{"id":61981,"date":"2015-09-25T07:15:59","date_gmt":"2015-09-25T11:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61981"},"modified":"2015-09-25T13:29:07","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T17:29:07","slug":"why-clock-boys-project-should-have-raised-eyebrows-and-alarms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61981","title":{"rendered":"Why “Clock Boy’s ‘Science Project’ ” Should Have Raised Eyebrows \u2013 and Alarms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jonn wrote an article the other day about “Clock Boy”<\/a><\/em>\u00a0– the 14 year old in Irving, Texas, who took apart what appears to be an old Radio Shack digital clock and put it into some kind of carrying\u00a0case, then took it to his school.<\/p>\n

Many seem to think what happened after he took the device to school was a gross overreaction on the part of local school and police officials.\u00a0 Some even say that the lad’s “science project” could not possibly have been a \u201choax bomb\u201d (illegal under Texas law), was obviously innocuous, and should never have been treated as anything suspicious.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they\u2019re right.\u00a0 But let me make a couple of observations regarding the situation.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>The case\u00a0into which the clock appears to have been installed looks to be about 9\u201d x 6\u201d x 2\u201d, more or less.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>The clock’s working parts\u00a0take up very little of the case\u2019s interior space; virtually all of the interior of the case remains free.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>An M18A1 Claymore Mine<\/a><\/em> is approximately 8.5\u201d x 5.5\u201d x 1.5\u201d; it weighs about 3.5 pounds.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>The parts of a Claymore that \u201cmake bang\/dead\u201d only occupy somewhere around half of a Claymore’s total volume, give or take. \u00a0The rest of that 8.5″ x 5.5″ x 1.5″ volume is taken up by the Claymore’s case, sight, and the case’s curvature.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>The equivalent of that \u201cmake bang\/dead\u201d part of a Claymore will easily fit within half of the case in which the lad mounted the Radio Shack clock parts, leaving the rest of the space inside unused<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>Add a couple of other things \u2013 which I won\u2019t list here, but which terrorists know quite well \u2013 and you essentially have a home-brewed Claymore with integral timer\/detonator.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>Those \u201ccouple of other things\u201d will easily fit into the unused volume in that case after the clock and \u201cmakes bang\/dead\u201d parts are installed.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0 <\/strong>The total package would weigh maybe 5 pounds – probably less.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:\u00a0 this kid’s \u201cscience project\u201d is about 1\/3 of what\u2019s needed for a homemade and quite deadly little time bomb.\u00a0 The other things needed are well-known to terrorists. \u00a0The fabrication required to finish the job is decidedly low-tech, not particularly\u00a0difficult, and wouldn’t take very long. \u00a0And with the clock side towards a wall or otherwise hidden, it would also appear innocuous enough that wouldn\u2019t be all that hard to hide it in plain sight.<\/p>\n

Yeah, maybe this was all innocuous and innocent.\u00a0 But the possibility exists it wasn’t completely innocent, either.\u00a0 Hell, the kid could have been duped into making it and taking it to school by someone else.<\/p>\n

. . . <\/strong><\/p>\n

We Americans want to believe that people are inherently good, and that the world is a safe place.\u00a0 We usually\u00a0act as if that’s the case\u00a0– and in the past it’s usually been the truth, at least in the USA.<\/p>\n

However, reality is now different.\u00a0 There is indeed evil in the world; there are those who would kill us simply because we are American citizens. \u00a0And some of them are here among us today – just as they were living here among us on 10 September 2001.<\/p>\n

Denying that reality and refusing to act accordingly is not only deadly.\u00a0 It\u2019s also monumentally stupid.<\/p>\n

Now, tell me again why this kid’s actions were\u00a0\u201cno big deal\u201d and why what the authorities did was an \u201coverreaction\u201d?\u00a0 Especially since, roughly 4 months prior, a group of terrorists had tried to attack a \u201cdraw Muhammed\u201d cartoon contest\u00a010 miles or less from where this kid went to school?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Author’s Addendum<\/span>: \u00a0for what it’s worth, \u00a0it’s quite possible that an entire M18A1 Claymore would fit in the case the lad used if the case is indeed 9″ x 6″ x 2″, as it seems to be above. \u00a0If the case were slightly larger than that, it would fit easily. \u00a0In either case, there would almost certainly be plenty of space left over for the clock entrails and other items required to convert the case into a truly nasty little time bomb. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Under those conditions, there would also be very little fabrication work required\u00a0for that conversion.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Second Addendum<\/span>: \u00a0here’s a link to a nice bit of reverse-engineering on “Clock Boy’s” little “science project”. \u00a0It appears to have been based on a clock sold by Radio Shack in the 1980s:<\/em><\/p>\n

Reverse Engineering Ahmed Mohamed\u2019s Clock\u2026 and Ourselves.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jonn wrote an article the other day about “Clock Boy”\u00a0– the 14 year old in Irving, … Why “Clock Boy’s ‘Science Project’ ” Should Have Raised Eyebrows \u2013 and Alarms<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,13,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberals-suck","category-society","category-terror-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}