Had an idea that I can't do anything about, except suggest it on HN and see if it catches anyone's imagination.<p>The idea is Special Bomb bins - a lot of bombings occur by terrorists placing bombs in bins. I don't know anything about bombs but I wondered if all bombs all contained an element that a bin could pick up on and auto alert authorities that that element existed within the bin. For example if all bombs contained 'x', and you had special bins that alerted authorities when the bin came into contact with 'x'. Or something along those lines. Happy to be told this idea is incredibly stupid. If that is the case, has anyone got any ideas about how we could possibly build a better bin so that terrorists can't hide IED's in bins without anyone knowing - or is that impossible?<p>Thanks,
Steve
Short version: It's pretty much impossible to build a bin that can withstand an explosion, is economically viable, and can be used in the same situations as normal bins.<p>The solutions that you see in the UK after various terrorist bombings are:<p>1) Bins get removed. If you look at chunks of London which are high-risk "targets" you will see a lack of public waste-bins.<p>2) Bins get changed to be less useful for hiding devices in. For example the UK rail stations often have bins that are just a transparent plastic bag hanging from a hoop. Any large/heavy device would be obvious quite quickly.<p>Both of these have associated costs of course (rubbish on the street and more frequent changing of bins respectively).
Unfortunately I don't think there's an easy component x which you could test for.<p>How about weight though? I imagine most bombs are considerably heavier than normal refuse. Could we add scales to bins and notify authorities that it should be examined if the weight suddenly increases by 2+ standard deviations, say.<p>I suppose this could be worked around by dropping explosive material piecemeal into the bin so this would have to be paired with an effective surveillance system to pick up on this behaviour.