Idea HN: Bomb proof bins

3 points by sw007 13 years ago | 5 comments

Had an idea that I can't do anything about, except suggest it on HN and see if it catches anyone's imagination.

The idea is Special Bomb bins - a lot of bombings occur by terrorists placing bombs in bins. I don't know anything about bombs but I wondered if all bombs all contained an element that a bin could pick up on and auto alert authorities that that element existed within the bin. For example if all bombs contained 'x', and you had special bins that alerted authorities when the bin came into contact with 'x'. Or something along those lines. Happy to be told this idea is incredibly stupid. If that is the case, has anyone got any ideas about how we could possibly build a better bin so that terrorists can't hide IED's in bins without anyone knowing - or is that impossible?

Thanks, Steve

adrianhoward 13 years ago |

Short version: It's pretty much impossible to build a bin that can withstand an explosion, is economically viable, and can be used in the same situations as normal bins.

The solutions that you see in the UK after various terrorist bombings are:

1) Bins get removed. If you look at chunks of London which are high-risk "targets" you will see a lack of public waste-bins.

2) Bins get changed to be less useful for hiding devices in. For example the UK rail stations often have bins that are just a transparent plastic bag hanging from a hoop. Any large/heavy device would be obvious quite quickly.

Both of these have associated costs of course (rubbish on the street and more frequent changing of bins respectively).

seanccox 13 years ago | |

The situation in Istanbul, for many, many years, was a complete lack of public waste bins. That has recently changed, but many are similar to those you mention in your second point. One caveat, however, is that bombers have even settled for cheap plastic bags to house devices (though mostly for specific assassinations, rather than mass attacks).

It depends on your goal, ultimately. Install bomb-proof trash bins and bombers will simply adjust their tactics, and the government will be out a great deal of expense and inconvenience to have only made rubbish safer from attack.

datr 13 years ago |

Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy component x which you could test for.

How about weight though? I imagine most bombs are considerably heavier than normal refuse. Could we add scales to bins and notify authorities that it should be examined if the weight suddenly increases by 2+ standard deviations, say.

I suppose this could be worked around by dropping explosive material piecemeal into the bin so this would have to be paired with an effective surveillance system to pick up on this behaviour.

Peroni 13 years ago |

http://www.aigis.co.uk/blast-resistant-litter-bins

seanccox 13 years ago | |

Those look pretty good... but I wonder what "exceptional blast mitigation" means. It would be interesting to see this tested against a range of commonly used professional and improvised explosive devices.

MythBusters anyone?