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Booby Traps

Panji, door, spike, tiger, and whip traps, military applications and those more… “personal”. From Vietnam to Hollywood to video games, Kevin, Toren, and Joe take a caustic look at booby traps! Plus: booby traps in the recent news!

Music: “Execute Operation: Get the Hell Out of Here” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

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27 Responses

  1. I could not believe just how gruesome some of those traps were, let alone just how much damage something like a modern IED can cause – could not imagine joining the armed forces; I take my hat off to those guys.

    There was a nice booby trap in the home of the incestuous family on “Home” S04E02 of the X Files, but I think your pop culture references dwarf that one.

    I’ve now loaded the entire back catalogue of Caustic Soda onto my iPhone so I’ll never be at a loss for something to listen to. 🙂 I barely know where to begin! Thanks for providing such a marvelous resource!

    (Any news on CS apparel, btw?)

  2. Hi guys! I didn’t see a contact form anywhere on your site, but I had a suggestion for another caustic topic for you if you need ideas– architecture/construction.

    See, architecture by itself doesn’t seem dangerous, but it might be interesting to talk about really bad construction accidents– It first piqued my interest when I began reading the book “Devil in the White City”… they talked about Roebling’s bridge causing the death of workers from bends, or entire building collapsing on workers because of shoddy building codes… or we could go way way back to the Great Wall of China–lots of people are buried in the foundations. I’d like to hear what you guys would come up with on that topic! 🙂

  4. So very sad that The Goonies wasn’t brought up in this episode. One of the best lines of the movie is Data, “That’s what I said!!! Booby traps!!! Now be quiet!! Shhhh!”

  5. Hearing Joe grousing about traps-for-the-perverse-glee-of-it modules reminded me of a really fun piece of work that ended up in Dungeon Magazine once upon a long time ago. It was a low-to-mid-level adventure — http://www.purpleworm.org/tools/DungeonMagazineIndex.htm says 4 to 7, and I love that such a web page exists — that involved goblins booby-trapping the bejeezus out of a silver mine. It was good stuff, too… you could think your way past most of it, and the goblins obviously didn’t pose that much of a challenge once you got in good and close, but if you just blundered on ahead, they’d rip you to pieces. (The same issue had another fun DM prank that involved a magic marble that made everyone in the party a few inches tall, which resulted in epic battles with frogs and mice.)

    Really fun episode, guys.

  7. Well, I went ahead and put the flashlight bomb in my Mutilator roleplaying session tonight. The first thing the player did when he found it was ask “are there batteries inside” rather than flick the switch. First booby trap thwarted. Luckily, they set off the spring gun and the barrel of radioactive waste trap, so I got some satisfaction. They completely neglected to look on the table that contained the case of beer trap. Two out of four ain’t bad!

  12. That story actually broke the day before we were set to record, so all the articles were super light on details. I figured it would make a good follow-up if it was caustic enough.

  13. Ok, this is incredible, first time I’ve listened and I am so hooked. I’ve become a huge fan of Darkest of the Hillside Thickets so I thought I might like the pod cast but damn, I’m all about it.

  14. You guys forgot the best South African anti car theft device of them all! There’s one where a shotgun shell/barrel system is installed into your steering column along with a button under the dash. If you don’t hold the button down while you turn the ignition, then something will go off and it ain’t the airbags.

    BAM!

  16. ah, good old Tomb of Horrors. the rhyme at the beginning says ‘shun green if you can’ and the sphere of annihilation is in an stylized green archway that has absolute blackness in it. of course the guy(not me) who shouldn’t have played a magic user cuz he’s a twit flies headfirst through it. ‘i’m flying so i won’t set off any tra–‘
    there’s also Grimtooth’s Dungeon of Death don’t recall if you mentioned it- which provides lots of low or nonmagic but highly creative traps. like the room filled with dust on everything that’s a powerful base and a fountain of water nearby for when it starts to burn…the bejeweled terra cota statues that are actually behives so when mr greedy guts helps himself to some jewels he pisses of hundreds of bees. and the room with a lever and a sign that says ‘don’t pull this lever…’

  18. Pingback: 7 Podcasts You Need to Listen To | Jeremy, frankly

      1. When i tried the “Play in new window” link it would get an error. Tried Download today at home and its working. Sorry could be our crappy internet at work!