Think you're tough? Probably not as tough as these Chinese soldiers, who played a lethal game of Hot Potato ... with live bombs!

During an exhibition drill in Hong Kong, last month, an elite garrison of 6,000 PLA troops staged a series of impressive exercises for the visit of the island’s chief executive, Sir Donald Tsang. Snipers shot tiny glasses, soldiers carried heavy logs and jumped through rings of fire, but nothing as incredible as a group of men playing a game of pass-the-bomb.

The lethal game is played by six soldiers standing in a circle with a dug whole in the middle. They pass an explosive satchel from one two another, counting down until it detonates. Just before it explodes, one of the soldiers throws it in the hole and they all leap away as the ground trembles and dirt starts flying from the pit. Any miscalculation could mean the end for all six players, but they don’t seem very intimidated by that. They just calmly pass the live satchel as if it were a simple bag.

Link

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.

Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it’s updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.”

It included a recipe for the Mojito Cupcake – “made of white rum cake and draped in vanilla buttercream”- and the Rocky Road Cupcake – “warning: sugar rush ahead!”

The efforts are ongoing, as the cupcake recipes were quickly replaced and the magazine has since been distributed with its original content. Read more at the Daily Telegraph. Link

Image

In 1955, the Atomic Energy Commission started getting complaints from Nevada citizens about nuclear testing. After all, who wants a nuclear test in their backyard? The government responded by publishing a booklet aimed at placating local civilians. The accompanying cartoons make a nuclear blast seem like any other day, with just a few fireworks added. See more at The Atlantic. Link -via Gorilla Mask

Picture this at an airport, perhaps in as soon as four years: A terrorist rolls through the sliding doors of a terminal with a bomb packed into his luggage (or his underwear). All of a sudden, the leafy, verdant gardenscape ringing the gates goes white as a sheet. That’s the proteins inside the plants telling authorities that they’ve picked up the chemical trace of the guy’s arsenal.

It only took a small engineering nudge to deputize a plant’s natural, evolutionary self-defense mechanisms for threat detection. “Plants can’t run and hide,” says June Medford, the biologist who’s spent the last seven years figuring out how to deputize plants for counterterrorism. “If a bug comes by, it has to respond to it. And it already has the infrastructure to respond.”

That would be the “receptor” proteins in its DNA, which respond naturally to threatening stimuli. If a bug chews on a leaf, for instance, the plant releases a series of chemical signals called terpenoids — “a cavalry call,” Medford says, that thickens the leaf cuticle in defense.

So far, plants have been produced that react to the presence of TNT, but other factors, such as light and movement, interfere with the process. Medford thinks a working plant is still three or four years away. Link -via Fortean Times

Spam, viruses, and piracy aren’t the only dangers on the web. James Mowery of Techi wrote an article about all the bad things that can happen online, but I’m particularly concerned over the ability of hackers turning my home computer into a … – wait, what’s that smell? Oh shi–

Link

My kids love bath bombs, but they are usually shaped like a plain ball. That situation has been rectified, and you can pre-order bath bombs that look like bombs! This might help to get reluctant little boys into the bathtub. Link -via Geek Alerts

In the opening sequence of the Academy Award-winning film The Hurt Locker, a soldier wears an explosive ordnance disposal (OED) suit pretty close to the spot where a bomb goes off. Can a soldier survive such an incident? Dvice contacted the manufacturer of the suit to get the lowdown on how it protects a soldier from both the shockwave and the shrapnel of an explosion. The 60-pound suit contains a lot of modern technology at work. Link -via Unique Daily

The next time you throw a party, make sure you’re well armed. The Bombs
Away Shot Glasses will definitely make your party a (direct) hit. These shot glasses are made from high-quality double-walled borosillicate glass with a frosted interior. And as you can see, it is shaped like the tail fins of an aerial bomb.

New at the Neatorama Shop: Link

The MOP is 20 feet long and can penetrate bunkers up to 200 feet before exploding. At 15 tons, the MOP is a third heavier than the previous “mother of all bombs”, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, which was only 10.5 tons. The MOP also packs a whopping 5,300 lbs of explosives, which is 10 times the amount its predecessor bunker-buster, the BLU-109, carried. Basically, it’s massive.

The push for accelerated deployment is due to the increased perceived nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea. It’s believed that many of their nuclear programs could be in development underground, below levels of current bunker-busting bombs’ range. The Pentagon intends the rapid deployment to send a message that the United States is tweaking strategies to address new threats. And nothing is more American than advertising the sheer size and tonnage of the bombs hanging below our jets.

Link

You may say that modern art is silly, but some may prove to be downright dangerous in this post 9/11 world. Take the Bunny Project, an performance art by Conny Blom where he goes around town putting together a suspicious looking object shaped like a bomb. A carrot bomb, to be precies:

Performance commissioned by Kalmar Museum of Art, Sweden. During the inauguration of the new art museum in Kalmar a suspicious individual sneaked around the premises mounting sculptures made of carrots, alarm clocks, red and blue cables, metal wire and tape. On direct orders from the Swedish secret police the performance was stopped since the Culture Minister refused to give her inaugural speech if it were to continue. The speech , as it later turned out, was about how art must be allowed to be free and provocative.

Link

But don’t let Wile E. Coyote light the "fuse", you may need the tissue to wipe tears from your eyes after spending $29 on this puppy!

Link – via OhGizmo!