Homebrew bomb detector in Pakistan

By at 10:02 am Friday, Aug 10

My friend Mason Inman is in Pakistan for a month with his girlfriend Sarah who founded a company called SaafWater to provide affordable clean water for poor people in developing regions. Mason, a science writer for National Geographic News, New Scientist, and other publications, is blogging about his experiences in Pakistan. One of the things he noticed in use at hotels and also at the Karachi airport are homebrew "bomb detectors" like the one pictured here. From Mason's post:
Joomla Images Bomb Detector ...We were happy to wind up at the Chancery Executive Guesthouse, with a stout wall and two somewhat scary guards, who lounge around on plastic chairs holding snub-nosed shotguns.

Before our taxi drove into the grounds the first time, they searched under our car for bombs with this high-tech device. It's just a mirror on a stick, with a flashlight attached. This is what, in Sarah's field of work, is known as "appropriate technology": it's only as complicated as it needs to be, and it's easily fixable in-country.
Link

UPDATE: Thanks to all the readers who point out that similar devices are in use in the United States and many other places as well.

David Pescovitz

Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.

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