Bangkok days
Several of you have sent us links to the story of seven Thai construction workers who found a suspected World War Two – era bomb. A spokesperson says that “they didn’t know what to do” with bomb, so instead of doing one of the thousand other things they could have done, they decided to cut into it with a welding torch. From Reuters;
“The explosion created a three-meter deep crater.”
Pools of blood and body parts were scattered on the floor of the warehouse.
Reuters camera footage showed just the shell of the building remained, its interior a mesh of twisted metal as firefighters doused flames and burning embers.
The guy who used the torch was pretty dumb, but not as dumb as the six other guys who stood around wondering what would happen. By the way, nineteen others were injured.
Category: Dumbass Bullshit
Darwin at work.
Talk about your shallow end of the gene pool….
VOV you beat me to it. I was thinking, “cleaning out the gene pool a little at a time”.
Yeah, the gene pool in Bangkok got a little dose of chlorine!
When I first reported to the USS Proteus in Guam, some idiot who had found a WWII hand grenade thought it would be a hoot to bring it back and put it in the radio room where he worked.
Needless to say, he got hammered flat after EOD took it out.
And this one ranks up there with the thieves here who tried to use a blowtorch on a safe full of fireworks.
I used to be involved in the production of the National Fire Protection Monthly Journal….the number of stories each month about idiots trying to bypass their gas meter with a blow torch was simply astonishing. Apparently the concept that gas under pressure is a fuel source escaped the folks trying to get at the pipes with a device that generates more heat than the furnace the gas was being used to operate.
When I was a kid, I would visit my dad’s workplace often. One of my Dad’s co-workers had an old World War II American Fragmentation Grenade. Of course, it had been long defused, but no one wanted to get too close to the thing, given that it looked entirely intact.
Well. Let’s just say that I knew far too much about military history than I should have, and within a minute I had screwed off the top of the grenade firing assembly and was looking at the hollowed out core of a pineapple grenade.
I suppose the lesson of that day was that just because it looks like a cool thing from World War II doesn’t mean it should be touched.
We once had a Combat Systems Officer that was fascinated with CIWS. So infatuated that he decided that a live round would be a cool keepsake.
A few months after he took it home as a trophy of some sort, he hosted a CS Department party at his house. His CIWS techs were, needless to say, a bit nonplussed to see the live CIWS round on display in his home…on top of the TV.
I should probably note for those unfamiliar with Phalanx (CIWS) that the 20mm rounds are electrically primed.
Thai No.1 “What you got?”
Thai No.2 “It look like bomb, old bomb.”
Thai No.1 “What we do it?”
Thai No.2 “We sell for metal”
Thai No.1 “What we got do it?”
Thai No.2 “We got, hammer, crowbar, blow torch.”
Thai No.1 “You gimme blow torch.”
Thai No.2 “It BOMB!”
Thai No.1 “But it OLD BOMB…no worky!”
Thai No.2 “Okay, here blow torch.”
Thai No.2-5 “Hey we help find, we watch you, no steal part for self!”
Thai No.1 “Okay, okay you all watch me now!”
And the rest as they say…is history.
So one guy doing the torch cutting and six more standing around watching. Yeah, I’m thinking they were union.
PG&E = Pacific Gas and Electric
OldSargeUSAR PG&E You nailed it!
It had to have been the Lt’s idea !!!
A terrible, terrible tragedy. The Darwin Awards have been notified 😀
Hmm, perhaps it was equipped with a seventy three year delayed action fuze?
Did they put “Cracker Jacks” surprises in bombs back then?
What’s Thai for “hey y’all watch this!”?
That is rather “Hold me Ba-me-ba and watch this so you know how to do the next one.”
Via Google Translator: Hey you see this! = เฮ้ทุกท่านชมนี้ 😉
You beat me to it.
That was my thought. A redneck Thai, passing over his beer can and saying “Hey! Watch this!”
There was a chain of stupid custody on this one. The bomb was found. So far so good. The bomb was excavated. (Stupid # 1, please sign and date here.) The bomb was transported to the metal shop. (Stupid #2, please sign and date here.) The bomb was taken into the metal shop. (Stupid #3, please sign and date here.) The bomb had a blowtorch applied to it. (Chain of stupid custody ends.)
Ya gotta hand it to ’em – they really put the “bang” back in Bangkok!
(Hey – someone had to say it! [smile])
I’m going to guess that they contacted EOD2 Laughter who told them how to best dispose of the ordinance (sic).
The picture I got in my head is: hands over beer, “hey check this shit out”.
I never had a happy ending like that before!
This story is all over the place, and so are they!
The torch man’s last words might have been “Tlust me, I know what I be dooing, heel, hord my beel whire I cut zees open!”
“No more Boom-Boom for them”
Greedy buggers. They wanted all their Boom-Boom all at once!
I am waiting for the video to be recovered from one of the cell phones that were recording the incident … no doubt it will be on Live Leak first!
Did the bomb come with a warning lable? I’m thinking someone’s got a pretty hefty pay day coming.
Yes, it did. Unfortunately, it was in English.
Xin Loi …
One of the larger pieces recovered–about 100 yards from where the metal shop used to be–bore this information:
WARNING: THIS IS A BOMB. IF THE WAR IS OVER AND JAPAN WON, CONTACT THE LOCAL POLICE OR MILITARY AUTHORITIES FOR SAFE DISPOSAL. IF THE WAR IS OVER AND JAPAN LOST, OPEN WITH BLOWTORCH.
LOL! Dickweed!
Priceless!
JohnC You know you hit a good point there. I have no doubt Obama and Kerry are already planning a big compensation package for all the families of the six morons.
Our tax dollars at…rest.
There is, actually, a really weird niche of law dealing with unexploded WWII ordinance: Is it technically lost/abandoned? Does does it escheat to the state? Is it a fixture? Who is liable? And so on.
Yeah, B. Hussein 0bama & Company will do that right after they blame Bush!
2/17 Air Cav, you owe me a keyboard. Damn Sprite went everywhere. 🙂
Fjardeson I agree. 2/17 Air Cav I had to stop reading and go get cleaner and a rag for my screen!
EOD guys have a tough job. In Bangkok, maybe some guys didn’t hear about World War II? During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the US was involved in a not-particularly-secret war in Laos, west of Vietnam. The Ho Chi Minh trail was mostly in Laos. Many SOG operations were recon on the Trail and in Laos. Air America operated in Laos supporting the Hmong fighting the Pathet Lao. Much of the actual fighting took place in the Plain of Jars roughly in the center of the country. About 1993, the Lao government allowed a group called Mines Advisory Group to find and destroy unexploded ordnance around the city of Phonsavan in the Plain of Jars. The MAG came to town, arranged for a place to work and sleep then held a big meeting with everyone in the community. They explained who they were, where they were located, why they were there and what they planned to do. “If you know where some piece of unexploded ordnance is, please come and tell us.” It was a good meeting. The next morning, a team guy gets up and goes out onto the street. There were hundreds of unexploded devices all over the place. The farmers had been handling these things for years. Some device location were known so the farmers picked them up and brought them in — just to help out the team. And there was much — ah, rejoicing… Then there was another meeting, “PLEASE don’t bring objects into us. Just tell us where they are and we will go and take care of them.” If you travel around the Plain, there are big signs in the areas that have been cleared (mostly around the jar sites) and other big signs on the local roads that most of the Plain has not been cleared and be careful where you walk. There are many small hills scattered around the Plain. Every hill I saw had three or four bomb scars around the summit. During the war, the Pathet Lao had people on the top of most of those hills; the… Read more »
In my line of work, human behavior such as this is commonly referred to as “job security.”