Entenda as EXPLOSÕES dos PAGERS no LÍBANO. Como os PAGERS EXPLODIRAM?

This sounds like something out of a spy movie, like Mission Impossible style, or James Bond, but it became reality. Today I'm going to tell you how several pagers exploded in Lebanon. Hey Engineering Lovers, we recently had a geopolitical event that left me quite intrigued.

Thousands of pagers exploded in Lebanon, in what appeared to be coordinated. Initially I thought “is it something to do with the batteries? Any modification capable of making the device explode?

After all, anyone who has ever seen a cell phone exploding knows that it is possible. But analyzing the explosions, you realize that the damage was too quick and too great to be just a battery. And that made me research how this actually happened, and the feat is something that seems to have come out of spy movies.

Let's go, Hezbollah reportedly ordered around five thousand pagers from Taiwan, a country known for producing around 90 percent of the world's most advanced semiconductors. And these pagers were destined for Lebanon. However, what makes this story particularly intriguing is what actually happened during the shipping process.

Somewhere along the way, a spy agency is believed to have intercepted this shipment and tampered with the pagers. They discreetly altered the internal components , with a hidden explosive device. This modification was made so subtly that it went unnoticed.

As soon as the changes were made, the altered pagers were silently sent to Lebanon as if nothing had happened. To help you understand more about the explosive pager, let's take a look at how it works. Firstly, the information I managed to find is that the company that supplied the pagers was Gold Apollo, model AR-924, which produces pagers in Taiwan.

A pager or beeper, for those who don't know, is simply a receiving communication device, that is, it can only receive information. It's as if you had a cell phone, but you couldn't send information, only receive it. It was widely used in the 80s and 90s to identify that someone was calling you.

As phones used to be landlines, you carried a pager with you, and when someone called your landline, the pager received an alert indicating that said number had called you. Later, these devices evolved to receive numeric messages, that is, they were able to receive messages in the format of numbers, and later, they started to receive alpha numeric messages, that is, they started to receive text messages as well. And then you think, why would anyone use a device that is so outdated in terms of technology?

Wouldn't it be better to use a cell phone? Well, as it is a device that only receives information, you cannot identify where the receiver is, because it does not send any location information or exchange information with other devices. This way, you can communicate with several people registered with a single pager number in various locations around the world.

The reason Hezbollah chose this technology was the fact that you cannot track these devices. And if you think that this technology is that outdated, maybe you should rethink, as it is still widely used today, you know? If you've ever been to a restaurant or store, and they give you a device when you enter a waiting line, and when your time in line arrives, it vibrates and flashes like crazy, guess what, this simple little device , is a pager.

But let's talk a little about the device itself. In essence, the battery powers the entire device as well as the various electronics we use. The whole point is that the purchased pager weighed only 95 grams.

Despite being a technology outdated, it already had updates using rechargeable lithium batteries and they were charged via a USB type C cable. Now let's speculate a little, imagine that we are a spy agency and have access to these pagers. We could take these devices and install a small explosive inside them.

According to some international news, they mentioned that the explosions would be characteristic of approximately 3 grams of explosives. ​Which considering a pager that weighs only 95 grams and adding just 3 more grams is almost imperceptible to humans. And just to say that I'm speculating, because the space and weight needed to install these 3 grams of explosives would be almost imperceptible.

Well, here I bring some hypotheses that could have been the trigger for these explosions. One would be that a timer was introduced into the microprocessor to trigger this device. This would explain the effect of explosions from 5,000 pagers at the same time.

The other possibility is that the circuit was altered to be triggered by the receipt of a specific message. In other words, if you intercept the sending signal, all pagers could receive the same message, and explode as soon as this specific message is received by the Pager. I particularly believe in the second idea, since the videos show the victims putting their hands in their pockets, seconds before the device exploded, indicating that it vibrated or rang upon receipt of a message.

In other words, the idea is probably that they received a specific message, and soon after the devices exploded. There is no way to know for sure, as the devices were completely destroyed and we could only understand how they exploded by investigating the devices or being lucky enough to find a device that was discharged and did not explode. But thinking about the general context, the intelligence in this type of attack shows a very large intelligence service, as it involved information, logistics, preparation, reduced time and mainly a very large damage capacity.

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