Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[martinuzz]

Oh heh yeah, that is the Dutch spelling of Lebanon

[lemon10]

Holy, that is a brilliant operation that must have taken tremendous effort by some security service, to get all those beepers loaded with explosives and sold to Hezbollah.

Libanon and Syria blame Israel.

Batteries are basically bombs already, I wouldn't be surprised if they could explode them with nothing but a software update.

The battery in a pager won't be a very strong bomb, but if your cellphone was intentionally overheated with all safetys disabled while in your pocket it would fuck you up as well, no need to add explosives at all.

[martinuzz]

Imagine this happening to electric cars. A software error blowing up the car batteries. That would probably be millions of deaths worldwide, depending on which car brand it is. Lithium burns rapidly and violently.

I am very curious where they bought the beepers. Made in China most likely, but where they went in between the factory and the buyer?

[martinuzz]

Death toll in Lebanon has risen to 11.
At least 4000 people have been injured. 400 are in critical condition. Every citizen of Lebanon has been called upon to donate blood.
Many hundreds of Hezbollah fighters will be too crippled to join any fighting soon.

[McTraveller]

Yeah definitely more than batteries in those pagers to do that kind of damage.

As for car batteries - you couldn't just do it in software, there are many layers of hardware protection in there as well.  So you'd have to really mess with the supply chain to do the same kind of thing there, probably significantly more difficult than with handheld electronics.

Fun times ahead, now, regardless; I'm guessing the import inspections on all handheld electronics are going to become massively more rigorous, intrusive, and expensive.

[martinuzz]

Apparently Hezbollah beeper users never travel by airplane, or explosives would have been sniffed out by airport scanners

[Frumple]

Also possible the airport scanners just missed it! Never hurts to remember much of that security theater isn't particularly helpful.

[anewaname]

The question then becomes, did they also manage to track the pagers? With high odds that the pagers were one-way, if you're going to add explosives, why not add a transmitter?

[hector13]

I think part of the scan for explosives at airports is swabbing hands to find particulates if you’ve been handling explosives, which presumably wouldn’t be the case in this instance if there were explosives present and hidden.

I don’t know if they would use sniffer dogs regularly enough to catch a tiny amount of explosive (a BBC article talking to “experts” suggests 10-20mg could be hidden in a fake component) or if the explosive was sufficiently sealed away to avoid any/enough odour to be detected by the dogs.

[Starver]

Oh heh yeah, that is the Dutch spelling of Lebanon

But what's the Hollandaise one? Don't want to be Friesing our linguistic possibilities unless we're totally averse to going out on a Limburg.

(Sorry, a few bad puns, about which you might now be Groningen at.)

[martinuzz]

Exploding batteries can be ruled out. The beepers, 'Gold Apollo' do not have lithium batteries, they work on 2 simple AAA batteries. Those can not explode that violently.

EDIT: or wait. The newer model has a lithium battery that could have been used as a heat source for detonating explosives using malware

[Lord Shonus]

Multiple sources suggest that each pager had been modified to contain 20 grams of PETN.

There's also sources saying that the pagers were intended to be detonated at the outset of any major military operation, but two people discovered the bombs and Israel only successfully assassinated one - making it a "use it now or lose it" weapon. So they used it now.

[martinuzz]

Indeed. The latest news says they wanted to detonate them as a precursor to a massive assault on Hezbollah. One Hezbollah member got suspicious and was assasinated before spreading his suspicion. When another one got suspicious, Israeli intelligence had a emergency meeting and decided to explode them right now. They did inform the US a few hours beforehand that they were about to do 'something'.

Very good action. Mostly non-lethal, and taking a large part of armed enemy forces out of action for weeks / months / years / lifetime of wheelchair. That is better than being killed, right?

The Iranian ambassador in Lebanon lost at least one eye and is severly injured.

[martinuzz]

Oh wow. Bonus points!

Another round of explosions in Lebanon: now it's walkie-talkies exploding. The walkie talkies were bought at the same time as the beepers. Brilliant double tactic.

[Frumple]

Very good action. Mostly non-lethal, and taking a large part of armed enemy forces out of action for weeks / months / years / lifetime of wheelchair. That is better than being killed, right?

Like... to push back on this one a bit, reporting I could find is saying there were a few hundred pagers sabotaged, but a few thousand people injured. Or in other words, that very good, mostly non-lethal action would have been inflicted predominately on just random people in the general vicinity of whoever was carrying one of those things.

That sounds a hell of a lot less like a very good action and more like a very literally indiscriminate attack on a primarily civilian population