The Frappachino Next Time

"By one measure, the Starbucks frappachino bottles can serve as the "perfect containers" for a Molotov cocktail, said Kevin B. Barry, a retired NYPD Bomb Squad Technician. "It's small enough to be concealed in your pocket and it fits in your hand, so you can throw it almost like a Nerf football."
Generally speaking, any bottle will do, said Barney T. Villa, a retired bomb technician from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department."Nonetheless, he added: "You don't want a wide-mouth, Mickey beer. You want a small opening." NYT -- Jan. 4

The guys always ask me why I bust my hump to make a wide-mouth, easily throwable Molotov from a consumer bottle. I always say that as a member of the retired bomb technician community, it isn't enough to always have our phones on, yes, even on the golf course, so that we can field calls from reporters.

It is a bomb technician's duty to stay ahead of the curve of these fruitcakes' attacks. Eventually, one of these psychos, by choice or necessity, probably motivated by a desire to show off to their fellow nutcases, in general or maybe in their own cell, is going to come up with a way to use a wide-mouth bottle.

While I wouldn't necessarily agree with that reporter who described the Mickey beer bottle, with its 2.4 centimeter mouth, as the Holy Grail of these whack jobs' efforts, you have to admit that, sooner or later, just like with these nuclear proliferation experts who get the lion's share of the media's attention and go to all the cushy conferences, while, yeah, it's Orlando for us, again, there's going to be a nuclear strike someplace just like there's going to be a wide-mouth, consumer bottle Molotov.

You can't stop progress, but you can at least prepare your sound bite for when somebody does overcome the challenge, really of just making a thick enough fuse so the perp can throw it without it blowing up too soon or being even harder to throw than a Nerf football, the gold standard as far as these douchebags go, which isn't even that easy because to get some decent length, never mind a proper spiral, you have to squeeze the the foam football or the glass container, remember what thin-walled means, so tightly that its easy to squash the projectile before you heave it. And then, if you add the challenge of a thick wad of burning fuse, you can see why your average Omar hasn't figured it out. Some of these guys can't even light their shoes.

Look, its like fly fishing for some of them. If all you wanted to do was to catch fish, you could use a spinning reel. You wouldn't need to get these huge loops of line rocking around behind your head and getting caught in the trees. But, mark my words, as a retired bomb technician, there's going to be a wide-mouth bottle used in an attack. As an industry, we don't have the luxury that these candy-ass, Ivy League nuclear proliferation experts have of having a decent chance of being blown up ourselves, DC a target, never thought of that, and not having to come up with a coherent statement when the bad guys figure things out.

That's why I'm in my garage, night after night, trying to engineer it before they do. Anybody can write the statement. Understanding and even being able to reproduce the technology is what's going to get one of us retired bomb technicians on the podium next January in Orlando. I already got the joke I'm going to use to set up my Powerpoint. " I'm really more of a craft brew guy, but for a malt liquor Mickey's isn't bad."