How Suicide Bombers Work

she's like, I'll make you some sandwiches. Now you're looking very sprited it. Chuck, you've done something that you've never done in me before. What man? What's going You literally put a video on your laptop and just turned it around and then started the podcast. And I'm waiting to see what happens because I think it might have something to do with the podcast. Did you see it? Did it happen? It happened. It's pretty awesome and and it has nothing to do with what we're podcasting, does it.

I just wanted you to see it. Putty General Interest. I will be putting that on the Facebook page okay, because ain't no party like our Facebook pages party. Yeah, you're into people getting flung off of things. Apparently I'm in a little a little bit of that mood right now. Yeah, how how are you doing? I'm great? Well good. We should probably tone it down a little bit because this is a grim, grim subject we're about to talk about. Yeah. That was the first minute, was about all the fun

we're gonna have here. Yeah, so chuck, Um, I got an intro for you. I was, um jogging you mean? And I were jogging on tread mills, as is our want usually, and um, I prefer tread mills because I can watch TV while I do and just totally forget that I'm running. Right, the guy kills me, but it works so well. Like I'm up to like five miles each time, right, you know what's soubring though I try to run a single mile on pavement, I don't need to.

There's no TVs on pavement, you know, much different. During one of these ventures, UM, I was watching CNN and um, this weird It was Wolf Blitzer and this weird segment came on where one of wolf Blitzer's journalists was in Libya meeting with the family of a man who had blown himself up in a car full of explosives to um gain entry for Libyan rebel fighters into this city.

It's very disputed city. I can't remember which one. And the guy was sitting down with the family, the two daughters and the wife, who were grieving but holding a picture of the man talked to his best friend, who picked up the pieces of the guy and I realized that it took me a minute, but it was dawning on me that this is exactly what say um Afghani or Talibani um State Television would do with one of

their suicide bombers. It was just like the embargo on discussed over suicide bombing as a general rule was lifted because someone CNN was rooting for blew himself up and suddenly it was okay. But I mean, like step for step, it was like a celebration of this man's heroism for blowing himself up. And I just thought it was really nuts. And I guess it's probably as unobjective as I should be throughout this podcast, but it struck me as really,

really strange. I wrote a blog post on it called um CNN oddly celebrates suicide bombers hero or remember like that. But it was just so weird, And there's in the blog post there's video. Somebody found it and posted it. So there's a video of this weird segment that just sticks out like a sore thumb. And um, I guess that. What I learned is that my personal opinion is suicide bombing is wrong no matter what side is doing it.

I think I would agree with that. All right. So this is a relatively new thing, right, suicide bombing it's new because there bombs are fairly new, right, Yeah, But it's far far more ancient than that. It is the concept of killing yourself or dying in the name of religion is pretty ancient. Oh yeah, you want to go all the way back to martyrdom in general, might as well. Okay,

start at the beginning. Martyrdom is what we're talking about, obviously, when you talk about suicide bombing, it's forsaking your own life for a higher cause, for a principle, for your faith, anything that is not for your direct like earthly benefit, but maybe benefit later on to elevate your cause, but benefits for you in the afterlife. And so generally that's what we suspect make suicide bombers tick. That's what is martyrdom.

And it's because although it is like a very deep there's a deep religious afiliation between martyrdom and um suicide like this suicide bombing. It doesn't necessarily have to be religious. It can be sure your side, your cause, like the forty one year old oil worker who is Libyan Um was for the rebel faction. It had nothing to do with religion. He was just willing to die for his cause, as all suicide bombers are. Religion kicks it up a little notch though so well. The and the reason why

is because it's so ingretened. The two are so entangled from such an ancient place, right like our lamb who did this article? Who did this? He wrote it? Um he he he traces martyrdom back to um the second or third century BC. Right. What with King Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah, yeah, the famous story in uh in Bible history, the Book of Daniel. We all know King Nebuchadnezzar gave as the best boys called them, shad rack mishak the bed nig. Yeah. I can't, I can't see this three names together without

thinking about that too. Well, these boys were three Jewish guys. That's probably why they called themselves at in the song, and they in the in the Bible story, he never cand as gave him the choice, you can renounce your Jewish faith or you can burn alive. And they said, you know what, we're the Beastie boys and we don't give in to anybody, and so we're gonna not renounce

our faith. They were thrown into the fiery furnace and they lived, which the lesson there was an early lesson in martyrdom, which was, hey, you know what, God's gonna protect those who die in his name. Doesn't it make you wonder? Like, don't you don't you tend to think that in stories like that? Somewhere eons ago, something happened,

possibly with these three people. What happened and eventually got translated into they were thrown into this furnace and they walked out unscathed, like did somebody like lose their grip on them? And they skirted across like a camp fire, you know, and like their robes didn't catch and everybody was like, oh my god, you know, and and then it just to just to make it more easily died juestable for the masses. It was transformed into this larger thing.

My feeling when it comes to parables like this, where uh, to me, it's obvious that someone wasn't unscathed and a burning fire was that maybe someone was burned like they were being tortured and saying renounced religion, being burned with like fiery torches or something, and they refused and refused, and they couldn't be broken, and so they were set free. And that becomes a parable in the way of something miraculous like this. That makes that makes sense. It's good analysis.

I probably get killed for that, But the point is, Um. The the idea was that if that God's God's got your back, if you're willing to die for him, right, yes, But that eventually transformed into what we what people still believe today that toil on this planet leads to bounty in the next life. The Big three. I'll believe that, and you can trace that back to the early the early Church, early Jewish faith, early Christian faith, and the early Muslim faith. UM, and martyrdom goes back just as

far and comes from the same tree. The idea that if you sacrifice yourself, you're going to gain reward after this. So what's a few minutes of pain for a lifetime

of happiness and pleasure? Yeah? Right, Well, and the non suicide version, where you're actually killing other people in the name of your God goes back to maybe not the first time, but one good example Robert Use was in d rather than surrendering to the Roman authorities, a rebel group basically killed their own themselves and every last man and woman. This one I think was probably literal, Yeah, probably, so does like do you think about how that would

be treated today though? Yeah, like the authorities are coming and you kill every man, woman and child inside and sounds like a standoff at at Waco or something. Um. So, but your your point is, I think the larger point is is that people were willing to kill themselves, kill those close to them, um, and kill others eventually and in the name of God, and expected some sort of

reward for it. So you were talking about the rise of Islam, right, So it was a D six ten when the prophet Muhammad received his first vision right and basically was set about going forth to found um Islam, and within fourteen years, uh, he had amassed something of of an army and was taking on other people in in the in the area. Right. It was pretty successful at it, Right, So what I gained from this, And I'm certainly not a scholar in Islam at all. I'm

not a scholar in any religion. It um the Islam came out of a place of strife and battle, and so thustly this concept of jihad came about fairly early on. Yeah, there's two two parts to jihad. If you've never you've heard that word a lot used, probably for the second part, which was a righteous battle in the physical world. But the first part of jihad means it's an inward struggle

of the soul uh in Arabic. So it's a two pronged thing there in the Kuran, basically vindicated defense and compact in the name of protecting the faithful as well as retaliation. So it's traced back to the Koran as far as probably the birth of the notion of something like a suicide bombing, even though it certainly doesn't say

that anything about that anywhere in the Kuran. So jihad played a big role in the Crusades, which was the Christian version of the Holy War right um, and that was taking it to the Muslim's doorstep, basically invading the Middle East. Right, Europeans invading the Middle East. It was the Crusades UM. And so from these conflicts UM, during the the Dark Ages, the Medieval ages UM, the Crusades uh, and after the birth of Islam UM, this this idea of taking a single person and going and doing as

much damage as you possibly could came about. So do you remember in the Sniper podcast we talked about sniper's being considered militarily forced multipliers. So are suicide assassins. And the term assassin actually comes out of this era and from the Middle East. UM, from the word hashishan Persian word, Uh, the name of a radical Shiite sect. Didn't know that, Yeah, So hashish An assassin are one of the same Hashian Hashihan assassin. Right the the you may recognize the word

hashish as a type of pot residue. So if if you find it odd that the word hashish pops up, um be advised that the sect, the Hashihan um smoked hash as part of their religious ritual. Yeah. They were also the ones though who would go out and Um. There they were tasked with um killing like public officials in very public places to basically terrorize the population. Like like if you kill somebody like that, you cut someone's

head off in a crowded square, you're gonna die. But the leaders had just got cut off in front of me, and now I'm really freaked out. It was the first early versions, ancient versions that would later become suicide bombings. But that sect was wiped out by Mongol in twelve fifty seven, and there was kind of a break on this activity for a while as far as world history goes. And then you get to World War Two and the Japanese Kamakazi pilots who are most essentially suicide bombers except

by way of a plane. Yeah, through the Bushido code. Yeah, But usually think suicide bombing is someone on foot, but it can really, you know, you can do. There's been boats, there's been cars and trucks, humans walking, and then obviously planes flying into aircraft carriers. Really a male cart filled

with explosives, you're gonna get the same. You're a suicide bomber. Well, Robert Lamb puts the first modern suicide attack in Lebanon in nine during War between civil war between Christian and Muslim militants, and there was a loan suicide bomber Shiite hit in Iraqi embassy in Beirut, and the US entered the conflict the next year, and so a side bomber drove into the U. S embassy I remember that, actually,

killing sixty three people. Yeah, that was in April, and most folks say this is like the beginning of the modern suicide mission, right. And then in October two truck bombs drove into the marine barracks in Beirut and killed two people French and American I think two D forty one Marines. So, like you said, that's the birth of the modern suicide bomber. And unfortunately it's just basically been

gaining momentum ever since. This whole concept of I'm going to strap a bunch of explosions to myself and walk into a crowd and blow myself up and kill as many other people as I possibly can. Yeah, let's poke around inside the mind because people have been curious what kind of person does this um? Because obviously, if you look at UM just from a straight physical standpoint, they did find between the ages of eighteen and twenty four

is your average age of a suicide bomber. Apparently Israel conducted studies in the late nineties to figure out what they you know, who sus eye bombers were, right. So, so the sense of despondency and teens is playing a part here. The whole world is against them teens. How many teens feel that way? I know I did, uh, and it's no different in other countries. UM combine these

feelings with tyranny. You're oppressed, you're angry. Uh. And then the final center here is usually and I think they even have a study that there's some sort of personal loss attached to the person that ends up being picked to carry out the mission. Right, their parents were killed or wounded or put in prison. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah. It wasn't a study, but it said it is readlarly psychiatrist UM sifted through the lives is how Robert put it.

And they did discover and almost all cases connections to like slain their wounded family members or friends. And for the most part they were males. But as times worn on, women, children, older people have UM all joined the echelons of UM suicide bombers, right, they're usually very poor. Yeah, um, there was. Did you hear about the woman from UM I guess she was a chechen extremist in um Moscow on New

Year's Eve. She had a suicide belt and was getting ready to walk out into Red Square to blow herself up and take just tons of people with her, and she decided it didn't match her purse. She didn't make it out of the apartment because she got a spam text from her cell phone provider saying Happy New Year, and it blew her up really, you know, in her room. Yeah, in her apartment. She didn't have her cell phone off, which apparently is standard procedure. Like she they went out

and bought a cell phone just for that purpose. The provider sent a spam text to everybody, because you know, cellphone providers have been thinking, like, we're providing service to somebody who's going to blow up a bunch of people as a terrorist, the same we want to tell don't happy New here exactly. Wow, I didn't hear about that. It's true. So uh. One other common trait is that they obviously are willing to die for their cause, but

they are also willing to kill for their cause. UM most terrorists don't have, you know, they have no empathy for the suffering of other people. And it helps that, uh, in the case of US versus them, that the them is very very different from themselves, which is certainly the case with the Middle East and the United States. It couldn't be any more different as far as countries go, and people go, yeah, yeah, there's definitely a whole sentiment

that UM occupation and invasion fans the flames of suicide bombing. Well, yeah, because that you see your you see Americans as an invader and an occupier and a savage and a nonbeliever, which is a big part that that part about jihad in the Koran says basically like this is what happens to nonbeliever. This is what you do to nonbelievers. To an extent, Robert points out that if suicide bombers were left just completely alone, they might want to back out

or think twice. So that's why they surround them toward go time with the social network of supporters to say, you know, you're doing the right thing. They isolate you from your family and friends and UM show you videos martyrdom videos to reinforce that what you're doing is you know, you make a martyrdom video, you make your own saying like I'm about to blow a bunch of people up and I can't wait to get to the afterlife. And

I'm like a true UM believer. You're right, I read that wrong and um and so that that is it's not only inspiring, it's also like, you can't back out now you've made your video, like you you this is your point of no return. Well, because yeah, that'd be probably even more shameful. But I think people, you know, that survival instinct is very strong. So there's these people

that are handling them. Usually one of them will go with the suicide bomber to the target area and we'll basically keep them encouraged and um on on track and um, I imagine will blow them up if they decide that they want to back out. Yeah, well, and beyond that, sometimes it's planned that way. Sometimes the the assistant is has the detonator to prevent any kind of backout. I think that there's probably a backup detonator, Yeah you think, yeah, Okay,

that's my suspicion. So we're talking about the nuts and bolts of it all A sudden then let's go ahead. And with that you mean the shrapnel. Yeah, suicide bomber, it's not a very elaborate, expensive operation that costs about a hundred and fifty bucks probably worth of explosives and one human life willing to do so. And you've got yourself a suicide bomber, whether it's a duffel bag full of stuff or something you strap on your chest. Uh.

Like you said, they've used trucks and boats. Well, deffel bags are um apparently out a vogue because you will get shot in the head if you look like you are dropping remotely Middle Eastern and you have a duffel bag at least if you're in London in two thousand five in your Brazilian right. Yeah. Um, but you were saying this, it's just one person with a duffel bag or a vest or a belt. And uh, the the attack of um a suicide bomber is threefold, right. One,

it kills a bunch of people, so it's terroristic. Two, it draws a lot of attention to this cause that at least one person is willing to die for. And then three it's it's a force multiplier because it has like a huge effect on morale in the psyche of the population. But it can also go the other way.

Um has pointed out with World War Two, Um, it can either Like it's happened both ways in America because when two forty one Marines were killed in the truck bombing in nineteen eight for UH, President Reagan said in his in his memoir that that had a big deal with his pulling out of that region. Like he was like, now you know what, forget that these people are willing to do this. I'm getting my guys out of there.

Or in the case of World War Two with the Japanese, let's drop two bombs on their country that they won't be able to recover from because they're willing to fly their planes into our aircraft carrier. You know, that's not how the Japanese tell it. How they tell They tell it like they were starting to make moves that they were willing to surrender, and the Americans had so much money invested in this research that they basically needed and

wanted to see what happened. It certainly doesn't surprise me. There are two versions of that story. That's the way history works. So Chuck, yes, Um, what I guess what are these things made up? You said you can fill a truck belt all this stuff, what is it? Well, it varies, of course between what your resources are. I think in the early days they would just re jigger land mines and I use those. But now it's everything from T and T too, something called t a TP

triacetone triper oxide and then other plastic explosives stuff. They can do a lot of damage. And they found too that uh, the more people around the suicide bomber the better. Obviously not for those people close in proximity, but if you hear that there's a suicide bomber suspect and all of a sudden the crowd disperses, it's gonna have a blast zone that's much greater and cover a much more area because the thick, massive people around that person create

basically a human shield, which is pretty serious stuff. And uh, in London two thousand five, you want to I've talked about that. Remember, Oh is that when you meant by shot in the head. Yeah, he got shot in the head seven times. And he's not a suicide bomber. No, he's just some guy from Brazil the staken identity. Yeah, that was a pretty jumpy time, if I remember correctly, Yes, it was you got anything else? M m oh. I

thought the very end had a very interesting um. The thing that Israeli settlers were trying was they proposed burying suicide bombers in pig skin body bags as a way of discouraging suicide bombers from because I guess if they think, if I'm gonna be buried in pigskin, that's not the

afterlife that I'm that I'm looking for. But the problem is, and Robert does a good job pointing, that's how I think when you the suicide bombing is capable of dehumanizing on both levels, right, that would have not only um, I guess, to dehumanize the suicide bomber, but it dehumanized the Israelis Right. So part of the the whole um feedback machanism for suicide bombings is that one side doesn't

see the other's human any longer. Right, you're willing to die for your cause, so you're crazy or um, you are worth dying to kill because I don't see you as a person any longer, and so that that would have been counterproductive. I'm sure, good job. This is a tough one. Yeah it was. I'm glad we got through it. Man. Okay, yeah, it's a tough topic. I hope we explained like how it works in the history and was it good? Maybe

I was? Okay, Okay. If you want to learn more about suicide bombers, you can type in suicide bombers, um terrorism. There's another article on how terrorism works. Um. Just type whatever you want in the search bar at how stuff works dot com and you will be pleasantly surprised. We virtually guarantee it, um, I said, handy search bar. So what do you want to do? No listener mail today? All right, in lieu of listener mail, because I was

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