Hiding a Bomb in Plain Sight
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Hiding a Bomb in Plain Sight
You are at war. Trains are key to keeping your army supplied with fuel, ammunition, food, and medical supplies. But, inexplicably, your trains keep blowing up. Sabotage? Enemy attack? There’s no evidence of a bomb or overt enemy attack. This is the situation the German military found itself in during World War II. As you can see in the video below, the hidden bomb was the brainchild of a member of Britain’s SOE.
The idea was to put plastic explosive inside a fake plastic lump of coal. They hand-painted each one, and the color had to match the exact appearance of local coal. Paint and coal dust helped with that. The bomb had to weigh the correct amount as well.
The coal was safe until it got quite hot, so resistance fighters could easily carry the coal and surreptitiously drop the bomb anywhere coal is stored. Eventually, it will be put in a boiler, and at the right temperature, it will do its job. There’s some actual footage of a test in the second video below.
As the CIA notes, the idea actually dates back to the US Civil War. [Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay] built coal “torpedos” in the 1860s. (In those days, a torpedo could refer to any kind of bomb.) Probably the biggest impact was to tie up soldiers to guard coal stocks. However, in 1864, the USS Chenango’s boiler exploded in New York, and although the Union denied it, [Courtenay] was convinced it was one of his coal torpedoes that had done the trick. Later that year, Greyhound, the personal steamer of Major General Benjamin Butler, exploded right after taking in fresh coal. The CIA also mentions how coal bombs were also produced by the OSS, and even the Axis powers had their own version.
While we are no fans of war, we have to admit we are always fascinated with war technology. Even if that means microwave death rays. Certainly, hiding explosives in coal qualifies as a wartime hack.
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Gli ultimi otto messaggi ricevuti dalla Federazione
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Giuli spende trenta milioni nostri per un Caravaggio....meloni urla anche stavolta?
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I enjoyed and appreciated reading this post.
"I realized almost immediately that GNU/Linux and FreeBSD were so similar they were completely different."
This right here.
My initial impression with #FreeBSD in 2006 was quite similar. Of course, #Linux back then was a much different beast than what it has evolved (mutated?) into today.
Had I not pursued Linux system administration as a career, I *probably* would have stuck with FreeBSD.
We can make all the technical comparisons between the two OSes all day long but what drove my interest and enthusiasm are (1) the documentation and (2) the community.
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@peacelink ma non sono riuscite ad evitare di sbavare mentre lo dicevano
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@stefano Don’t bother filing a bug report. They will act stupid. Probably they are stupid about it. They think it is a bug. Actually the author probably wrote a program he knew was not a solution to the problem but which he could do on deadline and which was good enough for his job at HP.
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@stefano Here is something new for you to be upset about, though, which affects everyone, Linux, BSD, illumos alike. I have been upset about it for over 20 years.
Read ‘man 5 fonts-conf’ or whatever your equivalent is. Read it carefully under ‘FONT MATCHING’. What it says is that a font is not chosen as you wished, but instead RANDOMLY. You are only LUCKY if you get the font you wished.
And if you experiment long enough you will find this is true.
Fontconfig is unfixable and must be scrapped.
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L'Ucraina ha sviluppato nuovi missili balistici FP-7, analoghi all'ATACMS, ma due volte meno costosi
I test si stanno muovendo verso una nuova fase, i missili saranno testati direttamente in attacchi in Russia
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E in omaggio la concessione decennale per l'uso di un pezzo di bosco demaniale.
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@quinta non solo lo fa, ma se ne vanta pure.
