Boston Marathon Bombing: BEAHCAT & BRUINS, 'MURICA

[Churchill]

is there any specific reason ball bearings are the bomb shrapnel of choice?

High velocity and dispersed momentum, it's basically like a giant shotgun blast.

basically this, they are abundant and achieve a high velocity. Nails, washers, screws, other stuff like that can be used as well or in addition to but don't fit as neatly inside the bomb, nor do they have a predictable dispersal.

So if there's ball bearings in the bombs, does that mean it wasn't suicide bombers? Or what?

Well, it was said it wasn't suicide bombers but no, the presence of ball bearings doesn't indicate one thing or another.

[NynJa]

You can in afganistan/iraq

Yeah, my bad, I completely forgot that middle eastern countries that have been warzones for longer than my lifetime where bombings happen almost daily are completely identical to cities in a first world country.
I apologize, I'm clearly dumb. I'm sorry

Spoiler: show

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...0/36900555.jpg

[Byrthnoth]

Not to get on the watch list or anything and I recognize that bombers aren't the smartest individuals, but why wouldn't you just use a kill-switch? If you reach your destination, raise your thumb and blow up. If you don't reach your destination and someone shoots you, you release it anyway and blow up.

[Churchill]

Suggested last page, it's not as practical as you'd think.

edit: eg, the target is usually important. It has to be at x/y/z, people from mamook can't be present. If I didn't care about the target, only that it caused hysteria, maybe that would be different.

Also take into account that a lot of people who end up being suicide bombers (from Islam) are really young, drugged up boys and you wouldn't really trust them with not fucking it up.

[Acevalefor]

Original post with lots of seriousness....

You heard it first people, shoot any human being wearing a belt and/or a vest.


Hey Captain complete fuck head...
http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/ima...ris-france.jpg
What do you do if theres a suicide bomber in there, no threatening messages were delivered to the media/authorities about there being a bomb...just a group of people playing on their phones and enjoying their day? Shoot everyone there?

Snarky one-liner that wooshed Nynja.

You can in afganistan/iraq

Sarcastic response showing that the snarky one-liner was completely missed and was taken seriously.

Yeah, my bad, I completely forgot that middle eastern countries that have been warzones for longer than my lifetime where bombings happen almost daily are completely identical to cities in a first world country.
I apologize, I'm clearly dumb. I'm sorry

Spoiler: show

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...0/36900555.jpg

Did I get that right?

On topic:
There seems to be lots of people still throwing around suicide bomb, terrorist and other words. Just remember, as said earlier, the network and cable news stations are notorious for false, inaccurate information and huge amounts of speculation passed off as "reliable information" from people on scene.

These were not, as far as anyone knows, suicide bombs. There have been no public claims made by any terrorist group as of yet. For all we know, this could be your neighbor that decided to go apeshit because he didn't want to pay his taxes...so he blew up a bunch of people instead.

[Coren]

I think by definition anybody that plants multiple bombs at a "squishy target" like the boston marathon is a 'terrorist'. Whether he's al Qaeda, white supremacist, a teahadist, or a liberal (lol) is largely irrelevant. He's still a fucking terrorist.

[noblemountain]

Okay, Major M U R I C A

Sergeant Slaughter? You don't wanna be an officer anyway.

I thought you were this superhero:

Spoiler: show

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/2132317/soonbama.gif

Shhhh...that's my secret identity.

[kuronosan]

I think by definition anybody that plants multiple bombs at a "squishy target" like the boston marathon is a 'terrorist'. Whether he's al Qaeda, white supremacist, a teahadist, or a liberal (lol) is largely irrelevant. He's still a fucking terrorist.

Stop spreading propaganda. Terrorists can only be brown.

[jmc]

Stop spreading propaganda. Terrorists can only be brown.

"I have a description of the Arabic guy that set off the bombs"

"How do you know it was a Arabic guy?"

"Umm he is Arabic, and visiting Boston at the time of the explosion duh"

Just one of many conversations I've had with random individuals today.

[Boyiee]

is there any specific reason ball bearings are the bomb shrapnel of choice?

High velocity and dispersed momentum, it's basically like a giant shotgun blast.

basically this, they are abundant and achieve a high velocity. Nails, washers, screws, other stuff like that can be used as well or in addition to but don't fit as neatly inside the bomb, nor do they have a predictable dispersal.

So if there's ball bearings in the bombs, does that mean it wasn't suicide bombers? Or what?

Well, it was said it wasn't suicide bombers but no, the presence of ball bearings doesn't indicate one thing or another.

Something like 9mm rounds travel around 1000-1200fps depending on make/grain etc, but ball bearings will travel in every direction at like 7,000 feet per second when used in a bomb/IED.

[Boyiee]

Always have to watch those WMD training videos and shit at work, and they show how you can make an IED capable of taking out an APC/HMMWV/whatever for less than 20$ and stuff it inside a dogs corpse.

[Churchill]

shape charges are really fucking cool, lol. the most expensive part is the copper. (homemade version anyway)

Edit: Anyone else think the explosion looked like almost entirely all black powder with no shockwave?

[NynJa]

Did I get that right?

my original post with the cafe was direct at churchill. My second post was very thick sarcasm based on your reply about the middle east being identical to boston.

[Plow]

ok what the fuck people you've now managed to turn this into both a churchill thread and a nynja thread at the same time, you seriously need to take some time and think about what you've done

I mostly wtf'd that the guy ran right towards it

It's amazing watching the videos and stuff just how many people were running straight in to help without a second thought while most are literally just running for their lives.

Anyway, few things I noticed that hadn't been mentioned:

Multiple reports that the bombs were in trash cans. One person said something like "we were standing there just a few feet away and all the sudden the trash can just blew up."

The timing was such that the most serious, and even more moderate (for the boston marathon) runners would have been done by quite a while. If the person actually realized what they were doing, it was, in addition to being designed to kill the spectators obviously, timed to be targeted at people that really wouldn't have been there for any kind of competition at all, just for the love of the sport and to have completed it.

Spoiler: show

Finally, it turns out it actually was a suicide bomber. His body was entirely vaporized, but there was clear evidence left behind as to who it actually was...

Spoiler: show

It was whopper jr.

[Plow]

Oh, and Chris Matthews was driving me fucking nuts on his show, stating like 4 times that "terrorism is usually/probably far right."

I think by definition anybody that plants multiple bombs at a "squishy target" like the boston marathon is a 'terrorist'. Whether he's al Qaeda, white supremacist, a teahadist, or a liberal (lol)

Right because there's never been any insane violence from far left groups like, say, the various communist parties, or, you know, these guys:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather...rganization%29

who pretty much brought the U.S. up to speed on modern political terrorism

[Mazmaz]

Do you even know what liberal means? It means center left. Social democrat, socialist, and communist are all more left than liberal.

[Tarage]

Guess what. Doesn't really matter what ideology he/she/they are because they're fucking crazy. Does it really matter what flavor of crazy? Is it somehow going to be better if they are strawberry crazy and not blueberry crazy? I swear why can't we just call crazy people crazy and not have to try to drag other unrelated people down?

[Kohan]

Guess what. Doesn't really matter what ideology he/she/they are because they're fucking crazy. Does it really matter what flavor of crazy? Is it somehow going to be better if they are strawberry crazy and not blueberry crazy? I swear why can't we just call crazy people crazy and not have to try to drag other unrelated people down?

If you can't simply call them crazy, it's at least reasonable to specify which facet of their ideology it is that they occupy. To his credit, Plow did say "far left," which is effectively akin to saying "religious extremist," and so on, so forth.

[Mazmaz]

My point was that someone who's moderate isn't batshit crazy to kill people. When you're center left, you're not gonna kill people in the name of your ideology lol. You find me a liberal that's blown shit up or done something crazy, I'll give you a medal. Hence the "liberal(lol)" of the original post.

[Tarage]

If you can't simply call them crazy, it's at least reasonable to specify which facet of their ideology it is that they occupy. To his credit, Plow did say "far left," which is effectively akin to saying "religious extremist," and so on, so forth.

Does it matter? If some dude decided to kill a bunch of people and said "LOL BG FOREVER" would you think it fair for people to come here and go "What the fuck is wrong with you people?"

Crazy is going to crazy. There is crazy everywhere. Instead of trying to blame people who aren't crazy for the actions of crazy, why not try to fix the crazy?