Why explosives probably were not used in Israel’s pager attack

Here’s why I don’t believe explosives were used in the Hezbollah pager attack - of the 2000 or so pagers eventually, someone’s going to walk through an airport and get their pagers x-rayed. Always think horses not zebras.

[RyanMcBethProgramming]

Here’s why I don’t believe explosives were used in the Hezbollah pager attack - of the 2000 or so pagers eventually, someone’s going to walk through an airport and get their pagers x-rayed. Always think horses not zebras.

[anothorestes]

You might be overestimating the sophistication of lebanese airport security

[SimonKhoury]

Lebanese (anti-yellow) here. Team yellow doesn't go through airport security (they control the airport). Doubt that they travel with them. They got them some 5 months ago.

[BadgerScrub]

No, I saw videos of those people who were affected by these devices. These pagers definitely contained explosives. As a pyrotechnician, I promise you.

[SmithofAllTrades]

Hey Ryan. I'm a R&D engineer, worked with explosive testing and explosive products for government contracts. This was 100% an explosive detonation, not a battery run away. Here's my reasons.
1. No flash, high explosives in a metal container like an initiator don't flash, just pop.
2. Brisance, high exploves like RDX create high speed pressure, shattering everything around it like the plastic housing. Battery defligration has low Brisbane and the shrapnel would look more like a ballooned pager body, not the brittle fractured shrapnel were seeing.

[stefm.w.]

As an electrical engineer I have to disagree on this one. Batteries don't just explode like that when short circuited

[prfwrx]

Ryan, I'm gonna have to respectfully beg to differ on this one.

You're right about the airport conundrum. How come they never got busted with explosives on them when they travel?

Me, I'm looking at another angle. The problem is that lithium based batteries, hell, even nickel based ones, they're not energetic enough to turn into a small blast device that can kill on blast. It'd burn you bad. But not blast you. A standard battery pack wouldn't be able to maim and kill to this degree.

It also surprised me that nobody in team Yellow realized their supply of pagers were laced with weapon elements. Surely some Carl dropped his pager, cracked it open or broke it, and then found something that's not a pager component. It's a matter of eventuality, especially with the many years needed to salt the supply of pagers to this degree of proliferation.

My guess is this. Whoever cooked this plan made special batteries that also housed explosive compounds in addition to regular battery components. That way, even if it's been cracked open, nobody suspects a thing without sticking a sample of it into a spectrometer.

Then there's a matter of how tf does one monopolize the supply of pagers to team yellow for years...

[wizo]

Honestly, your explanation sounds more like the zebra

[mikesmith]

FPV drone pilot here.
Back when I was a noob, crashing a drone at 80 MPH into concrete w a fully charged 4S lipo pack wasn’t a rare occurrence. Not once has a lipo pack exploded like those did. We’re talking about battery packs that produce MUCH more power than a pager’s battery is even capable of.

[jamsheed]

I like ryan, but I seriously disagree with his take here. If you’ve seen the graphic injuries on twitter from this event, they are catastrophic. Far worse than some battery could do. In fact, the style of pager and type of battery within it has already been revealed. And there’s videos online of people trying to make those very batteries explode, and its very underwhelming. Batteries of that size and type simply do not do that type of damage, let alone that quickly.

[duaneaikins]

Another rule in intelligence.

Don’t make hard assumptions when you do not have enough information.

The zebra would be a piece of malware that could turn any cell phone into a bomb.

You are an interesting guy, Ryan. But you seem to get more and more cocky as you become popular.

[RASMUS]

No way in HELL you get that kind of detonation out of any battery small enough to fit in a pager. Look at the footage. It's not the "poof" of a deflagration. It's the snappy "crack" of high explosives. If there was to be any remote chance of a legit pager blowing a fist sized hole in your thigh, do you REALLY think they'd be allowed on the market?

[MoritzvonSchweinitz]

I strongly disagree. There's no way those explosions were just mistreated standard batteries. Also, they all went off at the same time, which would be impossible because of different charge levels and temperatures.

I bet they "simply" embedded some standard explosive inside the heavily and hermetically sealed batteries, and got the modified BMS circuit to detonate it.

[Andrew-ihgz]

Little did he realize the hoof sounds were really four children in a trench coat walking around on their mother's coconut bra.

[ultrastoat]

Ryan keeps saying things that age poorly

[PaleandPastey]

Nah man, no way It's a question of energy density. Li ion is only around 0.5 - 0.75 megajoules per kilo, that's assuming it's fully charged. C4 is like 6 megajoules per kilo. No battery is blasting a hole straight through a wooden desk or taking fingers off.

[spicy]

No way, dude, even an 18650 won't blow fingers off like the images we have seen and the battery in those is a lot smaller. There just isn't enough energy potential in the cells that small. If I am wrong I would be amazed. I do have first hand knowlage of making 18650s go pop.

[RISE-AND-RISE-AGAIN]

They were definitely explosives, batterys don't burn like that

[TakenTooSeriously]

Lithium batteries explode, but they don't detonate. The worst you'd get with lithium alone is burns.

[rockethound]

You're assuming team Yellow has huge supply of lithium batteries. Acid cell batteries don't do that. Heck, Lithiums don't explode they rupture and spew fire. This was TOTALLY explosives planted in all these pagers that Israel figured out how to get into the hands of team Yellow specifically. which makes it all the more brilliant.