Booby trap

Military booby traps

A military booby trap is designed to kill or injure a person who activates its trigger, or employed to reveal the location of an enemy by setting off a signalling device. Most, but not all, military booby traps involve explosives.

Part of the skill in placing booby traps lies in exploiting natural human behaviors such as habit, self-preservation, curiosity or acquisitiveness. A common trick is to provide victims with a simple solution to a problem, for example, leaving only one door open in an otherwise secure building, luring them straight toward the firing mechanism.

An example that exploits an instinct for self-preservation was used in the Vietnam War. Spikes known as punji sticks were hidden in grassy areas. When fired upon, soldiers instinctively sought to take cover by throwing themselves down on the ground, impaling themselves on the spikes.

Many purpose-built booby-trap firing devices exist such as the highly versatile M142 universal firing device (identical to the British L5A1 or Australian F1A1), or Yugoslavian UMNOP-1 which allow a variety of different ways of triggering explosives e.g. via trip wire (either pulling it or releasing the tension on it), direct pressure on an object (e.g. standing on it), or pressure release (lift/shift something) etc.

Most explosive booby traps use between 250 g and 1 kg of explosive. Since most booby traps are rigged to detonate within a metre of the victim's body, this is adequate to kill or severely wound.

Effects

Booby traps are indiscriminate weapons. Like anti-personnel mines, they can harm civilians and noncombatants during and after the conflict. The use against civilians is prohibited by the Protocol on Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices, and the protocol also prohibits boobytrapping e.g. the wounded or dead, medical equipment, food, and drink.

History

A type of booby trap was referred to in an 1839 news story in The Times.

During the Vietnam War, Viet Cong (VC) soldiers would rig rubber band grenades and place them in huts that US soldiers would likely burn. Another popular booby trap was the "Grenade in a Can", a grenade with the safety pin removed in a container and a string attached, sometimes with the grenade's fuse mechanism modified to give a much shorter delay than the four to seven seconds typical with grenade fuses. VC soldiers primarily used these on doors and attached them to tripwires on jungle paths.

The CIA and Green Berets countered by booby trapping the enemy's ammunition supplies, in an operation code-named "Project Eldest Son". The propellant in a rifle or machine gun cartridge was replaced with high explosive. Upon being fired, the sabotaged round would destroy the gun and kill or injure the shooter. Mortar shells were similarly rigged to explode when dropped down the tube, instead of launching properly. This ammunition was then carefully re-packed to eliminate any evidence of tampering, and planted in enemy munitions dumps by covert insertion teams. A sabotaged round might also be planted in a rifle magazine or machine gun belt and left on the body of a dead VC soldier, in anticipation that the deceased's ammo would be picked up and used by his comrades. No more than one sabotaged round would be planted in any case, magazine, or belt of ammunition, to reduce the chances of the enemy finding it no matter how diligently they inspected their supplies. False rumors and forged documents were circulated to make it appear that the Communist Chinese were supplying the VC with defective weapons and ammunition.

Northern Ireland

During the Troubles, an ethnonationalist conflict in Northern Ireland, booby traps were used by Irish republican and Ulster loyalist paramilitaries to target British security forces and civilians. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) was the most prolific user of the booby traps during the conflict; according to the Sutton Index of Deaths, 180 people were killed during the Troubles as the result of booby trap bombs, the vast majority of them laid by the IRA. A common type of booby trap was the car bomb, which involved attaching a bomb to a car so that starting or driving it would detonate the explosive.

Middle East

Lebanese media reported allegations of intentionally concealed bombs in children's toys in 1997, citing a number of examples. The Hezbollah faction at the time alleged these booby-traps were deployed by Israel. During this period, civil war in Lebanon, rival factions and military interventions by Syria and Israel led to the planting of hundreds of thousands of landmines, and the widespread use of cluster munitions.

During the Second Intifada (2000–2005), some Arab–Palestinian groups made wide use of booby traps to prevent the Israeli army from entering their cities on Palestinian territories. The largest use of booby traps was in the Battle of Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield where a large number (1000–2000 bombs and booby traps according to a Palestinian militant who surrendered to Israeli forces in Jenin) of explosive devices were planted by insurgents. Booby traps had been laid in the streets of both the camp and the town, ready to be triggered if a foot snagged a tripwire or a vehicle rolled over a mine. Some of the bombs were huge, containing as much as 250 lb (110 kg) of explosives. To counter the booby traps, anti-tank and anti-personnel mines the Israeli army sent armored Caterpillar D9 bulldozers to clear the area out of any explosive device and booby trap planted. Eventually, a dozen D9 bulldozers went into action, razing the center of the refugee camp and forcing the Palestinian militants inside to surrender.

The most widely reported use of a 'booby-trapped' object in the Middle East is the Israeli operation against Hezbollah in 2024, in which at least one shipment of the target organisation's pager devices were remanufactured with explosive capability by Israeli security services. The devices were all detonated at once, on receipt of a pager message, causing severe harm and disruption to Hezbollah.

Civilian use and legal ramifications

Booby traps have been applied as defensive weapons against non-military trespassers, but most jurisdictions consider the practice illegal.

Practical jokes

Instead of being used to kill, maim or injure people, booby traps can also be used for entertainment. Practical joke booby traps are typically disguised as everyday items such as cigars or packets of chewing gum, nuts or other snack items. When the victims attempts to use the item, the trap is triggered. Two of the best known examples of this are the exploding cigar and dribble glass; others include the snake nut can and shocking gum. Booby traps can also be constructed out of household or workplace items and be triggered when the victim performs a common action. Examples of this include loosening the bolts in a chair so that it collapses when sat upon, or placing a bucket of water on top of a partly open door so that when the door is fully opened, the bucket tips onto the victim.