When you're in a hole, stop digging

Tim Cavanaugh | February 18, 2005

I knew there was another reason I was dreading the aftermath of the Hariri assassination, and I just got a reminder of what that reason was: The instant hatching of a school of experts in incredibly arcane and unfathomable forensic science always makes me feel old.

Today's lesson: the physics of bomb craters. These photos prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the explosive had to have been buried under the roadway (and not, as was temporarily posited, in another vehicle or roadside device). Or they don't. I must confess to limited experience in the creation and maintenance of craters, and will defer to the experts, who have determined that the hit was clearly done by the Syrians, the Americans, the Israelis, the Chinese, and possibly the Krell.

Comments

|2.20.05 @ 12:35PM|#

The engineering, science and/or art of high explosives is over a century old, i.e it did not just spring up overnight.

The shape of the crater is a dead give away: it was a subsurface charge, probably hidden beneath a cap of mud. The complete destruction of the target vehicle and the relatively small "walls" around crater point to a high-brisiance explosive [that is the 'high' in 'high explosive'] such as Semtex or C-4. A lower explosive [e.g. the Oklahoma City 'high-nitrate fertilizer + diesel fuel' bomb] would have piled a lot more dirt around the hole and left the target relatively intact [i.e crushed but still in one big piece], inside or right next to the crater.

Almost everything they do in the movies/tv with explosives is wrong - but that applies to almost anything they do in the movies/tv. A medic, a lawyer and this old soldier regularly sit through a TV show where the plot includes multiple absurdities about all three professions [we still enjoy it, primarily due to Catherine Bell.]

EOD T-shirt motto: "I am a trained explosives expert. If you see me running, try to keep up with me."