Re:Mass Evacuation Underway in German City over WWII Bombs
by segfaultbuserr on Sunday January 12, 2020 @08:40PM
(#22031165)
The explosive doesn't rot, but the trigger mechanism does. When the trigger is good, at least its behavior is predictable and a technican knows the precise condition that the bomb will detonate, but in the worst case, of which the trigger is completed damaged, it's unpredictable - they don't spontaneously detonate, until the slightest disturbance.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Mass Evacuation Underway in German City over WWII Bombs
by fhars on Monday January 13, 2020 @02:20AM
(#22032505)
„Good“ triggers were deliberately engineered to be unpredictable to make defusing harder and so you cannot assume the the area is safe just because the bombing has stopped.
Re:Mass Evacuation Underway in German City over WWII Bombs
by segfaultbuserr on Monday January 13, 2020 @03:54AM
(#22032882)
The most notorious example is a time-delayed chemical fuse, it uses a slow chemical reaction to detonate the bomb a few days later, as a form of psychological warfare. If the bomb didn't explode as designed, it means the chemical somehow got stuck, extremely dangerous to defuse, no matter how much prior knowledge one has.