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From: Martin Brown <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Exploding pagers
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 2024 20:56:01 +0100
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On 21/09/2024 00:04, Cursitor Doom wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Sep 2024 17:16:28 -0400, Joe Gwinn <joegwinn@comcast.net>
> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, 20 Sep 2024 16:57:47 -0000 (UTC), Cursitor Doom
>> <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 20 Sep 2024 09:57:27 +0100, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>>
>>>> Cursitor Doom <cd999666@notformail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, 18 Sep 2024 06:37:13 GMT, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On a sunny day (Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:39:17 -0700) it happened john
>>>>>> larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote in
>>>>>> <rv0kejddm69cioik17oeujstlfig16jn4o@4ax.com>:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:18:26 -0500, Crash Gordon <uucp@crashelex.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Pagers, even with a cheap LiPo battery that fails, do not explode.
>>>>>>>> Somebody built hundreds, maybe thousands, of intentionally
>>>>>>>> booby-trapped pagers and then managed to distribute them to a large
>>>>>>>> group of targeted individuals.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> This absolutely screams "state actor" but all of the states that
>>>>>>>> would be capable of pulling it off have disavowed any connection, as
>>>>>>>> would be expected.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Posting is on-topic for s.e.d because these things had to be
>>>>>>>> *designed*.
>>>>>>>>   Targets can be expected to cross security boundaries so these
>>>>>>>>   pagers
>>>>>>>> had to look like normal pagers under X-ray, and had to not "smell"
>>>>>>>> like explosives.  Putting aside, for sake of discussion, the horror
>>>>>>>> of the device itself and the evil necessary to conceive and deploy
>>>>>>>> it, one has to on some level, admire the skill required to manage
>>>>>>>> it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It's assumed that the Israelis booby-trapped the batch of pagers that
>>>>>>> were bought by Hezbollah. Fiendishly clever.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm surprised that anybody still makes or uses pagers.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> They used batteries filled with an explosive that would trigger when
>>>>>> temperature rised above some point They could heat your smartphone
>>>>>> battery by hacking or even some sucking website or email.
>>>>>> So be carefull what batteries you use, same for the equipment you
>>>>>> make. Simple heat up test in safety chamber would be a good idea?
>>>>>
>>>>> Is there such an explosive? High explosives - as it appears were used
>>>>> here - generally need a significant *shock* to set them off. Heat alone
>>>>> isn't normally enough and even if it were, the temp required would have
>>>>> necessitated the rapid discarding of the pager before it got
>>>>> sufficiently hot.
>>>>
>>>> They aren't restricted to just a single type of explosive.  There are
>>>> detonators that can be set off by a very small increase in temperature
>>>> and a few microgrammes of those would set off a bigger charge of
>>>> something more powerful.
>>>
>>> Well, maybe. But no one has yet *named* a practical explosive such as
>>> could be used in a pager which explodes when heated. I would like a
>>> specific named substance I can verify does that, because I simply cannot
>>> think of one and am consequently questioning whether one actually exists.

Tetrazene meets your requirements at below the boiling point of water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrazene_explosive

That would be well within the range that a phone battery might reach if 
it was deliberately shorted out. I doubt if that was how they did it 
though. Nothing like enough black smoke in the videos.

A military grade high explosive seems far more likely for a state actor. 
Weight really matters in a portable device.

>> PETN heated by a laser.
>>
>> .<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010218019304948>
>>
>> Laser pulse initiation of RDX-Al and PETN-Al composites explosion
> 
> But that's not what has been claimed. The MSM gave us to understand
> that the explosive involved could be triggered by a the kind of
> temperature increase we would expect from an overheating lithium
> battery. No one has yet specifically named a practical explosive which
> does this. You say PETN can be triggered by heating from a laser which
> is not the same thing at all. I like questioning official narratives,
> but am getting rather tired of this one. I'm not *that* interested to
> pursue the matter ad infinitum.

Given the low internal resistance of a Lithium battery there is no 
problem in using a detonator that is in essence a nichrome filament 
coated in the right primer and RDX or HMX as the main charge. This was 
almost certainly done as a modification of the battery itself and was 
cunning enough to have defeated visual inspection by Hamas operatives.

There are plenty of explosives that will detonate at red heat.

I wonder if a tiny fraction of them did not detonate when instructed to 
do so or if there are any of them still out in the wild and not in Hamas 
hands. They will be interesting if a bit risky to dismantle.

-- 
Martin Brown