SEAL Survival Guide (26 page)

Because military compounds and important buildings tend to have a lot of security in place against bombings and the like, prospective car bombers oftentimes target low-security locations—soft targets—such as markets or busy street corners.

Another brutal tactic that has been employed is the use of sequential car bombs. One is detonated to lure first responders and those trying to help, after which a second one is detonated, killing even more.

INDIVIDUAL PRECAUTIONS FOR COMMUNITY SAFETY

The absolute randomness of a car bomb makes it such a difficult thing to defeat. However, there are several things you can do to avoid your vehicle’s unknowingly being recruited as a car bomb or rigged with explosives. A potential car bomber will not want to use a car that can be traced to them, so they will often use a rental car obtained fraudulently—or your car. In Israel, it is not uncommon for random cars to be chosen and rigged with explosives, unbeknownst to the owner. Personal safety thus depends somewhat on everybody in the community taking basic precautions.

1. Park your car in a secure location whenever possible. If a secure lot or parking space isn’t available, then always try to park it in a very public place. It would be difficult for someone to remain unnoticed if they attempted to attach an explosive under your car or wire it to go off when you opened the door, for example.

2. Lock your doors and trunk to avoid undesired access to your vehicle.

3. Take a look under your vehicle frequently. Look for anything that shouldn’t be there, such as a wire that seems out of place or is hanging down. You may see an object that is relatively clean in comparison to the normal grease and dirt under your vehicle. Mirrors attached to a long handle are ideal for this task.

4. If you even remotely suspect something is wrong, back away immediately and contact the police.

STRUCTURAL SAFETY

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh packed a rented moving truck with five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate, a type of fertilizer, which he doused with highly combustible racing fuel. He parked the truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at nine
A.M
. and lit a two-minute fuse. At 9:02 the truck exploded and killed 168 people. Two minutes! In this case, McVeigh had been recorded on security cameras making practice runs and driving near the building in the same truck a few days before. On the day of the explosion, he parked the vehicle in a pickup zone for a day-care center,
which was housed in the building, and abandoned the vehicle. He fled on foot, moving away from the parked and abandoned truck, and jogged far from the building toward his getaway vehicle. What we can learn from this in retrospect is how important situational awareness is in detecting a car bomb. Unusual behavior, such as a driver running rapidly from a parked car or truck, is not part of the normal baseline, as discussed earlier.

One deterrent put in place after the Oklahoma City bombing was the installation of concrete barriers at all federal buildings, and eventually at the entrances to all buildings with high occupancy, such as malls and many schools. The following techniques for fortifying your house, estate, or compound are essential. These will also serve to protect you in the event that a catastrophe, civil unrest, or rioting occurs in your area.

Standard methods of fortification

• Gates and barriers at a distance far from the entrance.

• An approach to the entrance that requires vehicles to slow or stop completely. You don’t want a car to have the ability to race through rapidly. Use barricades or an obstacle, forcing an approaching vehicle to make a series of S-turns before arriving at the gate.

• Limited exits and entrances, so there is less traffic flow to control.

• Permanent bunkers at a structure’s other susceptible areas. Note how this technique is used at main pedestrian entryways at malls and public buildings.

• Inspection of all undercarriages, hoods, and trunks of cars.

• Visual sweeps of a vehicle’s occupants.

IED and Booby Trap

The use of explosive devices to kill or injure is not limited to vehicles. The true leading cause of casualties during both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was the use of IEDs and booby traps. An IED is simply any homemade device packed with explosives. Intensive situational awareness is the best defense against IEDs. As always, be alert to things that seem out of the ordinary, such as an unexpected delivery, or a package wrapped or boxed, for example, in an unusual manner.

IED delivery methods

• Disguised as a package.

• Thrown from a hideout along the road—in this situation it is usually two males doing the throwing. That’s how it was in Afghanistan and Iraq, though the throwing was not always done by adults.

• Placed in potholes and covered with a thin layer of dirt, to act as land mines. They can be on major roadways or on trails used only by the military.

• Placed near a pile of cinder blocks or rubble. Now and again after a battle, the IEDs are planted where they will kill rescue workers.

• Placed in dead animals.

Suicide Bomber

What’s called a “person-borne” bomb, the person being a suicide bomber, is a very lethal weapon and difficult to spot. These volunteers, or “recruits,” are fitted with a special vest or belt, or modified clothing, which is packed with high explosives. To achieve as much collateral damage as they can, these modified carrying devices also contain fragmentary objects, such as ball bearings, bolts, nuts, or any kind of metal scraps. Most often, this type of bomb will use a “command detonation firing system,” which is some sort of switch or button the person activates by hand. The downside of this method of delivery is that sometimes these bombers lose their nerve and fire off the bomb when not yet in place. Their clothing is bulkier than normal, and many times they seem nervous, sweaty, and preoccupied.

CONFRONTING A SUICIDE BOMBER

The opinions are mixed on how to disable a suicide bomber, if, in fact, you have the opportunity to know for certain that a person is vested with explosives. Given that many suicide bombers need their hands to detonate a device, many police departments train officers to shoot the suspect in the head—literally between the eyes—so as to immediately halt all motor skills.

For the civilian without a weapon, the best method might be to get behind the bomber and grab him or her by the shins and lift them off the ground. They will fall face-first and instinctively use their hands to stop the fall. If you are standing face-to-face with the bomber, use violence of action and strike forcefully at his face, then grab his hands. Call out to bystanders to stay clear, to take cover, and to call police for assistance.