Israeli Pager Bombs: The Little Bomb That Packs A Punch

The pager bomb has been all over the news as of lately. The Israelis managed to pack a ridiculous quantity of pagers with an small amount of explosives and then distribute them across the members of Hezbollah. These pager bombs then were set off simultaneously which has resulted in a large amount of casualties. The exact method as to how they did it remains unknown. It's not like they are going to share how they turned pagers into explosive devices. Fortunately, we are experts at turning random objects into explosive devices and we decided to see what kind of damage the pager bomb can do for ourselves. So, we got a hold of a few pagers, armed them as to how we think they did it, and set them off to measure the damage.

Now, we are licensed professionals and can do this safely. Do not attempt to recreate what we did here. Best enjoy the video and let us handle all the dangerous parts.

Music:

TeknoAXE - Revenge of the Atari Overlords
*This track is Royalty Free and is free for anyone to use in YouTube videos or other projects, whether monetized or not.*

Video references:
Dem-Com Companies LLC

NileRed Battery Short

Dog Chewing Battery Fire

Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
03:00 – First Pager Bomb Test
05:02 – Why the Battery Isn’t the Bomb
09:02 – Second Pager Bomb Test
11:26 – What Did We Learn?

[OrdnanceLab]

We really hoped the gel targets were going to arrive in time, but we have the worst luck with delivery services. So, our trusty mannequins will have to do for the time being. Still, these pagers really demonstrate that it's not the size that matters but how you use them.

So, what should we test next?

[owow]

I'll bet they regret buying those A-TNT pagers.

[Crwmagnum]

The fact that someone actually thought of it is only eclipsed by the fact they pulled it off.

[Crashing]

The name of the exploding pager operation was called Grim Beeper

[silverbankruptcy]

Israel is offering Replacement ACME pagers to all Dissatisfied customers.

[Kmurray]

Absolutely love that you not only listen to current events...but listen to your viewers.👍
Thank you for this timely acedemic demonstration.

[BB-isqv]

The Khorne flakes shirt is rad as hell.

[cphrpunk]

If people saw this op in a Bond movie they’d say “fake, there’s no way they’d do that, it wouldn’t work”.

[davidjernigan]

When I retired in 2021 we still had pagers at the nuclear power plant to notify us for emergency response.

[ozzyczzy]

fun fact, not also would that cause exterior harm to the body, but the bigger pager likely would cause trauma to the brain due to the shockwave, likely causing brain damage. like a hammer to the head.

[CanadianCope]

As a Canadian, I subscribe to you just to spite the Mounties

[ravendon]

Pagers are still used in hospitals because the analog signal penetrates concrete and doesn’t interfere with medical equipment. No company in America makes new pagers, so US hospitals rely on companies that sell or lease refurbished devices.

[jakebingham]

6:43 "vibrating wand for pleasure" It seems that these guys get more unhinged every episode. The concussive forces must be getting to them 🤣

[jlambuth]

I've become an expert in mannequin repair and rebuilding.

[toddhakesley]

Those pagers AKA "beepers" weren't designed to just drop in the pocket. They actually came with and outer holster like hard plastic clear or black clip and was meant to clip on your belt and when u got a beep or page you could easily slide the pager out of the outer case just like a pistol holster.

[JamieStuff]

To those insisting it HAD to be the battery... I'm showing my age here, but I've owned several pagers, both numeric (small) and alpha (large) back before cell phones. Every one I had ran on a single cell, usually a AA cell. Depending on how many pages received, the battery would last about a month. These pagers had been in use for a while; some several months, before the event, so the batteries would have been changed.

[thePrussian]

It’s my understanding that Mossad also armed handheld radios. That would be a bigger bang….hint hint

[sammiller]

“What’s blowing up in the Middle East this week” sounds like the name for a really grim news segment

[Chrism-os]

I’d said it before and I’ll say it again congratulations on Jake for finding his voice and getting more comfortable with talking on camera! Wtg man I remember the old days when he was super nervous on the mic !!

[bryonm]

True a battery isn't going to explode like we saw in the videos. However that's not to say it can't do serious damage. If you take any of those examples shown in the video, and encapsulate it in something sealed, that isn't meant to rupture, you are going to get a serious bang. Afterall a pressure cooker isn't an explosive, but it can still be used as a bomb, as has been seen many times. Yes, shorting a battery won't make it explode, however it will trigger that rapid deflagration that we see in the examples, which in turn can cause an "explosion".
Anyway, for this event it was PETN integrated into the rechargeable batteries inside of the pager.