Blowing up electronics

Wow! Hezbollah had a few thousand pagers explode, killing some and injuring many. The next day their hand held radios also exploded. That was different. It’s not too often that one sees a new military tactic come into play. 

I’m not going to comment on the rightness or wrongness of the operation. However, I will note that children were among the victims. It’s always the innocents who suffer. 

The question that came to mind was: how? For the pagers there was some initial speculation that the communication system was hacked causing the lithium batteries to explode. That’s disturbing as all our cell phones run on lithium batteries. As is usually the case initial speculation was wrong. It turns out that somewhere along the supply chain explosives were inserted into the pagers. Then the radios blew up the next day. While fewer people were using the devices the explosive load in the radios was larger causing more damage. 

So how can a group guarantee safe communications? Will they be back to runners carrying messages? 

How do you plan on keeping in touch with people?

-Sixbears