How IEDs Work

or her sense of humor has been ratcheted up. We're gonna look one day she's like literally pulled up to our downs with her chin on her hand, like, Hey, yeah, what are you guys do? Hey, nice shirt, Hey, thank you. You compliment the shirt every time I wear I know. Let me set the scene. We're in our serial killer like room and Josh is wearing his Mystery Science Theater shirt. Yeah, that's the one, and it's got the guys there. It's a silhouette, the famous silhouette in the movie theater seats

and it's just a great shirt. Yeah. Um one time you, me and I were at home watching it on I don't know, the Internet or something like that, laugh and laugh and laughing, and uh, she had such a good time that she got me this T shirt. You commemorate it. That's a great reason. So thanks a lot, mst three K guys, Yeah, Emily does. I got a Dexter shirt. I got a true Blood shirt. I got a Madman shirt. You guys are laughing at Dexter parks and red shirt

every time, Children's hospital shirts on the way. I'm like enough with the shirts exactly fun TV events, right, you can just show what TV show you've watched recently by wearing that T shirt. Well, do like Michael Stipe remember that ear He were like tin shirts at the vm as. No, he kept taking off his shirt for each award they won, and it was another like a statement, political statement, you know Stipe. Yeah, I found his best. Just let Stipe

do his thing. Let's Stipe be Stipe. Yeah, that's a shirt. You know. He's got a sculpture like right there, what do you mean? He has a an outdoor sculpture at the next building over the Sovereign building in the back really right next to the valet um, there's like six seven eight like cute little larger than life foxes and he running around in a circle and it's Michael Stipe did he do it or did he conceive it and then had some sculpture go do it. If he did,

he's taking full credit for it. Okay, I mean I believe he did it. They're called the Stipe Boxes. I can't remember what it is, but it's got like or what the name is, but it's got like a plaque that says, you know who the artist is and give some background and well look at that. Michael Stipe had no idea yea, and it's pretty good too. I have to say, I'm gonna go check that out. You should write it for them, Okay, Chuck, Yes, do you know what an I E. D Is? I do. I bet

some folks might not, though you hear that where. It's one of those things you hear on the news a lot. Some people might just sort of, you know, it gets lodged in the brain is. I don't know what that is, but I hear it enough spell it out for him. I the improvised explicit device, and that is the I believe still the leading cause of troop death in the Middle East. Uh. Yeah, the mission in Iraq is over right, like we've totally drawn with drawn. Yeah, I strong about Afghanistan.

It remained then forever now the number one killer of US troops in Iraq, and it still is now in Afghanistan as far as I know. Yes, I have a couple of stats here. Um, it is still the top threat. You're correct, killed a hundred four U. S troops compared

with one. That's a significant drop. Yeah. Yeah, they're they're getting better at fine, and we'll get to this of their methods of getting better at rooting them out with machines and from what I gathered reading the stuff, just the soldiers being there, they just sort of get in that mind. They're just getting better at this, like sniffing out, sniffing them off the case. Yeah, these guerrilla tactics. You know, more you're there, the more you just understand the enemy.

That article also though, said that that statistic reflects just fewer troops to be attacked though as well. Um, but yeah, we definitely have gotten better, um as a military over the last decade or so. Yeah, like twelve years. I guess wasn't a two thousand one that we invaded Afghanistan or two to mission accomplished. Um, And we came face to face with I E. D. S pretty quickly. UM And really kind of had to learn what we were doing.

Like I remember the the soldiers were just driving around in regular humpies and getting like blown to smitherreens from I E d S left and right. And it took like a year or two before they had humpies that were armored enough to protect them against humpy blasts. Yeah. Well it's sort of new though, because this article points out at the beginning of the war they weren't as popular and it was mainly gunfire. Mortars and grenades were the cause of the age because we were fighting a

non insurgent group. We're fighting the Iraqi military. We were fighting, um, but the Taliban, Well, yeah, you're right, they were Yeah, no, I guess yeah, but yeah, in Iraq, we were definitely fighting the Iraqi military, but then the insurgency came after that. Yeah, they definitely have realized how effective they can be. When you can put it in a dead dog's carcass on the side of the road or a cow or something like that, very scary stuff. You can hide it just

about anywhere. Um, And they're not new. The insurgents um in Iraq in Afghanistan didn't invent I E d S. They go back at least into the Vietnam War, where the viet Cong figured out that a good way to get American troops blown up is to put an I D in like an old coke can or something, or an old beer can't leaving along the side of the road where you knew they were going to be walking, because everyone knows that Americans like to kick cans down the road. And apparently all it took was one kick

and then boom, the whole platoon was in danger. Yeah, that was an I E D. Yeah, the i R a Irish Republican Army obviously used those in the sixties and seventies. And then you know when you hear about the Boston bomber or the Centennial Park bomber, the d s yeah, actually homemade bombs, right, it's an improvised explosive device, which basically the big distinction is you didn't buy it from a from a commercial manufacturer, or it didn't come

from a commercial manufacturer like a pipe bomb. That's an e D. Doesn't have to be in a rock or Afghanistan. And like you said, I mean, the reason that they are in use and man, they are in use um is because they are an effective weapon against a larger, especially larger conventional army. Um. It's it's they're cheap, they're easy to get the parts too, they're fairly easy to put together, and apparently there's a lot of information out there about how to do it. Like the Times Square

bombing that was foiled a couple of years back. The bomb that that guy had was virtually identical to the ones used in the Boston marathon bombing. So clearly there's some instruction out there that people who want to can get to and make these things from just part you buy at the store. Yeah, the internet, giveth in it take it away for sure. Yeah right, all right, So you want to talk about the basic parts of an I D. Yeah, there's five of them. You've got your

power supply um. You basically you're trigger in your detonator. Need electricity um usually from like say a battery or UM battery. Yeah, I mean it should be as simple as like a flashlight battery. Yeah, so that's pretty scary. The trigger is, uh, the switch that sets the device off. It's usually like sometimes can be a trip wire, but usually or a timer. But most times it's like a firing button where someone is watching that they actually press or a radio signal from like say a cell phone

or something. Yeah, anything that can relay information that can trigger an event to that trigger, like a garage store opener, cell phone, radio whatever. Um, that makes a pretty handy trigger switch. That's right. So the detonator that is the uh, the small charge that sets off the larger charge. I don't know, we talked about this since something oh building implosions exactly. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's kind of

the same thing. Yeah, you're taking a little charge because it doesn't take quite as much to set that one off, and then you use the energy, the force created from that one to explode the larger charge, the main charge of the primary charge. And um, you can actually use conventional weapons, conventional bombs like an unexploded landline as um. The primary charge, right, fertilizer is very handy apparently. Um. And then from the main charge, we move on to

the container. That's the thing that holds everything together, whether it's a pressure cooker or an old washing machine or whatever. What did they do in Boston pressure cookers? Was that what it was? Okay? But they snuck in and backpacks? Is that right? Yeah? That is some scary stuff. It really takes a lot to not be super freaked out

at any public event after something like that. You know, it definitely takes a little while too for even the most rational stable person and say, no, I'm just gonna I'm gonna go to this marathon and hang out and not worry about things. Yeah, I think it increases vigilance

for sure. Um, And then of course, like in the NFL this year, you know I got the Falcon season tickets, they sent out a statement to all the ticket holders that you can't like bring bags into the game anymore unless they're those clear bags that like high school stud it's apt to use. Now, I didn't know you could ever bring bags, Like you could bring a backpack into the game or something, or a purse or anything like. You can't bring any of that stuff in. You can't

bring a person any longer. No, it's got to be like they have a size requirement. It's basically, you know, a little small purse that can fet your I D and stuff. But yeah, they're putting the kih on that. Yeah I can figure I D, but not your I E D. That's right. Yeah, that should be their slogan, which I mean, I guess it's not much to give up like a purse. Of course, I don't carry purses, so it's not a big inconvenience for me. But you know, I mean to ensure that much more safety, yeah, that

doesn't seem like enough. But it's also part of that slippery slope where it's like, Okay, we made that concession, and what's the next concession? Taking off your shoes and line at the airport? Not that big of a deal. But when you add it together with all this other stuff, all of a sudden, we're pretty much constantly thinking. There's constantly an awareness of the threat that's out there. That's

probably good to a certain degree that anything. Yes, it is, but I think it's also a double edged sword where it's like you're maybe you're safer, but you're also more stressed out right, you know. Yeah, And it certainly doesn't limit the racial profiling and stuff like that, you know, after events like that and you're people are staring down people of different colors and races and oh yeah, I'm sure like the random pat down through like a T

S A line is pretty far from random. Yeah, you know. True. See our podcast on on No flight lists. Wright do one on that, Yeah, I genuinely don't recall it. Give yourself a break, buddy, Yeah, but I would think like I could remember any of them eventually if you said the title. Yeah, we did one on no fly lists, like how do you land yourself on a no fly list? Okay, on a government list of like no fly That was my fault. I said the wrong title. That's why I

wasn't jogged. Yeah, we did one on like flying and stuff. All right, So there's there are other things packed inside these devices as well, basically for use to shrapnel, um, anything from nails to ball bearings. Um. Sometimes it can be toxic chemicals to cause fire. It can be all sorts of nasty things, um. Yeah. And it could be part of a dirty bomb. It can be like the means to get a dirty bomb exploded. Right, Well, Chuck, before we go any further, you want to do maybe

a message break, I think so, Chuck. So we've talked about what parts there are to a um an I e. Ed Um, let's talk about how they fit together. And obviously we're not going to give you any kind of instructional step by step, um, but there I mean, there's just general information about how how they fit together. So you've got your power source, which we talked about, and that's going to give you the electricity that you need to power the trigger and the detonator. So that's how

those fit together, right, Um. And then you've got the trigger which activates the detonator, which also requires some sort of power um or also draws power from the power source. Uh. And the trigger can be it can be said on a timer like the old like sticks of dynamite with the clock. The timer that's an I E. D. I suppose um the Yeah, it could be activated by a trip wire. Um, it could. There's all sorts of things you can do. Somebody could be standing off in the

distance watching and pressing a calling a phone. I remember we talked about it before. I don't remember which one it was, but we talked about supposedly a separatist, the Chechen separatist. Maybe it was planning on bombing Red Square in Moscow in the New Year's before last. And she blew up because she got a text message from her phone before she made it out of her apartment. She got like a happy New Year message from the phone provider. I never followed up to make sure that wasn't an

urban legend. But it is a heck of a story. I do remember talking about that, and I believe it you could just because why not, you know, why not? Uh? And then you've got, like I said, we got the detonator which provides the energy for the main one, and then the main charge which sends a shock wave or a blast wave and shrapnel and fire or toxic chemicals or whatever outward very fast. Yeah. And the big problem, like we said, with I E d s and with combating I E d s, is you can make them

from so many different materials. There's all sorts of different types of explosives you can use. Um, the parts you can get from just about anywhere. I know, in the Boston bombings they used, um, the trigger was triggered via an RC car part. They used regular like battery D cell batteries. Um. You, so you can get this stuff from anywhere. So, like, if you were really interested in stopping i E d s from being produced and made your supply lines, following supply lines is really difficult. Yeah,

it's not like you can trace things. Yeah, and they're just coming from so many different places. It's like we're banning our c cars can't really do that. Yeah, I did see where the government is UM trying to track this stuff a little bit more. Um, they spent more than two hundred million dollars to Pentagon has UH basically

just trying to get ahold of the problem altogether. But they have something called the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization or JAI DID right and UM, I think they're gonna get about two d and seventeen million dollars this year. And one of the things that they're trying to do is track some of the stuff out of Pakistan. It seems to be one of the main countries where things

like how see um ammonium nitrate or coming from fertilizer. Yeah, in Pakistan saying we kind of have an agricultural um sector that needs fertilizer soon. We're not gonna stop making fertilizer. What part of the problem is that's also the main source of explosive material being used in I E D S. Shows you the problem. You're part of the problem at least. UM. The The other part of the problem is there's so many different ways to deliver an I D. You can

just put it somewhere. They're very easily hid. Um and say like a rubble or trash pile or like you said, in the carcass of a dog or a cow or something like that, to something that seems innocuous. They can be buried. Um, they can be left in a car. Yeah, those are vehicle born I E. D. S and uh that have you seen I'm really into these modern war movies. Have you seen hurt Locker is one? I haven't seen that one man So good and zero Dark thirty was

the worst part of the movie. What part where the ladies like jumping up and down like yeah, my informants coming for the car bomb. That's what happened though, dude, and the other girls on the other aunt saying like, oh mg, I'm so excited for you. It's like their characters suddenly just totally deteriorate, like into just these caricatures, like what happened at that part she was jumping up and down like yeah, I don't know, man, I think

she was probably pretty excited. Dude. I just thought it was very weird so much so I'm like, what is the director trying to do here? Like what she's trying to say something that I'm not picking up on it. It was just odd. But yes, it was a vehicle born explosion, But you liked the movie aside from that. Aside from that, yeah, that was pretty cool. Both those were Katherine Bigelow by the way, right, but yeah, I never saw hurt Locker. Hurt Locker is great. And then

Green's On was another good one. The Matt Damon one. Wasn't that like, um, the born identity for Isn't there a lot of people called that? Really? Yeah, well that's just silly, wasn't I by the same guy who directed it too? Maybe I think it was Paul green Grass And yeah, but it was not. That's just silly. It was because it was Matt Damon kicking but and Paul green Grass. But it was a war movie, not a spy movie or whatever those Born movies were. Yeah. Um,

I'll take issue with that statement. Okay, um, all right, So let's talk a a little bit about the explosion itself. I said that gas heats up expands rapidly, and how rapidly Josh? Um, Well, if you're talking explosion, usually at least ft per second four eight meters per second, which is a lot that's your blast wave. If you're anywhere near that, then you probably are not going to make it out. And it um creates a lot of um force measured in atmospheric pressure gez. Oh yeah, how many?

Up to a thousand times the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level. So you remember in the diving bell episode we're talking about or no, it was the the ejection seat episode, we talked about how when you eject from a plane, you can be depending on how fast you're going, you can be subjected up to twenty g s all of a sudden when you when your seat shoots out. This is a thousand gees. Alright, so that's gonna send that shrapnel at that same speed, which is gonna do

tons of damage. Their secondary shrapnel from stuff like windows and buildings that are going to be splintered and flying around. Uh, there's the fire itself, Uh secondary fires. And then this

one I didn't really think about though. The the vacuum. Yeah, apparently can it leaves a vacuum that can like cause you to go blind or deaf, And well it blows it out so much that, yeah, it causes a partial vacuum, and then the air rushes back in to fill it, and it brings all that other debris that it's just shot out right back into you. So you get it twice. I guess if you're in the blast zone, and I guess the atmosphere pressure is what can give you like concussions.

That's the shock wave swelling of the brain, like, um, what what is it? A traumatic brain injury which is so similar to PTSD. Oh yeah, um. And it also points out to I'd never really would have thought about this, but air filled tissues and organs like your lungs and your bowels can actually be perforated with this pressure change. Yeah, that's just unbelievable. Yeah. Um. And like we said, if you're close to one of these, you're probably not gonna

make it out alive. If you're a little further way outside that primary blast radius, um, you're likely going to be injured. A lot of I think of wounds in Afghanistan are still caused by I E. D S. So while deaths are down, there's still a lot of guys and ladies being wounded. Yeah, you know, losing limbs, there's a lot. There's a huge increase in a rock and Afghanistan to lost limbs and brain traumatic brain injuries because

they're being protected from kevlar. Whereas before these these protections and the measures that that the military took to protect soldiers um were instituted. Prior to that, they would have just died, so they wouldn't have been chalked up to the casualty or the injured list. They would have been chalked up to the dead list. Right. So now it's like, yeah, they're being protected, but they're also losing limbs. They're also

like they they have brain injuries. There's big problems that they're carrying along with them as well, which is one of the things that's made this war so expensive, um, not just financially but in like you know, human costs as well. And of course civilians aren't protected at all, so they're dying at a rapid rate. So you've got I D S. They are out there. There's a problem.

What have we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, Like, how do you detect against the either use of I E d S. Well, one thing that uses dogs to sniff them out. I don't know. At some point we have a good article on war dogs that we might cover, but dogs is one way. Um, like I said, just living in country and learning that. You know, every time one of those goes off, they probably learn a new method to add to the list, which is scary but also great to be there and sort of get inside

their head a little bit. Paying attention and being suspicious is another one. Yeah, Like there's an instance that's given in this article about a marine spotter who noticed a man outside of Habania, Iraq who is videotaping a convoy. Yeah, it's like that's kind of a dig giveaway that this

guy should be checked out. I guess they looked at him and saw that he had a high powered rifle on the seat next to him, and they shot and killed him and went over and apparently he had a bunch of parts to make I E. D. S with. That's right, So I guess he was scouting or what have you. And then not very surreptitiously either, like, um, and he probably well you never know. I was going to say he might have one of those video cameras from like the eighties too. It's like set on, it's

not even a small one. Um. They do have some new technology though, which is pretty cool, and it makes sense because if you're using like a signal from a cell phone, let's say, to set these things off. You might think, hey, can they jam those things? And they can, And they're trying to something terribly named UM device called the NERF and I r F which stands for neutralizing improvised explosive devices. Oh no way? Yeah? Oh yeah? Is that nerve? Isn't there a terrible acronym? So nerve with

radio frequency? Okay, sorry, give him the whole thing. Neutralized neutralizing improvised explosive devices with radio frequency ner Yes, And that emits a high frequency pulse that basically just shorts out all the electronics in the area. Yeah. They also have devices that emit births of microwave radiation that fry the electronics anywhere around. So if you have an I E. D coming up and you shoot it with some microwaves,

it probably isn't gonna work, that's right. And they have lasers, the the libs, l ibs man the military and their acronyms like everything. They love those. When I'm talking with my brother in law, he's just like and he's so used to saying what they are too, and it's just like rapid fire. We'll say like LIBS laser and just break down spectoc See I can't even say that that spectroscopy well, the spect spectroscopy is a difficult word to

say either way. That's what they call it LIBS. And these detect I D explosives within about a hundred feet, which is pretty good because these things, you know, most of the time it's not like it's not a daisy cutter. You know, the explosion is large, but it's not you know, if you're five yards away, it's not gonna have much of an impact on you. And they um, the gun a lot better at detecting devices. Um. Apparently of I E d s in Afghanistan were detected before they went off.

And I think two thousand eleven, two thousand twelve. Um. And uh, did you hear about the guy who sold fake bomb detectors like around the world. He's this British guy named James McCormick, and for ten years he sold this device called the a d E six fifty one, which stood for Advanced Detection Equipment And basically what it was was a device called the gopher, which is used to find lost golf balls. And it actually doesn't work.

It doesn't even find lost golf balls. It has no better no better chance than random chance to detect a golf ball or anything else. This guy just repackaged these things and sold them. He sold one to a government for three grand. Apparently the Iraqi police fought six thousand of them. They're still in use all over the country. They don't do anything. This guy means sixty million dollars over ten years selling these things, and he's a total fraud. Is he in jail or anything? Yeah, they got him

finally doing ten years in prison. Wow, and they took his money. Yeah, but who knows how many people like Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty scary. They also have like you talked about their the humpies and stuff were more armored now. But um, they also have things called mind resistant ambush Protected Vehicles m wraps, and they have a flat undercarriage in the shape of a V which will supposedly divert the blast. Yeah, rather than flat, it's like it goes it comes to

a point. Yeah, it makes makes sense. It diverts it away instead of just right up under the vehicle. So you just have to hope you're not standing next to the vehicle and the thing goes off because it's going to direct all that stuff towards straight out. And then just today, um, we learned that a company called Ashkosh not Ashkosh but no, but I wonder if they're related. The military Vehicle division of Oshkosh Bagosh in Wisconsin. Is

Oshkosh Bagosh, Wisconsin? Yeah, is it really? Yeah? This Oshkosh is probably a place there. Yeah, you think I believe it is. All right, we'll look into that. Maybe they make onesies and military vehicles. But in Washington, d C. Right now, today's August. What today in DC? This week they have a trade show and oshkos is an unveiling the Terra Max and the Terra not terror Terra is

in land. The Terra Max is um unmanned, which is kind of cool, and it has counter I D payloads and uh, it's basically a little UM a TV that I guess is remote controlled or it says it can run UM in a supervised autonomous mode remote control? Is that what that is? It's just the way I think moment. Yeah, they should just say RV man UM. Yeah. So that's pretty cool. So they're they're definitely spending money at the rate of about two hundred and two twenty million a

year to try and combat desk. Ye. Well, and that's all I got. That's all I got too. Um. If you're interested in this, you can also another way of delivering an I D is via suicide bomber. And we did an entire episode on suicide bombers, did we not? We did? Okay, so you might want to check that out as well. Uh. And if you want to learn more about I E d s and how to combat them, you can type I E D into the search bar

at how stuff works dot com. And since I said search bar, it's time for a message break, all right, chuckers, how about listener mail? All right? This is called I've worked with a hyperbolic chamber? Uh Jeric hyperbaric? Would I say hyperbolic? The guys like it's the largest chamber in the world. It's so full of hyperbole. Um, thanks for catching that. By the way, I just finished listening to the how does a Diving Bell Work? And I couldn't help but think about a guy. I think about a lot.

I used to live on a Caribbean island called Utilla. It's in Honduras. Utila or Utila is known for backpackers learning to dive whilst traveling around Central America as a scuba instructor on the island and also drove the hyperbaric chamber or hyperbolic chamber set up and funded by small the charge to all divers, although we treated locals for three um all of us non Hondurans learned to dive as safely as possible. But the locals will go for lobster.

They called them bugs. Had horrific diving conditions. They would have a guy in about a couple of dive tanks without pressure gauges attached along hoses that the fishermen would use to breathe. They knew that they were running out of air when it became hard to breathe. Once they realized they were running out of air, they would surface quickly, but stay in the water, drink a coke uh and smoke a joint. It would be attached to a new tank then and go down looking for more lobsters or

bugs of stuff in their sacks. This what's going down down here. There's an article about um this industry and in this way of getting lobsters in Mexico by hand in harpers that people last month's Harpers or this month's hard Yeah, it's like just like that, really really dangerous. Yeah, they're really cavalier and they get hurt a lot. Apparently they smoke we'd while they're doing it. Uh. This one guy came into the chamber room in pain and twisted up.

We were pretty sure he wouldn't walk again. He gave him a couple of rides in the chamber over a couple of days. This entailed trips down to the equivalent of sixty only to be slowly brought back to the surface quote unquote uh sorry quote surface end quote over a few hours time. Um. We also did some hydrotherapy on our small pool. Because he wasn't getting any better, we had to fly him off the island to the mainland. Keep the plane just above the water so it's not

to elevate them much higher than sea level. After leaving him at the hospital, I never saw I heard about him again. He was a husband and father of two and I was twelve years ago and I think about him often. That's from James, Thanks James. I thought that was a pretty great email too. Yeah. Um, and he sent a picture the hyperbolic hyperferic change. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah he said it was a bad picture. If that was great, Yeah, it seems fine. Your heart

on yourself, James, let yourself up. Uh. If you want to send us a picture of something cool that you operate, we'd like to see that. Um. You can tweek to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how Stuff Works dot com