page_title: Booby trap
section_title: Military booby traps
hierarchical_section_title: Booby trap / Military booby traps
caption_attribution_description: English: Korean troops use chart to show villagers types of Viet Cong booby traps
context_page_description: A booby trap is a device or setup that is intended to kill, harm, or surprise a person or animal. It is triggered by the presence or actions of the victim and sometimes has some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. The trap may be set to act upon trespassers that enter restricted areas, and it can be triggered when the victim performs an action. It can also be triggered by vehicles driving along a road, as in the case of improvised explosive devices.
  Booby traps should not be confused with mantraps which are designed to catch a person. Lethal booby traps are often used in warfare, particularly guerrilla warfare, and traps designed to cause injury or pain are also sometimes used by criminals wanting to protect drugs or other illicit property, and by some owners of legal property who wish to protect it from theft. Booby traps which merely cause discomfort or embarrassment are a popular form of practical joke.
context_section_description: A military booby trap may be designed to kill or injure a person who activates its trigger, or employed to reveal the location of an enemy by setting off a signalling device. Most, but not all, military booby traps involve explosives.
  There is no clear division between a booby trap and buried conventional land mines  triggered by a tripwire or directional mine. Other, similar devices include spring-guns and mechanisms such as the SM-70 directional antipersonnel mine.
  What distinguishes a booby trap is that its activation is intended to be unexpected to its victim.  Thus booby trap design is widely varied, with traps or their trigger mechanisms often hidden.  Frequently at least part of the device is improvised from standard ordnance, such as an artillery shell, grenade, or high explosive. However, some mines have features specifically designed for incorporation into booby traps and armies have been equipped with a variety of mass-produced triggering mechanisms intended to be employed in booby traps deployment.
  Part of the skill in placing booby traps lies in exploiting natural human behaviors such as habit, self-preservation, curiosity or acquisitiveness.  A common trick is to provide victims with a simple solution to a problem, for example, leaving only one door open in an otherwise secure building, thereby luring them straight toward the firing mechanism.
  An example that exploits an instinct for self-preservation was used in the Vietnam War. Spikes known as punji sticks were hidden in grassy areas. When fired upon soldiers instinctively sought to take cover by throwing themselves down on the ground, impaling themselves on the spikes.
  Attractive or interesting objects are frequently used as bait. For example, troops could leave behind empty beer bottles and a sealed wooden packing case with "Scotch Whisky" marked on it before leaving an area. The rubble-filled packing case might be resting on top of an M5 or M142 firing device, connected to some blocks of TNT or to some C4 explosive stuffed into the empty fuze pocket of a mortar shell. Alternatively, the weight of the packing case might simply be holding down the arming lever of an RGD-5 grenade with a zero-delay fuze fitted and the pin removed. Either way, when the case is moved, the booby trap detonates, killing or severely injuring anyone in the immediate area. Many different types of bait object can be used e.g. soldiers will be tempted to kick an empty beer can lying on the ground as they walk past it. However, the can (partially filled with sand to add weight) may be resting on top of an M5 pressure-release firing device screwed into a buried M26 grenade.
  Many purpose-built booby-trap firing devices exist such as the highly versatile M142 universal firing device (identical to the British L5A1 or Australian F1A1), or Yugoslavian UMNOP-1 which allow a variety of different ways of triggering explosives e.g. via trip wire (either pulling it or releasing the tension on it), direct pressure on an object (e.g. standing on it), or pressure release (lift/shift something) etc.
  Almost any item can be booby-trapped in some way. For example, booby trapping a flashlight is a classic tactic: a flashlight already contains most of the required components. First of all, the flashlight acts as bait, tempting the victim to pick it up. More importantly, it is easy to conceal a detonator, some explosives, and batteries inside the flashlight casing. A simple electrical circuit is connected to the on/off switch. When the victim attempts to turn the flashlight on to see if it works, the resulting explosion blows their hand or arm off and possibly blinds them.
  The only limits to the intricacy of booby-traps are the skill and inventiveness of the people placing them. For example, the "bait object" (e.g. a cash box in a corner of the room) which lures victims into the trap may not in fact be booby-trapped at all. However, the furniture which must be pushed away in order to get to the bait has a wire attached, with an M142 firing device connected to a 155mm artillery shell on the other end of
caption: Vietnam War: Republic of Korea Armed Forces soldiers show Vietnamese villagers types of Viet Cong booby traps.
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