Breast Implant Bombs: My Plots Stay Ahead Of The Curve…Again
The Obama Administration’s recent warning about terrorists using breast implant bombs reminds me that over my 35 years of writing thrillers, I’ve frequently developed ideas — including explosive breast implants — that once seemed preposterous, outlandish or impossible — but which have either come true or entered the realm of the dangerously likely.
My first novel, The Trinity Implosion (1976), was repeatedly rejected because editors said it was ridiculously implausible that terrorists could get their hands on a nuclear weapon. And detonate it at the Capitol during the State of the Uni0n address, thus decapitating every branch of the U.S. Government.
Then there was the genetically engineered bioweapon in Slatewiper that could be triggered by specific gene sequences shared by members of a specific ethnic groups. I wrote the book in 1993 and was rejected because of its implausibility. By the time it was published in 2001, the United Nations, Red Cross and others had warned that these weapons probably existed. Slatewiper.com has links to some of those warnings.
Oh, and there were the crop dusters in Slatewiper used to spread the bioweapon (shades of 9/11 preparations).
There was also the gasoline tanker in The Tesla Bequest which was used as a devastating bomb in a tunnel in Luxembourg.
And the secret government program to chemically engineer soldiers to make them perfect killers. After I wrote Perfect Killer, I discovered that the program actually existed. Read more in this NON-fiction afterword by a retired Army intelligence officer and professor at the U.S. War College about the significance of Perfect Killer.
You can read the FOIA documents at Perfect Killer.Com.
THE HOW-TO OF IMPLANTING TERROR.
Yep. You guessed it. About 2002 or so, I outlined a thriller around women who had implants filled with a liquid explosive that does not require a separate detonator to explode. Nitroglycerine is an example one of these, but is less stable and not as powerful as alternative formulations available.
I’ve abandoned that thriller because I got a better idea.
But in that outline, I had stunningly attractive women with breasts surgically enhanced to Brobdingnagian proportions, which of course, require commensurate structural support including a substantial underwire superstructure.
The detonation mechanism consisted of two parts, both cleverly constructed to identically mimic bra underwiring. The actual detonator circuit was contained in side the implant was a simple variation on a spark gap. This was capacitance linked to external wiring in the bra. The connection as I designed it in the outline was a bit like those capacitance switches that work when you touch them with your finger. No direct connection is needed.
Similarly, the electrical charge to initiate the detonation in the breast implant bomb doesn’t need a direct connection. Just the closeness through the skin between the detonator and the electrical charge to set off the explosive. The electrical charge in my thriller outline came from a small netbook which had been rewired to route the power leads of the USB port to the earplug port. Very large capacitance charges can be achieved by gradual charging. But the advantage of a capacitor is that t can discharge all its energy almost instantly.
By bringing the slightly modified earplug near the implanted detonator wire and pressing the “PLAY” button on the netbook’s music player would detonate the implants.
