A few years back, I remember reading that Homeland Security was inviting thriller writers over to give them advice on what plots terrorists might be cooking up. The notion was widely lampooned but it was probably a very smart idea, because as author Lew Perdue points out, when it comes to terror plots, he's often been way ahead of the curve, especially when it comes to killer breasts:
The Obama Administration’s recent warning about terrorists using breast implant bombsreminds me that over my 35 years of writing thrillers, I’ve frequently developed ideas — including explosive breast implants — that once seemed preposterous, outlandish or impossible — but which have either come true or entered the realm of the dangerously likely.
[…]About two year ago, I outlined a thriller around women who had implants filled with a liquid explosive that does not require a separate detonator to explode. Nitroglycerine is an example one of these, but is less stable and not as powerful as alternative formulations available. […]I had stunningly attractive women with breasts surgically enhanced to Brobdingnagian proportions, which of course, require commensurate structural support including a substantial underwire superstructure.
The detonation mechanism consisted of two parts, both cleverly constructed to identically mimic bra underwiring. The actual detonator circuit was contained in side the implant was a simple variation on a spark gap. This was capacitance linked to external wiring in the bra. The connection as I designed it in the outline was a bit like those capacitance switches that work when you touch them with your finger. No direct connection is needed.
Similarly, the electrical charge to initiate the detonation in the breast implant bomb doesn’t need a direct connection. Just the closeness through the skin between the detonator and the electrical charge to set off the explosive. The electrical charge in my thriller outline came from a small netbook which had been rewired to route the power leads of the USB port to the earplug port. Very large capacitance charges can be achieved by gradual charging. But the advantage of a capacitor is that t can discharge all its energy almost instantly.
By bringing the slightly modified earplug near the implanted detonator wire and pressing the “PLAY” button on the netbook’s music player would detonate the implants.
The problem with explosive breast implants is that there’s no way to test them once installed, so you don’t know until you actually try to detonate whether you have a boom or a bust.
Well, that is certainly a more … grabbing illustration than the one I used for the original post! Maybe that’s why your Jury covers work so bloody well!
article that appeared good enough to be read so that adds to knowledge when reading
I was once told by a woman with a similar build that “anything more than a handful is a waste”! 🙂
So this problem of implanted bombs in the body can be solved, I guess, at least at airports, by passing all those arriving and departing through a “detonation chamber” that would double as a coffin should a bomb go off. The chamber might be a quarter of the size of an elevator, and an electric current is projected from the walls–they can do that up to ten inches without wires, through the air, and it takes less than ten seconds. Luggage can be screened this way too. This method is so efficient that almost no bombs at all can get through, so the terrorists would stop targeting planes and airports altogether.
It’s gruesome, but then so is setting off a bomb and killing scores of innocent victims.
Yeah, I’ve heard it all now. I couldn’t imagine putting anything in my body just for destructive purposes, but then again, I’m not a terrorist.
My husband – a nuclear engineer by training – has been talking explosive breast implants since September 11! It was the first thing he thought of to get around airport “security.”
I, not being a man, lean towards plastic explosives stuck in the frame of a baby stroller. Those are stored separately under the plane with the luggage and have tons of hollow spots that can be filled without anyone being the wiser.
It’s an interesting concept in a fictional setting. For real life, it would be too convoluted since people make sure that the materials for implants are safe to use. Bombs like that would work well in movies and fiction, but it’s a bit iffy in the realm of non-fiction.