Why no bombs?

This is something I'm wondering about lately.
Why is it that terrorist bombings are such a 20th/21st century phenomenom?

I mean the technology has been there for hundreds of years as siege warfare shows.
Yet the only example I can think of off my head is the famous one of 5/11....and that failed.

Was it just a case of the availability of materials? Or the skills needed for explosives? Or that they didn't work if they got wet?

In my current on-off tl I'm thinking about having some carriage bombings in the 16th century. A little bit anologous to the modern day I know but...Its just so cool!
Sure- timing mechanisms would be non-existant or immensly crude but we're not talking mafia style 'carriage bombs' (start your horses and it goes) here. Just plain booms that kill some people.
If they're set off manually then you may well be able to get at least a small chance at killing someone important as they pass by (very small, but its there)

edit- oh and of course Alexander II. But the 19th century is still very recent and those were grenades not quite bombs
 
This is something I'm wondering about lately.
Why is it that terrorist bombings are such a 20th/21st century phenomenom?

I mean the technology has been there for hundreds of years as siege warfare shows.
Yet the only example I can think of off my head is the famous one of 5/11....and that failed.

Was it just a case of the availability of materials? Or the skills needed for explosives? Or that they didn't work if they got wet?

In my current on-off tl I'm thinking about having some carriage bombings in the 16th century. A little bit anologous to the modern day I know but...Its just so cool!
Sure- timing mechanisms would be non-existant or immensly crude but we're not talking mafia style 'carriage bombs' (start your horses and it goes) here. Just plain booms that kill some people.
If they're set off manually then you may well be able to get at least a small chance at killing someone important as they pass by (very small, but its there)

edit- oh and of course Alexander II. But the 19th century is still very recent and those were grenades not quite bombs

Well, there was a Wall-Street Anarchist Carriage-Bombing in the early 20s...
 

Philip

Donor
This is something I'm wondering about lately.
Why is it that terrorist bombings are such a 20th/21st century phenomenom?

I mean the technology has been there for hundreds of years as siege warfare shows.

There have been some improvements in explosives. Human bombs based on gunpowder will definitely lack the effect of modern high-explosive versions. That being said, several casks of gunpowder in a carriage will be quite impressive. If detonated in a crowd, the flying wood fragments will leave many maimed or dead.
 
This is something I'm wondering about lately.
Why is it that terrorist bombings are such a 20th/21st century phenomenom?

There were plenty of bombings in the 19th century. First I think one has to seperate or deliniate 'terrorists' bombings. One can split that generic category into Fenian, Anarchist, Revolutionary and other subcategories.

I would submit that there is a much more wider access to materials to build, design and use bombs. We are living in an Information Age and it takes barely a few minutes to search the Internet to locate a recipe for making mustard gas. We have home and over the countertop chemicals that can be easily converted to explosives. The Oklahoma City Bombing was a truck full of fertilizer (in general). The Industrial Revolution led to the refinement and proliferation of inexpensive explosives that would repeatedly work. Thank God for Alfred Noble.
 
Was it just a case of the availability of materials? Or the skills needed for explosives? Or that they didn't work if they got wet?

All three I would have thought.

1. Scarcity of resources to mix explosives and the difficulty in doing so. At a guess making several barrels of gunpowder in the 16th century in your basement is a bit more difficult than producing a crude nail bomb in the 20th/21st.
2. Lack of knowledge. Fewer people probably knew how to mix gunpowder, carry it safely and so on. You can't even begin mixing up gunpowder in your basement if you don't know where to start.
3. Effectiveness. Sure if you stash a few barrels of gunpowder in a carriage you have an effective bomb, but producing several barrels of gunpowder and moving them around undiscovered is alot harder than producing a modern, small explosive device.
4. Terrorism just isn't effective without a modern media to carry the information.
 
Could it be that in previous eras such asymmeatrical warfare would have resulted in far more ruthless suppression than we are prepared for today?

I always had the impression that historically non-conventional combatants (bandits, spies) were often killed out of hand. Am I incorrect in this?
 
Detonation

Detonation would require a sputtering fuse. This can be heard or smelled, depending on the circumstances, and also might go ouot. Yiming wasn't all that reliable, either.
However, bombs were used. IIRC, in one 19th century extradition treaty between the USA and Britian, "Dynamiters" were not extraditable. The Irish vote in the USA was such that any extradition treaty that included them would have had great difficulty in the Senate. (Sorry that I can't site sources...my college textbooks on US Foreign Policy are put away where I can't find them.)
How available were large quantities of gunpowder in earlier times? If you can't get the explosives, you can't make a bomb?
 

Of course. That's the one I make a point of mentioning in my post...


Could it be that in previous eras such asymmeatrical warfare would have resulted in far more ruthless suppression than we are prepared for today?

I always had the impression that historically non-conventional combatants (bandits, spies) were often killed out of hand. Am I incorrect in this?
Yep, that's why I'd think explosives would be done more- you can jump at the king with a sword and try to stab him in spite of all his personal bodyguard or you can set some explosives in the royal toilet then run like hell.

And there were quite a lot of assasinations back in the day...



As for all those believing there are fewer people to make the bombs; again this may not be so.
Sure a commoner couldn't make a bomb BUT soldiers weren't treat anywhere near well as the modern day. Once the war was over they were out on the streets. Depending on how recent history has been going I'd imagine there could be quite a few unemployed ex-soldiers around (That's what Guy Fawkes was)
 
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Perhaps I am being naive, but is it possible that revolutionaries, anachists, and nationalists in the 19th century and earlier might have been more squeamish about exploding bombs in random locations just to kill completely innocent people? If one really wanted to target specific people for assasination or military facilities without necessarily killing lots of bystanders, was the technology available before the 20th century to ensure both an assurance the bomb would go off and that it would be timed accuretaly enough?

Plus the point about media coverage was a good one. Terrorism as a practiced today needs the media and global communication to be effective.
 
where have all the bomb-throwers gone?

well it's alot easyer to get recipies nowadays

what ever happend to the good old days of radical humanists takeing up arms against corporate greed and corrupt goverment. the only resestance you find nowadays is from religious right -wingers of the worst sort.While so called "progressives" go to self-rightious redundent protests, wear ridiculous clothing that alienates mainstream working people and sit around and pass joints all day while complaining about "the man". I'm not saying they should blow up army recruting stations and kidnap a hearst family member but what does sitting on your ass blogging all day really do?
 
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Yep, that's why I'd think explosives would be done more- you can jump at the king with a sword and try to stab him in spite of all his personal bodyguard or you can set some explosives in the royal toilet then run like hell.

And there were quite a lot of assasinations back in the day...
...
As assaisin tools... That works for me. :)
 
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