The sled contains far less explosives than a truck bed; they’re laid flat, so most of the blast will go harmlessly upward; and it ehave enough momentum to crash through a wall and detonate inside a building where it could do real damage.
Then it’s stopped even harder. The frame and axles are destroyed as well as the cab.
[quote=“shaddack, post:11, topic:42174”]
Another option is mounting a rocket on the truck bed.[/quote]
Seriously? It’s a vehicle barrier. It’s not meant to defend against artillery attacks. Probably not airstrikes, commando raids, or tank columns, either.
You need a really, really huge bomb, probably one made with high-quality military explosives, to do major damage to a building from a few dozen feet away. With a few barrels of fertilizer, the most you can depend on is to break all the windows and shower people with broken glass, and buildings at serious risk of attack will likely have reinforced and/or safety glass anyway.
I don’t understand the negativity. This isn’t meant to be a battlefield fortification. It’s a cheap, non-disruptive way to stop cheap, easy attacks by resource-poor terrorists.
Who said anything about freeways? Did you read the very first post in the thread? If your innocent, law-abiding truck driver is in the habit of accidentally ramming giant, obvious barriers on lawns, sidewalks, and parking lots at 60+MPH, then frankly I don’t think there’s much anyone can do for him.
If you want a really big boom, you don’t need high explosives. A mixture of finely dispersed fuel (whether aerosol of solid particles or droplets, or gas) will do. Also known as thermobaric weapon or fuel-air explosive.
The shock wave has less sharp rise but much higher magnitude, and much higher overall energy. Not as good in open areas as in enclosed ones, but still good enough. Russians used them in Chechnya, where the negative pressure behind the main shock wave earned them the name “vacuum bombs”.
The biggest bombs to rule them all are of this principle. See Mother of All Bombs and Father of All Bombs. Especially the latter one - note the total yield of 44 tons of TNT from a 7.1 ton delivery weight.
Ka-BOOM!!!
Yes. A rocket, tank, or air raid will go straight through. The only thing achieved will be an evening more spent by the adversary thinking. Or a choice of softer target populated by less worthy people, aka the plebes, aka you and me.
Have they considered the driver may have hidden weapons in the soles of his shoes? In the case of an impact the driver’s shoes may fly off his feet directly over the barrier and into the target. I suggest they should make all truck drivers remove their shoes for inspections before being allowed to take control of their vehicle. Also, jobs!
Can we flag the original boing-boing post with ‘misleading title’ like on reddit? Driver safety isn’t a concern when you’re looking to stop truck bombs.
At ~7000 lbs, that was a really, really huge bomb. I’m saying you’re not gonna do it with a typical car bomb, like the pile of canisters on that test truck.
Technically, that one bomb was a pile of drums with ANFO… so the pile of canisters on a truck quite fits. There were a bit too few for a nice fireball, though.
I was thinking of the specific small pile of canisters on the specific truck in the video.
Basically, I’m okay with the idea that this is a simple, cheap measure meant to exclude terrorists with limited skills and resources, which is most of them. It’s not going to stop serious military attack, and it’s not going to stop someone who can get the materials for a four-ton fertilizer bomb together without being detected by the people watching for exactly that; but in 2014, those things are much less likely than some asshole with a cargo truck and a slapdash homemade bomb.
Given the amount of fragilities and weak spots of the western civilization, the lack of incidents indicates lack of perpetrators, and the percentage of botched incidents indicates lack of quality perpetrators. Nothing to worry about. It’s the countermeasures that are worrying (and ANNOYING).
Indeed, which is why I would much rather see harmless countermeasures like passive barriers. If that makes people feel better, they’ll be less likely to push for still more random paranoia and police-state-ism.
Alternatively, they can perceive it as a daily reminder of The Grave Risk, and will be more likely to push for more and more crap (or passively not-oppose it, because OMGTERRORISTS!) of not just relatively harmless architectural nature.
