they would have accomplished by setting of a charge on it would be to cause it to detonate which kind of defeats the purpose of disarming it doesn’t it? I think the bomb-squad in Boston just like to blow stuff up hap-hazardly.
Re: out of control children
“I think the bomb-squad in Boston just like to blow stuff up hap-hazardly.”
Of course they do. If your job was to go around with a bag of high explosives blowing every little piece of trash you find on the pavement you’d love it too. They are overzealous little teenage boys that haven’t grown up yet.
Unlike real soldiers they don’t actually face any danger either.
I wonder how these Boston Bad Boyz would fare in a real conflict situation or in London in the 1970s where people really did put nasty fucking big nailbombs in litter bins. I think they would go rather pale, fill up their trousers and refuse to go anywhere near it. Sure they feel like big men hiding behind a badge and uniform when they have the “power” to close streets and disrupt society, it’s all “Hut Hut Hut…Go Go Go! … Yes Sir!” but put them in a real danger situation and see how long they hang around to “protect” anyone.
Re: Re:
blowing up bombs is a pretty standard safe way to dispose of them.
The purpose of blowing up a bomb is not to prevent it from going off, but to control the circumstances in which it goes off. When a bomb goes off of it’s own devices, it’s typically aimed at people or things to destroy. When the bomb squad detonates it, it’s when there’s nobody nearby to be injured.
Re: Re:
The key to bomb disposal is to **dispose** of the bomb safely, but what looks like an attempt to detonate it may actually be an attempt to “disrupt” it.
Sometimes technicians may actually determine that detonating a bomb to render it safe. However, can be less desirable than disruption, where an explosive charge is used to energetically scatter the parts of the bomb **before** it can detonate, or if it does detonate it may do so in a less efficient and less destructive manner.
fear is the killer
Yes the terrorists have won. But when you say that you are still thinking that the “terrorists” are a bunch of disaffected swarthy Islamic people.
The terrorists are, and have always been, those members of the government who believe that you should be ruled by fear.
That is the textbook definition of terrorism. To control by fear.
They had no qualms about murdering 3000 Americans to instill that fear and they will have no qualms about destroying other lives and property to try and perpetuate that fear.
The explosion (no pun) of “security” companies and quasi-police officials in the USA means that terrorism is now an established industry. As such it will be an enormous challenge to defeat and dismantle because there is profit in fear.
You may flame me for saying this, but I say it with the most honest good intent… In some ways the collapse of the dollar and the US economy will be the best thing that can happen, in the long run. When people can’t afford to eat they suddenly focus their minds back on reality.
@ Ben
Paranoia still is a mental illness. Paranoia is a very disturbing condition where the patient feels persecuted by unseen or unknown forces. It is irrational. What you are suffering from in the USA is not paranoia, it is fear. Fear is perfectly rational. You know who your persecutors are, you see them on television and you read their words in the newspapers every day. They are tangible, and they are within your reach and power to defeat.
Maybe...
Maybe it’s time to turn this to our own advantage. Right after the traffic department puts up that shiny new red light ticketcam, roll the bomb squad on it. Surely, as suspicious as they look, the bomb squad wouldn’t want to take any chances, right?
Good
hell, I saw this girl carrying two huge bombs yesterday and tried to blow them up myself. I do feel a lot safer now though.
In other news
I don’t suppose anyone heard anything about a recent bombing campaign in the UK?
No? Well we had one the other week
You know one with like actual explosives and stuff – people were injured
The bombs were all in letter bomb form. No cities were shut down – a few 50yrd cordons around actual explosive items but that was it
All quite dull really compared with flashing LEDs and evil traffic sensors but hey
Incidentally one look at the criminal mastermind pretty much sums up why they never tried to trot out the terrorist line – it’d be like calling your pet rabbit a wee savage beastie
Anyway back to the story – a box you say? chained to a lamp post you say? that must have been scary – is everyone alright?
Techdirt Idiocy
To the contrary, Boston Police did an excellent job of not allowing complacency to set in. Whereas amateur know-it-alls concluded that a second box must be another hoax, professionals know that a true terrorist will consider this a window of opportunity. The wolf’s best time to pounce is after Peter has already cried wolf.
Re: Techdirt Idiocy
To the contrary, Boston Police did an excellent job of not allowing complacency to set in.
And, yet, BPD are the only folks who have set off explosives in the city limits thus far. Who are the mad bombers again? Admittedly, it is hard to be complacent when our would-be protectors are blowing up random stuff on the sidewalks, but hey, that’s just my take.
Whereas amateur know-it-alls concluded that a second box must be another hoax, professionals know that a true terrorist will consider this a window of opportunity.
I conclude that it was probably a traffic monitoring device, exactly as it appeared. I have not yet entered your bizarro world where everything is an immediate threat, nor do I have any desire to do so.
Surely, explosives can be hidden. Bombs can be disguised. One could potentially walk about all day long, pointing at random things, saying “That could be a bomb! Or that! Or that! Somebody could’ve put a bomb in that dumpster! Or this paper bag! Some reverse pickpocket might’ve stuffed my pockets with C4, oh noes, I could be a bomb!!”
One could. You may. I won’t. The things around me have a remarkably stable history of not exploding. I don’t have any particular reason to assume they’re going to start now.
The wolf’s best time to pounce is after Peter has already cried wolf.
OMG, thank you, dorpus. You write the best trolls. Now if only you would’ve jumped in on that thread about online abuse…
Re: Techdirt Idiocy
Right…it really was excellent that no one made a phone call to confirm that the device was supposed to be there and even more excellent that an official from the transportation department didn’t come down collect it.
The “complacency” is actually there. It is with watching and believing the terrorist garbage seen on Fox news.
Tell me. Is that what watch nightly?
Re: Re: Techdirt Idiocy
Hah, their defense for not calling is that the “bomb” could have gone off before anything official was confirmed…
Re: Techdirt Idiocy
To the contrary, Boston Police did an excellent job of not allowing complacency to set in. Whereas amateur know-it-alls concluded that a second box must be another hoax, professionals know that a true terrorist will consider this a window of opportunity. The wolf’s best time to pounce is after Peter has already cried wolf.
I must have missed it… where was the reference to Japan this time?
“They had no qualms about murdering 3000 Americans to instill that fear”
If saying that the destruction of the World Trade Center was done by the US government, you should readjust your tinfoil hat.
Your statement that the US government is presently ruling by the use of fear, I agree with.
Someone in Boston needs to start selling “BOMB” stickers. Stick them to lamp-posts, fire hydrants, even BMWs. City government would be blowing up things every day.
Re: Re:
Put them on SUVs!
They are bombs… big, wasteful, ugly carbombs.
idiots who blow things up
Employing high explosives in civillian towns and cities should be an absolute last resort. Bomb disposal have an amazing repertoire of technology to safely dispose of and neutralise explosive threats. They have xray cameras, robots, precision impact drivers and drills, fiber optic cameras, impulse absorbing foams, containment boxes… Blowing things up is a thinly disguised piece of macho theater, a show for the cameras and news channels, nothing more. It’s cheap and amateurish.
@24
Of course none of us will ever know precisely what happened, I am still sceptical of the “strong” theory of insider planning, but at the very least I believe in complicit negligence. I think you need to get up to date on the evidence. Here it’s no longer a debate whether or not the US government was involved in a false-flag op on US soil, but rather what that means to the world. I mean, you have some of the most respectable intelligence officers and air-force captains saying it was an inside job, people with very deep knowledge and impeccable credentials admitting that the whole thing stinks. What more proof do you need? I think the only people who argue against it now are in denial or so entrenched in their position that they want to save face by sticking to a safe belief. But anyway, I do not base my beliefs on the opinions of others, I take an empirical approach to form my conclusions based on observations. So, yes, I’m saying with absolute conviction that 911 was an inside job and it has nothing to do with tinfoil hattery. It’s a scientific conclusion based on the observable facts and the laws of physics and nothing would convince me otherwise now. The smoking gun is the freefall of the towers. I always thought there was something not quite right about that from day 1. Once you accept the irrefutable fact that WTC7 was demolished and the statistical analysis that shows the chances of 3 structures failing on the same day in that way are infinitesimal, then you have no other place to go. Unless you choose to lie to yourself to avoid cognitive dissonance.
To be honest, I don’t care that much and it doesn’t suprise me. Far too late to be feigning outrage, especially considering everything else that has happened since. It’s fools who argue against what is right under their noses that bugs me though, because their willing naivity is a danger to everyone else in society.
Less secure via more security
I’m sure this is all making us somehow less secure. I mean, before all this, in order to put a bomb on a bridge or on a boardwalk, you’d have to hide it really well. Now, since everyone is going around collecting very obvious box-like items and detonating them to make sure they’re not bombs, pretty soon we’ll just assume they are all not bombs and you’ll be able to hide them in plain sight.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that drastic, but leave it to the media and to the government to highlight one of our many weaknesses to attack and put it on display for all of the world’s terrorists to study. Good job, with friends like this, who needs enemys.
me…
Less secure via more security
I’m sure this is all making us somehow less secure. I mean, before all this, in order to put a bomb on a bridge or on a boardwalk, you’d have to hide it really well. Now, since everyone is going around collecting very obvious box-like items and detonating them to make sure they’re not bombs, pretty soon we’ll just assume they are all not bombs and you’ll be able to hide them in plain sight.
Okay, so maybe it’s not that drastic, but leave it to the media and to the government to highlight one of our many weaknesses to attack and put it on display for all of the world’s terrorists to study. Good job, with friends like this, who needs enemys.
me…
911
http://www.911myths.com
begin reading, then see how YOUR physics holds up.
Re: 911
Thanks for the link MCeeP. I’ve probably seen that site before but not read that particular page. It’s another interesting piece to add to my collection.
But please understand this:
I’m not one of those people who had a pre-formed opinion based on what I want to believe. If you read my posts you’ll hopefully see I’m one of those (probably rare) people who has no shame in revising my opinions or accepting new evidence. That is what a real scientist, rationalist or freethinker should do.
I’ve read hundreds, possibly thousands of articles on the subject.
Most of it is unfalsifiable, hearsay, gossip, rumour and emotional diatribe.
For the longest time I kept an open mind and considered many viewpoints, including the official version of events.
However, I have now settled on a firm opinion, which is my conclusion unless I am presented with any further evidence. I am not into debating this with others because I find it unproductive. My belief that the events of 9/11 were orchestrated by forces ouside the official version of “19 hijackers with planes” is based on one fact and one fact alone, that the official explanation does not correlate with the observed facts and the known laws of physics.
I looked at the site you have provided and went straight to the relevant section on “freefall of towers”. I think it is a very good site with some decent research. The figures presented there are well within the parameters necessary to confirm and support my beliefs.
I have read many reports that put the disintegration of the towers at betwen 8 and 20 seconds. That is a HUGE range of error for some event that happened in reality and was observed and recorded from many angles. My own measurements from videos put it at about 11 seconds and I can’t account for the errors in other peoples observations but video can be sped up or slowed down. Videos that have soundtracks are the best because you can adjust the playback speed to account for shifted voice frequencies and other natural sonic markers.
There is simply no way that even one of those towers collapsed due to fire alone. The “pancake” theory is nonsense and the official NIST report, which I’ve read thoroughly, is damned lies and creative speculation.
To extend that reasoning to TWO towers is completely beyond the realms of possibility. If it had been just the one I might have swallowed it. The laws of statistics alone make it too unlikely to entertain.
That THREE towers fell when the last one wasn’t even hit by a plane is just taking the fucking piss. The more I think about it the more glaring and brazen is the obvious wrongdoing.
For what it’s worth my own education in sciences is A+, I have more than one degree in technical subjects and have never scored less than 90% on any physics or maths examination, not that I need to boast about that.
That is why I base my beliefs on what I see, not what other people believe.
The facts speak for themselves. The people of New York and the USA were hoodwinked. That many cling to the hopelessly flawed official version is perfectly understandable with a grasp of basic psychology.
And I’m not trying to “convince” you or sell my point of view. You must find out in your own way in your own good time. But since I was asked I will state my opinion again:
If you admit that the towers were not destroyed as a result of fire then you must ask how and why they came down. Once you ask this question you really have no choice but to entertain the hypothesis that the conspiracy is wider than 19 Arabs with boxcutters. Where you take it after that is your own decision….
Respectfully.
did someone say stickers?
I’m sitting here desperately thinking of how to make b.o.m.b. stickers that convey the idiocy of the actions of the Boston government
As in,
Boston Officials Masters (of) Bullshit
Blathering Officials Messing up Boston?
The letters B.O.M.B. are large, the rest of the letters are not.
Someone run with this eh? Ill buy one for each of my cars & a couple of dozen extras .
Perhaps sell them through CafePress with the profits going to benefit bomb squad members and families.
That will give them something to think about, the fact that while we support them and the job they are doing, we DON’T respect stupidity.
Perhaps if enough people tell them that we can tell they are full of it, they will understand that they cannot frighten us with mere bullshit?
Of course the next question is, what will they do then to keep us frightened?
did someone say stickers?
I’m sitting here desperately thinking of how to make b.o.m.b. stickers that convey the idiocy of the actions of the Boston government
As in,
Boston Officials Masters (of) Bullshit
Blathering Officials Messing up Boston?
The letters B.O.M.B. are large, the rest of the letters are not.
Someone run with this eh? Ill buy one for each of my cars & a couple of dozen extras .
Perhaps sell them through CafePress with the profits going to benefit bomb squad members and families.
That will give them something to think about, the fact that while we support them and the job they are doing, we DON’T respect stupidity.
Perhaps if enough people tell them that we can tell they are full of it, they will understand that they cannot frighten us with mere bullshit?
Of course the next question is, what will they do then to keep us frightened?
Re: did someone say stickers?
B.O.M.B
Boston Officials’ Monumental Blunders
Cry wolf to many more times and who knows what will happen. Well for all of us missing in the bombings in irag lets just go to boston. How about in a U-Haul full of boxes or maybe just leave the u-haul parked then see what happens I mean how big the explosion is. Stupid people and stupid cops. No one have a phone number to the Transportation Dept?
More information
This story
has the police saying they knew it wasn’t a bomb, but they blew it up anyway, just for the heck of it.
Tell them first and allow them to Verify!
Traffic officials SHOULD inform the Police ahead of time that they are doing this – and the Police should verify everything – this so that any potential suspicions are accounted for.
Just a little communication and pro activity can prevent so many misunderstandings.
terrorists
we are fucked, we are all FUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
im so scared, please save me Bush!
In some countries every box IS a bomb
In Israel, box on bus station (or any other public place for that matter) is considered a bomb with all consequences. And nobody thinks it’s funny.
Re: In some countries every box IS a bomb
… and in that environment, I would support Boston PD’s response, but Boston is not currently such an environment.
911
The tower’s most definately didn’t fall because of fire. The pancake theory is complete and utter nonsense. Explain the molten steel at the base of the towers please.
But i do believe that WTC7 was destroyed by terrorists….terrorists riding unicorns.
Boston
In the minds of most folks, currently Boston = Retarded (did anyone notice the smackdown that the FCC laid on massport?)
Folks in Boston really need to make smarter choices in the voting booth…
That guy
Next time someone insinuates I am stupid
for being from the south at least I can say..
“could be worse, i could be a Bostonian!”
Bombs
Hey I think I just saw a brown truck full of bombs
Seriously though, Boston is so busy running scams to rob the tax payers that when it comes to real emergencies, we’re not equipped to handle it. Terrorists know this – this is likely part of the reason why the 9.11 attacks were launched from Boston.