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Thread: Orange County skirt lifter bomb scare

  1. #11
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
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    896
    That will bring about the "underground" geocachers! Where secret caches handed out through e-mails and or even old school letter boxes with no fingerprints on them will be the new norm.

  2. #12
    astrodav Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by jclaudii
    That will bring about the "underground" geocachers! Where secret caches handed out through e-mails and or even old school letter boxes with no fingerprints on them will be the new norm.


    Ooh .... I'd LOVE doing that with a few.

  3. #13
    Join Date
    Feb 2010
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    Searcy,Ark
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    138
    00ooh yea than the name g.e.o will be molecachin.com

  4. #14
    grzz51 Guest
    Maybe they should contact the Bomb Squad of "that central Arkansas city" for proper disposal techniques........

  5. #15
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    Russellville
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    I went to my favorite site (besides this one) which is over on Zombie Squad(zombiehunters.org) and posted a question like this:
    how much explosive damage potential is there in a film canister or a m&m mini's container if it's attached to the skirt of a light pole(those seem to be the most called in). This is in no way an illegal question, I am just wanting to know to better inform myself and to inform the geocaching community.

    My guess is there is not much potential, especially if it's in an empty parking lot.
    I got a response like I was hoping for from a military EOD Tech (or so he claims anyway )
    A film can or similar item there would be very little space for a device. If one was made it would be something designed to harm a person handling it. Now something the size of an ammo can could do some damage.
    He also stated that he as worked with Civi bomb squads and he says once the bomb tech is called, everything gets shutdown until the tech clears it...Kinda crazy but it is the way the system is to prevent unneeded accidents especially if they were called out and didn't check it out.

    I also asked a question on why the 911 dispatcher didn't look it up on gc.com and was basically told that it's not "in their duties" as an operator to do that. They could recommend that be looked at while services are en route to the location, but usually if an officer declares it suspicious...it gets bomb squaded. Now I suppose that officer could look it up on his lappytop but then he has to make the call to check it out.

    So far out of all of the geocaches in the WORLD that are published on GC.com...I have not heard of one instance where one of them turned out to be a bomb! I may be wrong, but so far the odds of a published geocache being a bomb are rare...now if it said geocache and it was not on the site (not under basic or premium membership) then perhaps it needs looked into. The only thing it "could" be besides a bomb is a "pending" cache that Chuck has not approved yet or the user temporarily disabled it.


    I guess this would be a good time to throw in what was found at the Cwy meeting with the bomb techs? Does anyone have that info?
    [/quote]

  6. #16
    astrodav Guest
    Personally, this is something that I wouldn't touch. I'll always feel the best route here is to simply perform our sport in a manner which will not draw any unnecessary suspicion to it. In other words, don't hide caches right out in front of people who have no idea what's going on.

    Trying to work with governments, bomb squads, police forces, etc. will almst surely accomplish the same identical thing .... but INVOLUNTARY. Laws & ordinances will be enforced completely preventing us from using ANY skirt, fire hydrant, etc, even the one at the far end of the parking lot ..... rather than us taking the initiative ourselves & simply being a bit more careful about our locations.

    This affects me very little as far as hiding. ALL of my hides are at least semi-rural & NONE are right in front of a house or business, where no one knows anything about what's going on. So my hiding will continue regardless of what happens in this situation.

    But I also like a large number of caches to find, in different types of conditions. But purposely pushing the "suspicion meter" as far as you can, simply because you can, will not lead to a single benefit for geocaching .... regardless of who you talk to, how many meetings you have, or how many agreements you sign.

    But that's my opinion & I may be wrong. But with the past experiences I've had working closely with law enforcement in the military (I can't say in what aspect however), I don't believe that I am wrong. This type of exposure is one thing that we most definitely do NOT want to get associated with geocaching. Every single possible effect it can have on us will be negative.

    And it's just so easy to prevent that.

  7. #17
    Join Date
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    896
    I agree, but when a cacher post or contacts the cache owner of a particular geocache that has raised citizen's suspicion to the point of police being called and or the cacher letting the owner know that it is in a "bad" spot and that it could be construed the wrong way; and the only response the owner has is "use more stealth" or "I'm not moving it" sends the wrong message. How is the best way to deal with those people?

  8. #18
    astrodav Guest
    Sometimes there just isn't a way. Being as this is a mostly voluntary & un-regulated sport, which I am 100% for it STAYING that way, there's no "court" to judge when a cacher is behaving improperly .... or in a way detrimental to caching. Thus, there's no possible way to MAKE a cacher do anything.

    Even if someone wanted to take a 12" long piece of 1" PVC pipe, cap both ends, paint it silver, & place it in plain view in a parking lot .... there's no guideline, law, or rule by GC.Com which specifically says they can't do it that way. (In case no one caught the example .... that type container in that type situation would automatically mean "PIPE BOMB".)

    And I don't WANT there to be any guidelines saying we can't do that. And most definitely I don't want a governmental LAW saying we can't. I'd much rather we police our own sport, NOT doing things which raise too much suspicion ourselves, & highly discouraging it as a group when we see others do it. If we don't do that, then eventually someone will do it for us.

    Unfortunately, not every cacher is willing to take those few simple steps & extra 2 minutes to do a quick survey of the area & determine if it's an appropriate caching location or not. And if you say anything about it, they throw a fit. A perfect example is the one I mentioned that happened to myself. I'm not going to name names .... just ain't my style. But the one I am talking about isn't very difficut to find.

    First off, it's on a bridge, which is against guidelines anyway. No, it's NOT a vehicle bridge, but it IS a bridge, AND it's right above one of the busiest interstates in Arkansas. The bridge is VERY rarely used, so muggling isn't so bad. But even so, when I was there, I noticed at least 3-5 ways to hide a cache which would probably be 90% safe from a muggle, but easily findable to most cachers.

    But the owner instead decided to make it REALLY hard & unconvientional, not give a hint, and pretty much require you to stay up there for at least 30 minutes .... unless you just get real lucky. His reasoning was, "If I make it easy for a cacher to find, then it's easy for a muggle to find". To me, that's simply the mark of an unexperienced hider. Theres a hundred ways for a cache o be hidden, which is fairly obvious to an experienced cacher, but completely invisible to the public.

    But that wasn't so here, so there I was, in the middle of a bridge, in the middle of a city, with 10,000 cars an hour passing directly below me. After about 30 minutes of poking, prodding, peering, scratching, & all that other stuff we do during cache-finding, I gave up. During this entire time, a grand total of ZERO other people used this bridge.

    Think I looked a bit suspicious up there? D!&n right I did. That's evidently what a motorist thought also. Since 2 sets of cops had blocked both ends of the bridge during this time & met me at one end on the way out. Anybody NOT think this situation had the potential to be a very serious one? D@*n right it did.

    Luckily, I'm not really a very suspicious looking guy, & most certainly don't have a police record .... at least not for anything bad. I've been in jail twice for bar-room fights in the military, but nothing else. I'm almost certain that they called in for my record prior to. That may be one of the reasons the situation was easily defused.

    But is somethng like this even necessary? First off, personally, I would never have even PLACED a cache in a highly visible location like that. But that's just me. But I do appreciate every cache I find, although Iwould much rather someone make this THIS type a very quick one, so we don't have to wander around like a lost goose for a long time. And I almost immediately saw a way this could have been done here. A cacher would never have even had to stop walking to retieve the cache .... but a pedestrian would have walked right past it, not even seeing if it they had been looking.

    So I brought up my concerns in my DNF log .... not a "Needs Archived", nor even a "Needs Maintanance" .... just a very nice run-down of what had occured. The reaction was TWO complete posts, each several paragraphs long, from the cache-owner .... then a THIRD similar one from the co-owner .... informing me just how many things I did wrong, how he had every right to hide it as he saw fit, & that it really wasn't any of my business. Then to top this off, he launched into several insinuations about how I must be overly scared of police because had a criminal background & related stuff like that.

    There's no reasoning with these type people & I know better than to even try. I simply deleted everything I had posted, except for a simple "DNF" or something. That didn't satisfy him either, since he then modified some of his previous comments & added that it was my "responsibility" to re-post what I deleted, because other cachers needed this info.

    Group pressure is the only possible choice for those types. It's a really nasty way to do it, & I'm not even suggesting it TO be done. But these type of ill-thought-out cache placements will eventually come back to bite us in the long run, in some form or fashion. Of that, I'm 100% sure. And when that happens, it's already too late to say, "Okay, please take that part away. We promise we won't do that again."

    That's why I am so against purposely hiding caches in places where it's impossible to NOT be seen by the public, especially when that public has no idea what you're up to. Or at the VERY least, make those so we can get in, do our thing, & get out quick enough to raise no suspicion.

    But it's a voluntary & "trust" thing, which is the way it should be, & the way I want it to be .... even knowing that there will always be a certain percentage of cachers who abuse that trust. And that in turn makes it harder for ALL of us to enjoy our now-lightly regulated hobby.

    But anyway, I've said about all I can say on this issue, so will bow out of it now. The discussion was interesting.

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