TIL: The Harvy's Casino Bomb had so many gadgets, even MacGyver couldn't have beat it

**Telionis** · 12-13-2010, 02:02 AM

I can't believe I never heard of this:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009.../harvey_082609 << Story.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2009...ey_note_082609 << Note itself.

Do not move or tilt this bomb, because the mechanism controlling the detonators in it will set it off at a movement of less than .01 of the open end Ricter scale. Don’t try to flood or gas the bomb. There is a float switch and an atmospheric pressure switch set at 26.00-33.00. Both are attached to detonators. Do not try to take it apart. The flathead screws are also attached to triggers and as much as ¼ to ¾ of a turn will cause an explosion. In other words this bomb is so sensitive that the slightest movement either inside or outside will cause it to explode.

The bomb was in fact exactly as dangerous as he made it out to be. It was also as powerful as it was made out to be (1,000 lbs of commercial TNT). After x-raying the thing the FBI tried to render it inert by separating the detonators with a small shaped charge. They failed, the bomb detonated and blew the crap out of the Casino.

Thankfully, there were no fatalities! The bomber was caught and served life in prison. To make the story even more Hollywood, the guy was a Nazi pilot in WWII, he was captured by the Soviets and sentenced to 25 years hard labor in a gulag, but escaped into the Soviet wilderness, after improvising a bomb that destroyed most of the prison facility.

How is this not a movie yet???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey%..._Hotel_bombing

In the ultimate cheesy Hollywood ending, the brilliant super villain makes an idiotic mistake and gets caught; in this case, a hotel clerk was suspicious of the van delivering the package with the bomb in it and wrote down the license plate number. Seriously, evil MacGyver did not use fake plates.