Harvey's Casino Bomb
fbi.gov
fbi.gov
and an explanation of the triggers https://dh1rvgpokacch.cloudfront.net/atavist/1/video/iphone/...
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Decades after “the machine” radically remodeled a portion of Harvey’s Wagon Wheel Casino, Big John’s masterpiece bomb maintains legendary status at the FBI. Bureau agents acknowledge that it is unlikely that even modern bomb squads and technology could make much headway disarming Big John’s improvised explosive without setting it off...the Harvey’s bomb was the largest domestic bomb ever to explode in the United States until the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993...why so few people these days seem to remember...Jonkey’s speculation is succinct: “Nobody died.”
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I've been in that casino so many times and never knew about this event. Crazy.
It's really fascinating stuff.
My takeaway is to re-work of an old proverb, one that seems describe the attitude for Las Vegas in this situation:
When life gives you a casino bomb, turn it into a gambling and tourism opportunity.
The casino operation wanted to open part of their gambling area that was not damaged. And they did build this big wall and put a big picture window in it so that the gamblers could watch the FBI process the crime scene for the next few weeks.
I should also note that, unless you had extremely detailed pictures of the switches themselves (or part numbers), you could easily use a combination of switches which appears to do one thing but instead does another, so X-Rays and a wiring diagram wouldn't necessarily be helpful in discovering the actual path of electricity. You could maybe do something clever with a very sensitive electrometer, but that would take way too long.
Arming it doesn't seem like the hard part to me. I think the hard part, with all the foil based triggers and spring loaded screws, would be construction and QA and making sure you don't kill yourself activating the thing because there's some filings completing a circuit you didn't know about.