WEBVTT - How Bomb Disposal Works 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:10.400 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:15.280 Hey, welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Kaboom Clark, and 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:23.560 there's Chuck Wow Bryant, and Jerry's not here. She's a 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:29.040 dud and this stuff you should know about bomb disposals. 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:33.320 That's right, and specifically a dud meaning a thing that 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:34.239 doesn't go off right. 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:35.800 Yeah, a dud. 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.760 Yeah. I think you're a kid playing with fireworks and 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.280 you light one through it at your friend. Nothing happens, 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:44.240 and you start crying because it's a dud. 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.240 You're like, I don't have two cents to waste, black cat, 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:49.640 give me my two cents back. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:50.760 Yeah. 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:53.280 Yeah, when you're a kid, two cents matter back in 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:53.800 the eighties. 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:54.880 That's true. 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:56.680 You can put that together with three other cents and 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.120 buy yourself a stick a butter. 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:02.240 Throw it at your friend. 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:07.320 So we should shout out. Speaking of friends, are Newish 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:11.320 writer Kyle Houkstra, who's writing for us from the UK 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:16.839 makes us an international podcast of mystery, and he helps 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:20.640 us out with this one. It's a pretty interesting topic 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:22.520 if you ask me, and I don't remember where I 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:24.679 got the idea, but it's been on the list for 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.800 a little while and I finally pulled the trigger mechanism 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:29.080 on it. 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:32.200 No, wow, you're in a roll today. 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:34.080 I guess. So that's one way to put it. 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:37.199 Had you just seen the hurt Locker or something. 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:41.600 I've never seen the hurt Locker. Really, yeah, you check 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:41.840 it out. 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:42.759 It's great movie. 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:45.120 Oh. I know, I've heard nothing but good things. I 0:01:45.240 --> 0:01:48.640 just have not ever gotten around to seeing it. I'm 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:51.720 not crazy about war movies. The last war movie that 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.640 I saw that I really liked was probably Uncommon Valor. 0:01:56.320 --> 0:01:59.240 Oh wow, see like terrible war movies. 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:02.280 No, are you crazy, that's one of the best war 0:02:02.440 --> 0:02:05.160 movies of all time. Oh okay, you don't like an 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:06.080 Uncommon Valor? 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.399 I mean I liked it as a kid in the eighties, 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.480 But I mean it was very much that I don't 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.160 think it's regarded as one of the great war movies. 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.160 You don't think it'd hold up now, huh? 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:18.680 Well, I mean I think it would hold up as 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:19.760 an eighties war movie. 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:22.440 I mean he was a guy in it, Gene Hackman. 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:28.400 Randall Tech Cobb, he was Patrick Swayze. Yeah, okay, great movie. 0:02:28.600 --> 0:02:32.560 It was a great movie. So yes, But no, I 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.840 haven't seen hert Locker I from what I understand, it's 0:02:35.880 --> 0:02:40.919 about as accurate a depiction of how bomb disposal technicians 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:45.760 or EOD technicians explosive ordnance disposal technicians, I should say, 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:49.000 for those who don't know the lingo, it's about as 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.080 accurate as is what they do. Is is that correct? 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:54.600 I mean, I've never done that job, so I don't know, 0:02:54.639 --> 0:02:57.200 but judging from reading this, it seemed pretty spot on. 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:00.959 And I know that Catherine Bigelow makes heck of a movie, 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.480 so I'm in her corner no matter what. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:05.320 What else does she made besides Zero Dark. 0:03:05.160 --> 0:03:10.000 Thirty, Well, she did movies. I mean those two were 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.200 kind of later in her career as far as like 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:16.680 a big time recognition, but she did. You know, she 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:18.880 did a movie, a vampire movie called Near Dark back 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.079 in the day. It was great. Oh yeah, and yeah 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:23.040 you should see that one too. 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.639 That's the trilogy Near Dark, the hurt Locker, and Zero 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:27.880 Dark thirty. 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.000 Yeah, Vampire's Bombs and Osama bin Laden. 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:38.040 So okay, so we're talking about people who go near bombs, 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:44.880 unexploded bombs, and try to disable them, try to diffuse 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.880 them so that they can either be taken somewhere and 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:51.200 disassembled or they can be safely removed from an area 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:53.440 where say there's a lot of people are real estate 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:56.600 around and blow them up in a much safer manner. 0:03:57.080 --> 0:03:59.920 They walk up to bombs that have not yet did 0:04:00.520 --> 0:04:02.720 and they have no idea how or if or when 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.160 it's going to detonate, and that is their job. That's 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:07.280 who we're talking about today. 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:11.720 Yeah, and that can be you know, a military personnel 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:16.240 if it's in wartime or whatever, and that can obviously 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:21.239 be a civilian bomb squad, because bombs are not only 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.800 wartime weapons, as we've seen with things like the Boston 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.599 marathon bombing. That kind of stuff happens on the on 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.680 the streets of the USA and other places too. So 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:32.720 you've got to have cops at work, you got to 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.200 have military at work, and they have all kinds of 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.960 cool gear that just gets better and better. One thing 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:41.520 Kyle points out is that, you know, it's always and 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:43.279 we're going to talk about the history, but it's always 0:04:43.320 --> 0:04:48.360 been sort of a race of devising bombs that aren't 0:04:50.240 --> 0:04:52.480 you know, that that blow up when they're supposed to, 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.320 and then defeeding bombs from blowing up, and then new 0:04:55.360 --> 0:04:58.520 technology and then new anti bomb technology it's just sort 0:04:58.520 --> 0:04:59.200 of back and forth. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:03.160 What's horrif is that when new bomb technology comes out, 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:08.520 like they don't know until after somebody's died. Essentially, that's 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:12.640 that's often the case, that's how their bomb's gone off, right, 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:15.360 But often it's like if it's if say, like it's 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.360 booby trapped, a new kind of booby trap, that probably 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:21.600 means that they found out the hard way that there's 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:24.479 this new style of booby trap. That's the kind of 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:25.920 job that these people have. 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:29.640 Yeah, and since I mentioned that, we've got to throw 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:32.360 Kyle some love because he inadvertently came up with his 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.200 first band name for the show mm hmm, because in 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.600 describing that back and forth of technology and racing against 0:05:38.880 --> 0:05:42.039 the bomb technology, he called it the pendulum of development. 0:05:42.040 --> 0:05:43.440 And I think it's a pretty good band name. 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:45.119 Sure what kind of music? 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.200 I mean, that's got to be some sort of like emo, right. 0:05:51.120 --> 0:05:54.400 I guess I could also see like trance or drone 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:54.960 or something. 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.000 Yeah, like it too. Youre better at that than me, 0:05:58.040 --> 0:05:58.720 I should ask you. 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:01.360 That's not true. That's not true, Chuck. 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:04.479 Well. I feel like we each have our part. I 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.400 generally recognize the band names, and you're always spot on 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:09.120 it nailing the kind of music that it would be. 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:11.320 All right, well let's move on, we'll both take the 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:12.200 compliment out with that. 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:17.000 All right, Well, should we cover some of the history, 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:19.000 I guess yeah. 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:23.240 What was really surprising to me is that that bomb 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:28.680 disposal really started back in England in the nineteenth century, 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:32.000 like yeah, you know the Victorian era. I think the 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.799 eighteen seventies really was when it started to take off. 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:39.279 One of the reasons why is that Ireland was trying 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:43.560 to gain independence from Great Britain and one of the 0:06:43.560 --> 0:06:47.800 ways they did that was through bombing campaigns. So essentially, 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.240 as you'll see, like you said, the pendulum of development 0:06:51.920 --> 0:06:57.080 like situations whether it's war or some sort of struggle 0:06:57.160 --> 0:06:59.719 or something like that, where bomb's make an appearance, that 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.240 leads to bomb development, and that leads in turn to 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:06.240 bomb disposal development. Right, and so that was I mean, 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:11.120 right off the bat, people started adopting this new technology 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:13.880 at the time, dynamite, which is a stable form of 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.920 nitroglycerim into bombs. So now it was up to people 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:19.880 who were in charge of disposing of these bombs to 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.480 figure out how to do that safely. Like that's the 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:24.760 kind of pendulum of development you were mentioning. 0:07:25.520 --> 0:07:28.920 Yeah, so dynamite comes along. It's a big sort of 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:33.240 leap forward in bombing technology, right. And the first person 0:07:33.360 --> 0:07:38.120 to kind of pioneer this inspection routine was a guy 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:46.600 named Vivian durang Majindi. What was the Finnian Dynamite campaign 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.840 was kind of the first big bombing campaign that featured dynamite, 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:56.000 and Vivian came along and pioneered this field. Was the 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.160 first bomb disposal specialist because he got to work on 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:02.560 that anti dynamite campaign. 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:05.720 Yeah, and so when you think of bomb disposal, we 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:07.720 probably should have said this at the outset. The job 0:08:07.920 --> 0:08:11.800 entails much more than just diffusing and disposing of bombs. 0:08:12.160 --> 0:08:16.120 There's also like finding bombs, there's identifying the kind of 0:08:16.120 --> 0:08:19.600 bomb you're dealing with, and so that's what Magendi was doing. 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:22.160 It was really low hanging fruit because it was such 0:08:22.200 --> 0:08:24.120 a new field. He would walk into the room and 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:26.600 be like, yep, that's dynamite and they'd be like, oh, 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:28.840 good show, you know, like and he was like a 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.760 celebrated bomb disposal expert, but he was also a very 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:36.240 brave one and he would not delegate dealing with bombs 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.360 to anyone else below him, like he took on the 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.920 actual handling and attempts to diffuse bombs by himself, and 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:45.480 he was celebrated for that for sure. 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.839 Yeah. Absolutely. He was the first head of the explosives 0:08:48.880 --> 0:08:51.920 department that they set up over there in eighteen seventy 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:56.360 five that would later become the Forensic Explosives Laboratory, which 0:08:56.400 --> 0:09:03.400 basically any kind of explosive activity, like literally explosive activity, right, 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:07.480 not like a Beatles concert or something like that in 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.239 Great Britain is run through the Forensics Explosives Laboratory. 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:17.120 Yes, so this is going on in the third or 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:22.480 fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, and as the Irish 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:26.120 were laying bombs, so too were anarchists starting to use 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:29.400 dynamite as well. And that was a problem in Europe too, 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:32.920 but it was also a problem in New York in America. 0:09:33.600 --> 0:09:36.360 And so just like in Great Britain and England, where 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:38.679 there were suddenly a lot of people putting bombs all 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.760 over the place, there was a huge need for people 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:44.760 to figure out how to make those bombs not go off, 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:49.600 and so America developed its first bomb squad back in 0:09:49.679 --> 0:09:54.920 nineteen oh two under the leadership of guy named Giuseppe Petrosino, 0:09:55.520 --> 0:09:58.280 and they were dealing with the mafia. Thank you. They 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.439 were dealing with the mafia at the time, and apparently 0:10:01.480 --> 0:10:04.520 they did their job because the Bomb Squad got disbanded 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.520 and then as anarchists started to really step up their game, 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.200 the Bomb Squad, actually the Anarchist and Bomb Squad was 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.280 created in nineteen fourteen in the NYPD and it was 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:18.720 basically the revived Italian Squad under Petrosino. 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.679 I can see Reddit now, my friend, what's up with 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:27.640 Josh doing Italian names? Now after sixteen years? 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:29.920 Right, you can take it? 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.560 Oh no, no, no. Which you don't do is go 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:35.400 back and redo an Italian accent. 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.040 So take it. I think you can under the right circumstances. 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:44.160 And the circumstances are these do that Italian accent as 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:49.760 Christopher Walkin doing Sammy Davis Junior doing the Italian accent. 0:10:50.320 --> 0:10:53.400 My brain just broke all right, So we're in nineteen 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.520 fourteen with the Anarchists and Bomb Squad. It's kind of 0:10:56.520 --> 0:11:01.199 a clunky name. I guess the aabs. 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.680 Yeah or ABS, Well, they. 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:04.160 Threw that and in there it's just sort of strange. 0:11:04.800 --> 0:11:07.040 Abs are made in the kitchen was their slogan. 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.199 So they uncovered a plot to blow up Saint Patrick's 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:16.360 Saint Patrick's Cheese I'm getting it all backwards Cathedral in 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:22.160 New York City. They basically let this thing go off. 0:11:22.160 --> 0:11:26.480 They got all the manuals of the fuse design. It 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:30.040 was a timed fuse, and so they they kind of 0:11:30.120 --> 0:11:33.760 let it happen and then arrested these like they wanted 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.679 to catch the people, So they let the fuse be lit, 0:11:37.320 --> 0:11:40.120 be lit, and then they got these guys, and of 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:41.520 course it extinguished the fuse. 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.720 Yeah, during mass. Yeah, they they went ahead and let 0:11:45.800 --> 0:11:47.360 the bombers light the fuse. 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:49.480 I mean, I guess that's the only way to know 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:50.760 who the guys were, right. 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:54.960 Yeah, I guess. But yeah, that was I mean, that 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:55.679 was gutsy. 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:57.640 That's the way I took it was that they were 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:00.360 they wanted to, you know, find out who was actually 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:02.160 doing this, and the only way to do that was 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:03.240 to see the views get lit. 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.640 No, absolutely, I think you could also just say anybody 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.640 who's who starts to crouch down near the fuse, you 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:11.920 can go ahead and arrest that guy. 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:14.280 Or raise your hand if you're not here to blow 0:12:14.320 --> 0:12:18.000 this place up right and then just arrest who doesn't 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:19.160 raise their hand yep. 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:23.199 So also remember we talked about Jay gar Hoover running 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:26.240 the Radical Division. They also had an early bomb unit 0:12:26.280 --> 0:12:30.439 within the FBI, and the FBI probably ever since has 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:38.560 had bomb specialists special agent basically bomb technicians, and they 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:40.920 do a lot of training. We saw a really interesting 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:45.120 video on Wired I think, where a FBI bomb technician 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.680 describes like, you know, what the whole process is like. 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:53.280 It was pretty fascinating. Yeah, very calmly, but still, I 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:55.959 mean you got anarchists laying bombs, you have Irish Republicans 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.000 laying bombs, and then what really steps up the whole 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:01.760 game makes it necessary. Area of the world wars and 0:13:01.800 --> 0:13:04.080 the First World War came along and there's a lot 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.240 of munitions that were fired on either side all over 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:11.079 the place, all over Europe. And anytime you're firing munitions, 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:12.920 just like we said at the outset with black Cat 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:16.240 fire crackers, some are bound to be duds. And just 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.640 because they didn't go off now doesn't mean they're not 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:20.320 going to go off one hundred years from now. So 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.880 it's actually, as we'll see, like a huge problem. Still, 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:27.079 we covered it a lot tangentially in our Land Mines 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:30.400 episode about how when bombs are you know, shot off 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.200 in war, laid in war, they can you know, kill 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:37.440 people a century later. Essentially that was a problem in 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:42.960 and of itself, and there were volunteer usually Air Force 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:49.120 for some reason, like soldiers, who taught themselves essentially how 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:51.560 to try to diffuse the bombs that were left over 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:55.360 for World War One. But it wasn't until World War 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.240 Two that the whole thing started to be formalized, both 0:13:58.280 --> 0:13:59.880 in the UK and in the US. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.480 Yeah, the training that they had in World War One, 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.200 the equipment that they had wasn't enough to snuff, and 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:09.160 I think it just sort of slowly built in everyone's 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:10.959 minds that like, all right, this is something we need 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:15.240 to officially address. Where we're not trained up, we don't 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:17.040 know what we're really doing, and so we got to 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:19.640 correct that because this is a big problem moving forward. 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:24.440 And in nineteen forty Winston Churchill said, we owe it 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:26.240 to these brave men to provide them with the very 0:14:26.280 --> 0:14:30.160 best technical equipment. So equipment and training was really the 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:35.200 way forward, especially after Germany's blitz happened over the period 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.360 of you know, about a year or two, because there 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.280 were a lot of bombs dropped, and like you said, 0:14:41.400 --> 0:14:42.880 you know a lot. I mean, I don't know if 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:45.840 we have an exact percentage of I guess it depends 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.840 on the war. But even today, like some of the 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:52.960 more recent wars, I've saw numbers like twenty thirty percent 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.760 of bombstone even go off. So those things are just 0:14:55.920 --> 0:15:00.480 laying around waiting for you know, Unfortunately, sometimes some some 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:03.320 kid or any innocent person to just stumble upon it. 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:07.440 Yeah, and I saw something I can't remember, I send 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.000 it to you, So maybe you'll remember either hundreds of 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.840 thousands of tons or millions of tons of munitions were 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:15.120 dropped in Europe. 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:16.440 I don't remember. 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:18.320 Okay, well it was one of those. It was just 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:21.600 a mind boggling amount. So if you think of twenty 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.920 or thirty percent of that, like that's they're still there. 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:28.520 They're still in Europe. Like those bombs, if they didn't 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:31.760 go off, they would plant themselves sixty feet underground, waiting 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:34.400 for some guy who like later was going to build 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:37.200 a sports arena on the site to find it and 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:39.200 hope that he didn't accidentally blow it up with his 0:15:39.280 --> 0:15:43.000 earth mover. Like that's a I don't know how common 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:45.200 it is, but it's a frequent occurrence in Europe. 0:15:45.320 --> 0:15:50.720 Still, Yeah, absolutely, As they got better at disabling these bombs, 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:54.480 of course that that race starts again the pendulum of development. 0:15:54.840 --> 0:15:59.280 That great band takes the stage and Germany is like, well, 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:01.440 here's what we'll do. Then we're going to start implementing 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:05.400 things that will kill somebody trying to dismantle it. An 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:10.080 anti handling device. They had all different kinds, but you know, 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:13.640 basically most of them were just you know, if you 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.800 mess with the fuse or if you mess with the wiring, 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:19.000 like if you were trying to extract something to keep 0:16:19.040 --> 0:16:21.640 it from going boom, that would make it go boom. 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.520 Right, And so yeah, I just want to like punctuate 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:28.840 that these anti handling devices were booby traps specifically designed 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.800 to blow up the very people whose job we're talking 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:34.360 about today. Yeah, that was the whole thing. That was 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.120 the point of it. And for people walking around like 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.480 me who just have always thought of fuses as that 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:44.800 long wick that goes to like a shiny black round bomb, 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:50.640 there are basically anything that sets off the detonator or 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.520 the thing that blows up the detonator that's a fuse. 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.080 It can be everything from something magnetic, it can be barometric, 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:03.640 can be like a gyroscope, so if the bomb is 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:08.160 tipped over, it blows up. Anything that you can use 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:12.760 to to that detects a change in the environment, a timer. 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.280 It can also be a radio, something as simple as 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:18.840 a garage shore opener. All those are fuses. It's not 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:23.040 just like there's a wick that'slit. It's anything that can 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:25.240 blow the thing up that triggers the explosion. 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.560 Yeah, so they started working hard again to try and 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:33.320 counteract this by developing, you know, new methods, new techniques 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:38.639 to not only diffuse bombs, but you know, figure out 0:17:38.680 --> 0:17:43.480 what was sometimes literally making them tick, drilling holes in them, 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:47.320 and time bombs. They started listening to them with stethoscopes 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:50.199 so you could hear if it had a clock, and 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.639 if it did have a clock, see if there was 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:57.440 some sort of mechanism called a clock stopper, like it's 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.880 basically a steel collar, battery power thing, to see if 0:18:00.880 --> 0:18:05.040 that thing's firing, to see if they, you know, had 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:09.679 any anti withdrawal devices. Thank you Germans. Boiling water. They 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:13.560 started using water and steam early on to render either 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:17.320 the powder useless or as we'll see now, like just 0:18:17.359 --> 0:18:19.440 like flooding a thing with a lot of water very 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:21.359 quickly can sometimes work as well. 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:24.480 Yeah, and that also didn't quite make sense to me 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:28.240 at first until I realized that bombs also are made up. 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:31.720 There's a really like the explosive part that makes the 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:36.120 big boom, but there's also frequently a slightly smaller explosive 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.639 that makes the big boom go off. The thing that 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:45.280 booms really hugely, they're usually really kind of hard to detonate, 0:18:45.600 --> 0:18:47.440 so you can do things like pour water on the 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.240 whole thing, and you're you're not necessarily trying to keep 0:18:50.280 --> 0:18:53.200 the big bomb from going off. You're trying to disable 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.720 that either explosive charge or the fuse or whatever that's 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.240 gonna make that bigger bomb go off. It's kind of 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.240 hard to jiggling around a bomb to make like say 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:06.320 the plastic explosives or something like that go off. It's 0:19:06.359 --> 0:19:09.520 way easier to make the black powder get triggered. That's 0:19:09.520 --> 0:19:11.960 what you're trying to disable most of the time when 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:13.760 you're messing with the bomb. Yeah. 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:15.639 Absolutely, I mean, we talked about that a lot in 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.880 our episodes on nuclear bombs and stuff like that. 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:21.560 You said we did one on IEDs. Is that right? 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:23.080 I genuinely don't remember that. 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:24.960 Oh yeah, eleven years ago. 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:30.760 Wow, I'm glad you remember. Oh, just we're talking about 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.920 previous episodes. I think we should take a second here, Chuck, 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:36.919 to correct ourselves. I don't know if you saw some 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.600 of the emails come in, but we released our Genghis 0:19:40.680 --> 0:19:43.440 Khan episode as a Saturday select. I think I chose 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:48.439 it ye this past Saturday, And apparently in it we 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:51.080 say that when Genghis Khan was running around, there were 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:53.960 seven billion people on the planet and three billion of 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.720 them were Mongols, and that is that could not be 0:19:57.760 --> 0:20:01.680 further from the truth. Apparently we didn't hit one billion 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.840 until the nineteenth century, and we're at seven billion now. 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:07.800 So we were so off that it doesn't even make 0:20:07.840 --> 0:20:10.199 sense what we were saying. And I can't believe we 0:20:10.280 --> 0:20:13.399 got it that wrong, but apparently we did. So sorry 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:16.200 to everybody who's like, I can never listen to Josh 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:18.520 and Chuck again. After that, you said, I guess you 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:19.879 wouldn't be listening right now. 0:20:21.880 --> 0:20:24.720 You kept saying we did we both say that in unison. 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:27.320 Hey man, if one of us said it and the 0:20:27.359 --> 0:20:29.400 other one didn't correct it. We're both guilty. 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.440 Oh okay, all right, well we're guilty of not taking 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.280 an ad break. So we'll do that right now and 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:59.000 beg forgiveness when we come back right after this. All right, 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:04.840 So flash forward again. You know, the sort of technology 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:07.720 of defeating bomb seems to rise and fall with lots 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:12.040 of bombings happening, of course, and that happened between nineteen 0:21:12.080 --> 0:21:14.760 sixty nine and really up into kind of the mid 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:19.399 two thousands with the Provisional Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland. 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:25.199 During that time, twenty three different specialists were killed in 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.480 action from the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and ordnance is 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:31.680 just sort of a fancy name for any kind of artillery. 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:35.560 But you'll hear, you know, like unexploded ordnance and stuff 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:37.960 like that a lot. And that's like a bomb that 0:21:38.000 --> 0:21:38.640 didn't go off. 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:44.359 Yeah, And so the troubles in Northern Ireland were a 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:54.359 huge impetus for new bomb disposal technology. Simultaneously, bomb disposal 0:21:54.400 --> 0:21:56.880 techs who had fought in Vietnam were sorry to come 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.399 back to the United States too, So there are two 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:03.800 different things that were pushing bomb disposal technology at about 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.159 the same time in both the UK and America. And 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:08.560 what's interesting is this is the second time that it happened. 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.320 Third time actually, remember there were there was the Irish 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:14.480 Republicans in the nineteenth century, followed closely by the anarchists 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:19.160 in New York. There was the Vets returning from Vietnam, 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:22.360 and in the UK dealing with the troubles of Northern Ireland. 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:25.920 And then in World War Two there was the there 0:22:25.960 --> 0:22:30.520 was Churchill's push to train veterans or servicemen in World 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:32.680