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Things that go bang

The news wires were all abuzz yesterday with reports that a dozen had been killed and thousands more injured when pocket pagers used by Hezbollah had exploded.

What's going on and how did this happen?

I suspect many people's first thoughts were "damned lithium batteries" but that appears not to be the case. Not even the IDF is clever enough to cause the batteries in such devices to detonate with such fury.

The reality appears to be that someone had planted a small explosive charge inside the pagers and rigged that charge to detonate when a specific paging code was used.

Given the scale of the death and injuries produced, it seems to have been perhaps the most effective strike against Hezbollah that Israel has inflicted in a very long time.

However, the explosions have not yet finished.

There are reports this morning that, in a separate attack, walkie-talkie radios used by Hezbollah have also exploded, causing more death and injuries.

Then a bunch of domestic and commercial solar power units exploded.

One can only wonder how deep the Israeli operatives have infiltrated into the technological infrastructure used by Hezbollah and whether there are more bangs to come.

I expect that this is the end of it, but from a strategic perspective, that doesn't matter.

Hezbollah will now trust none of their technology so it might as well not exist. Israel has crippled their ability to communicate and coordinate their actions.

It's likely that many other countries are watching with great interest exactly how much was achieved with such a conceptually simple but perhaps technically difficult attack.

Did Israel have someone in the factor where these things were made?

I doubt it. That would have been pretty risky and I doubt the walkie-talkies, pagers and solar power systems were all made in cooperating factories.

It's far more likely that the consignments were intercepted and the splody-stuff was inserted on their journey from source to customer.

Despite the apparent simplicity of the attacks there must have been a great deal of work done in advance. Initially I thought that the Israelis must have also modified the firmware in the pagers to activate the charge on receipt of a very specific code but now, after the walkie-talkies and other systems reportedly also went bang, it seems far more likely that the charges were connected to a separate receiver that simply listened for the detonation signal.

Such a system could actually inserted into any device that has a source of power.

Since the Hezbollah will also have figured this out by now, they'll likely be keeping a god distance between themselves and any other electronic or electrical equipment they've purchased in the last year or so -- hence they have been hugely disempowered.

It never fails to disappoint me that we, as humans, spend so much time, effort and money trying to kill each other when there'd be so much more to be gained by pooling our collective resources and coming up with ways to improve everyone's lives.

Most intelligent creatures on the planet? I have strong doubts.

Carpe Diem folks!

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