Inside Bomb Squad Academy: Michelle Khare's Week Learning to Disable a Bomb in a 65-Pound Suit
Michelle Khare
In this episode of Challenge Accepted, Michelle Khare spends a week training with the Arapahoe County Sheriff's bomb squad. She is building toward a final test: approaching a suspicious device alone in a 65-pound bomb suit, diagnosing it, and rendering it safe before it "detonates." Along the way the bomb technicians take apart the movie version of their job. They almost never cut a red wire, almost never put their hands on a device, and spend most of their effort working out how to avoid touching it at all.
The Physical Agility Test
The week opens with Khare meeting two instructors, Brian and Brad. They joke that the squad has a lot of Brians and, so far, no Michelles. Her first task is the physical assessment every new recruit goes through. She has to cover a quarter mile in the full bomb suit while completing a series of tasks that test endurance, dexterity, and memory, all in under 17 minutes. If she fails, she can't continue the academy. The instructors explain that this rule exists because her body would not be able to safely handle the mental and physical strain of the 65-pound suit.
They describe the purpose bluntly: the test is meant to stress the candidate on purpose, because a bomb tech's brain has to keep working while the body is exhausted. The helmet has a nickname, the "dumb bucket," because once it goes on, much of what you knew "just kind of goes out the window." Recruits have to concentrate hard to remember things. So before the test starts, Khare is given a number, "one," which she will have to recall later.
Putting on the suit is a struggle in itself. The instructors warn that it will feel briefly like it's choking her as the weight settles on her shoulders for the first time. Khare says her head feels like it's inside a bowling ball, and that she feels "like a drunk Michelin man." Then comes a detail she hadn't been told: the test starts with her lying on her back. The instructors explain that this simulates being knocked over by a blast and having to get back up.
The Long Walk and the Obstacles
The first stretch is a walk that represents what bomb techs call the Long Walk. On a real call, the technician leaves the team at the truck and approaches the objective alone with their equipment. One instructor calls it "possibly either the scariest or the best part of being a bomb tech." He describes walking at least 300 feet while thinking about what you'll find, how to keep yourself safe, and how to keep the public safe. Khare's immediate problem is more physical: the weight on her lungs makes breathing difficult.
Each obstacle is modeled on a situation a bomb tech might meet on the job. Khare expected the weight to be hard. What she didn't expect was how much the suit limits her vision. An instructor notes she probably can't see past the top of the chest plate, and points out that she is reaching for a pole she can't actually see. She carries heavy, awkward equipment, does another lap of the track, and then, exhausted, has to remember her number from the start and point a laser at it. On the next lap she decides to try running, which surprises the instructors. She compares it to deadlifting and running on a treadmill at the same time. She says she spent the weeks beforehand doing strength training to prepare.
Next is the "monkey board," a sheet of plywood with basic mechanical tasks: open a lock, undo a bolt, remove screws, and strip insulation from two wires and twist them around an eyelet. Khare says she feels "like a baby" doing it. The instructor remarks on how much the suit makes simple tasks harder.
The last element is a stair climb to push her heart rate up. At the top, she gets 20 seconds to look all the way around a suspicious device and memorize as much as she can. Afterward she has to report back at the truck. She finishes in 15:43, well under the limit, and describes how she feels as "awful." From memory she reports a green light on top, a red light below it, a label reading something like "a lift for you" with red tape, and a red bar underneath. She passes.
The Fear Test: A Children's Puzzle in the Dark
Within minutes she has to suit up again for a second assessment. The instructors say this one is designed to test her ability to work around fear. She wears a hazmat suit to simulate a chemical threat, the bomb suit over that, an SCBA air bottle on her back, and a gas mask on her face. An instructor estimates all this gear nearly doubles her body weight. She says her legs are shaking just from standing.
She is then sealed inside a dark shipping container and given what the instructor calls "an incredibly simple children's puzzle." He predicts it will take her "a ridiculously long amount of time." Inside, Khare describes feeling claustrophobic and says the gear seems to get heavier by the second. The instructor explains why the task is hard. The gas mask and the visor of the EOD 10 helmet restrict her vision, and breathing SCBA air isn't natural, so the wearer must constantly think about conserving air and staying calm. He estimates she has roughly 25 to 30 minutes of air. Khare describes her method: decide what to do, look away, "and pray that my hand does what I just thought." She finishes in about 14 minutes, which the instructor calls an excellent time. With both physical assessments passed, she moves on to the practical side of the work.
Forgetting the Red Wire
The instructors start by correcting what they call the biggest misconception about bomb squads. It comes from the media: walking up to a device, putting your face next to it, and cutting the red wire. One instructor says they are "almost never" going to go down and put their hands on a device. Unless there is a human life that can't be moved away from the suspicious item, he says, he won't touch it until he knows it's safe.
Khare says this is when she realized her idea of bombs was "almost entirely based in fiction." The instructors explain that real devices don't look like sticks of dynamite with a timer and a red wire running to a detonator. They look like boxes, backpacks, and everyday items. The video describes improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as collections of components, often ordinary objects, that work together to cause damage or injury. The bomb tech's job is to separate those components so the device can no longer function.
The PAN Disruptor
The main tool for that separation is a PAN disruptor, short for "percussion actuated non-electric." The instructor tells Khare she doesn't need to remember the full name. The goal of disruption, he says, is to make the components stop touching so they can't work together. The device he shows her is essentially a 12-gauge shotgun barrel. A blank goes in, and the barrel is filled with water. The laser she aimed during the agility test corresponds to aiming this tool. When fired, the water shoots into the package and expands, ripping it apart and, hopefully, breaking the circuit. Khare summarizes it as "literally shooting a water projectile at a bomb," and the instructor agrees: for the most part, yes.
X-Ray First
Before any disruption, the team has to determine whether a suspicious package is actually an IED. That means confirming it has all the components needed to detonate. The first step on any bomb call, they explain, is an X-ray. A panel goes behind the package, X-rays are shot through the package onto the panel, and the tech retrieves the panel without touching the package. Back in the truck, a scanner develops the image.
Khare practices reading an X-ray of the box from the agility test. With some prompting, she identifies a battery and an LED, which is one of the lights she saw sticking out of the box. She first guesses a measuring tape, but it turns out to be a kitchen timer. Last is a toggle switch, which the instructor helps her recognize by asking if she has ever taken the cover plate off a light switch at home. The instructors stress that this training box isn't a bomb, since it contains no explosive material. It is just an example of what she might see in the final challenge.
Driving the Robot
If an X-ray shows an IED, the next step is moving it away from property and people. The safest way is with a robot. Khare meets Rob Porath of the bomb squad. She asks if he goes by "Bob," since everyone's name seems to start with B, and he says many of the guys call him Bobby. He explains the reasoning plainly: robots let the team analyze an item without sending a human down. If a robot gets blown up, it's expensive, "but they're not a human."
He teaches her the controls: a single stick for driving and turning, multiple cameras including one on the gripper, and buttons that move the arm and shoulder together or just the wrist. She practices by picking up a water bottle.
Then comes an obstacle course that she has to run using only the robot's cameras. The rules: don't hit any cones, don't fall off a wooden bridge, find the suspicious item at the end, pick up the pipe bomb, and put it in a fragmentation bag. The final rule is "do not break my robot." Porath says this one costs $75,000. Khare finds the camera perspective very hard to use and says her depth perception is off. She gets through the course and grips the pipe bomb, but she drops it right at the finish line. The instructor treats that as a potential explosion where you don't want one.
Rigging
Robots aren't always available. When they aren't, bomb techs use a much more dangerous technique called rigging: moving a device with ropes and hardware from a distance. The instructor demonstrates with a box. A rope tied straight to it would snag on obstacles, so the rigging kit includes pulleys to change direction. One pulley is designed to break open when a ball fixed on the rope passes through it. Khare clips a carabiner to the box handle, walks back, and pulls. During the demonstration the box changes direction and comes right back toward her. She asks why this is better than just picking it up. The answer is that moving the device at all can still set it off, so a person carrying it is in much more danger. The video stresses that rigging needs precision because a small miscalculation could be devastating.
What the Suit Doesn't Protect
The video notes that bomb suits keep improving. An instructor describes an old suit in the sheriff's office museum as a cross between an Iron Man suit and a knight's armor, with literal eye slits. But even modern suits leave the hands and feet exposed. The technicians don't wear gloves in the suit, and their feet have little protection. One technician says that if something goes wrong, even if he survives, he might lose his hands or feet or suffer severe injuries. He calls it a reality he has had to accept, and that his family has had to accept as well.
At the Explosives Range
To show her what's at stake, the squad takes Khare to their explosives range for a controlled demonstration. They emphasize that the tests are still treated as seriously dangerous. They start with very small charges. Khare learns the firing procedure: hold "charge" until a green light comes on, press "fire," and before that, check left, downrange, and right and call "fire in the hole" several times. The first small blasts make a lot of smoke. She jokes, "happy 4th of July," then gets visibly startled by louder ones.
Then they move to what they call big charges. They clarify that this means not a large amount of material, but very powerful material. They use ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel, which the video identifies as most likely the explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing. The video describes that attack as a car bomb outside a federal building that killed 168 people, including 19 children. The instructor notes that this material looks very much like lawn fertilizer pellets but becomes explosive when mixed with fuel. The demonstration is meant to show what a small amount can do, so viewers can scale it up to someone with thousands of pounds.
After the detonation, the instructor points out the depth of the crater and says it came from about 12 pounds of ammonium nitrate. By comparison, Oklahoma City involved roughly a rental truck full. The blast also blew out a window on the production team's vehicle. Khare says she now understands what she's up against and why rendering a device safe quickly matters so much.
Why a Bomb Squad Exists
One officer reflects that it's unfortunate a bomb squad is needed, but that human history shows people "are going to do bad things." The video includes archival news audio about the Boston Marathon bombing and the World Trade Center garage bombing. The officer notes that explosive devices can target police, civilians, and many other groups, and describes his own goal as a police officer as helping protect the community and solve problems. Khare says that although her final challenge won't involve a real explosive, imagining doing it for real is "absolutely terrifying."
The Final Challenge
The final scenario is meant to be as close as possible to a real response. A local fire department recently fired an employee who then made several threats. The chief found a toolbox-like package under his car, right under the driver's-side tire. Khare must enter the parking garage, find the item, determine whether it's an active IED, and render it safe if it is.
She asks if she'll have comms in the suit. The answer is no. Someone could build a device that reacts to radio frequencies, so a radio transmission could set it off. She makes the Long Walk alone. She says every step "feels like molasses," that her body is very hot while her hands are freezing, and that she has trouble seeing. She places the X-ray panel and positions the X-ray. She is unsure she got it right, and has to move away within 60 seconds of setting it. She says the residual fatigue from the week is catching up with her.
The image comes out. She identifies a battery connected to a switch, and with the instructor's help recognizes it as a micro switch. The wires lead into "something dark and mysterious" that they agree looks like it could be a plastic explosive. The instructor walks her through the logic. The switch is triggered when the lid opens, so the one thing she must not do is open the lid. With the device confirmed as an active IED, she has to use rigging to move it away from the vehicle. The device isn't a real explosive, but it is fitted with sensors and alarms. If it would have detonated, the alarm goes off and she instantly fails.
The rigging is long and tense. She says she thought it took about three hours; it was about an hour. She gets the package to the target location and sets up the disruptor. After the fire-in-the-hole calls, she presses the button. When they inspect the result, the battery, the initiator, and the explosive have been separated, with the team noting the pieces are around 25 feet apart. The mission is accomplished.
The squad gives her a plaque naming her an honorary member of the Arapahoe County bomb squad, and thanks her for bringing attention to their work. Khare says she hopes viewers understand what a privilege it is to have a bomb squad in their communities. She closes with her own description of the suit: it feels like being Boo from Monsters, Inc. in her monster disguise, "except that costume weighs 65 lb."
This week on Challenge Accepted, I am going to Bomb Squad Academy. Are you ready? No, Brian, I am not ready.
We'll be detonating real explosives. My God. And learning how to disable those explosives to render them safe. Cut the red wire, cut the blue wire thing, that's kind of a myth. So we're literally shooting a projectile at a bomb? For the most part, yeah.
All while wearing a 65-pound bomb suit. My legs are shaking right now just standing. And this all leads up to my final challenge, where I will have to disable a bomb completely by myself before time runs out.
You're completely alone, wearing a 65-pound suit with limited mobility, heading for an unknown situation which could be very dangerous or deadly. Oh my God. Challenge accepted.
Hi. Good morning. Hi, Brian. I'm Brad. Brian and Brad. Brian and Brad on the bomb squad. I love all the alliteration. Did you guys plan that? We didn't, but there's actually a lot of Brians on the bomb squad. Are there any Michelles? There's not. Not yet. Not yet.
So what you're going to do right now is our physical assessment that we put all of our new recruits through. In order to pass, I will have to run a quarter mile while completing a series of difficult tasks, tasks that will test my endurance, dexterity, and memory, all in under 17 minutes.
We actually affectionately refer to the helmet you're going to be wearing as the dumb bucket, because the dumb bucket, when you put that on, a lot of the stuff that you've got in your head just kind of goes out the window. So you've got to concentrate to remember things. So we're going to test your memory.
And if I don't pass the test, I won't be allowed to continue the rest of the academy because my body cannot safely endure the mental and physical strain imposed by the 65-pound bomb suit.
So this is the bomb suit. Okay. The first thing you're going to put on are the pants. Okay. The point of the physical agility test is to intentionally stress the candidate. Your brain has to be able to work while you're physically exhausted.
And then just put it on your head. There we go. You look quite contained. It feels like I have a bowling ball in my head. Am I yelling right now? A little bit, but that's okay. Oh my God. This is going to feel a little bit like it's choking you out for a second.
Because that's going to be her first time putting the suit on, first time feeling that 65 pounds of weight on her shoulders. All right, you're in it. How's it feel? How does it feel? I feel like a drunk Michelin Man.
God. Michelle, are you ready for the assessment? I suppose we'll find out very soon. Michelle, there is one more thing that I didn't tell you. To start this whole thing, you're going to be on your back on the ground. Yep. So that exercise is used to simulate something blew up and you fell on your back and you have to get up. So that's how you're going to start this whole thing. Okay. Probably a bad time to say I have to pee, I'm guessing.
Okay. Right, chin up. There you go. Oh my God. Oh my God. Michelle, are you ready? All right, Brian, I am not ready. So when you are ready, your time starts when you physically move, and your number is one.
This feels so awkward, so heavy. This part here is just simulating the long walk. You've left your team at the truck, and you are walking towards your objective. On a real call, you'd be all alone. It'd be you and your equipment.
So the long walk is possibly either the scariest or the best part of being a bomb tech. You walk alone, probably at least 300 feet down to where the suspicious item is, thinking about, what am I going to find? What do I need to do to keep myself safe? What do I need to do to keep the public safe?
There's so much weight on my lungs. There is just... Breathing is difficult. Each obstacle is designed to test a different aspect of being a bomb tech and is inspired by real-life situations a bomb tech would encounter out on the job.
And once you touch that silver pole, you're done. Good, drop the... Oh, I'm sweating. So next, Michelle's going to pick up some equipment.
I knew the bomb suit would be difficult because of the weight, but what I didn't really account for is how much the suit limits your visibility. You probably can't see much past the top of that chest plate, can you? Correct. You can see she's reaching around. She doesn't even know where that pole she's reaching for is. She can't see it.
While holding this heavy and awkward equipment, I have to take another full lap around the track before starting my next task. We're at five minutes and 40 seconds right now. Almost there. Ten more yards.
And after being completely exhausted from the lap, I still had to remember the number I was given at the beginning of the challenge and point the laser at it. That's it. You're good to go. You're at seven minutes right now. One more lap.
This might be a bad idea, but I am going to try and run. You're going to try and run? All right. Braver than I. That's impressive, Michelle. That's impressive. You're doing great. This is like deadlifting and running a tent on the trip at the same time.
Having been warned of the difficulty of this test beforehand, I actually spent the weeks prior strength training in preparation. And if you're curious what my strength conditioning looked like for this challenge, I uploaded my exact program to my fitness app, Challenge Fitness, which you can find down in the description.
The next activity she's going to do, we have what we call a monkey board. Basically, it's a piece of plywood with a bunch of different activities on it. There you go. Oh my God. She's going to have to demonstrate her ability to use basic tools to do things like open a lock. Not my first time doing locks. Undo a bolt. Remove screws.
God, I feel like a baby trying to do this. It's amazing how much that suit will all of a sudden make simple tasks that much more difficult. Okay, last one. The wires. Strip the insulation off both sides. Twist it together around that eyebolt. One, two, three. Nice, you're done.
And then the last thing we're going to have her do, we're going to have her climb some stairs. So we're going to get that heart rate way up, and then there's going to be a suspicious device sitting there, and she's going to have 20 seconds, that's it, to look all the way around that device and memorize as many things as she can about that.
Green, red, lift for you, red tape. Time. And then she's going to come out to me at the truck and have to tell me everything she can remember about that device.
Time. Woohoo! 15:43 was your time. All right, how are you feeling? Awful. Let's get this jacket off, get you some air.
All right, so your last task: tell me what you remember about that box. Okay, the top has a green light thing, and then underneath, a red light thing, and it said, "Lift for you," with red tape. And then underneath there was a red bar. Cool. Good job. You passed. So I passed? Passed, yes. That was so challenging. So what's next? So next, we're going to test your fear. Huh?
Within minutes of finishing the agility test, I now have to put the bomb suit back on, but this time in addition to a hazmat suit to simulate dealing with a chemical threat.
Really, what this test is designed to do is test her ability to work around her fear. We're going to put her in a hazmat suit, and then we're going to put the bomb suit over the top of that. We're going to strap an SCBA bottle to her back and put a gas mask on her face that she has to breathe through.
Stand up. My legs are shaking right now just standing. It is a lot of weight. With all this stuff that we're putting on her, we're almost going to double her body weight. I can do this. Oh my God. You can do it. I can do it.
Then, if that's not enough, we're going to put her inside of a dark shipping container and seal her in. Then I'm going to give her an incredibly simple children's puzzle.
Okay, here we go. Children's puzzle. And it is going to take her a ridiculously long amount of time to complete a children's puzzle. Oh no, that's a trick. There's trick sides. This one goes here. Here's the next move. Okay, I think I got two. Woo! That's the ear. Got this cat.
This is so uncomfortable. I feel so claustrophobic, and it just feels like it's getting heavier and heavier by the second. It's hard to see. Obviously, she's wearing the gas mask plus the visor helmet for the EOD 10. The SCBA, it's not natural air. It's hard to breathe. So that's something that you have to constantly think about: A, to conserve air, and B, to calm yourself.
My legs are shaking, and all I'm doing is standing. Yes! Oh yeah. Right now, she's been in there for approximately ten minutes. Effectively, she has about 25 to 30 minutes' worth of air.
Again, I cannot see what I'm doing, so basically I will make a decision on what to do, and then I look away and pray that my hand does what I just thought. Bam! Yes! Oh my gosh, one last piece. I am so excited to get out of here. I'm ready for Tov check. That's a pass. All right, let's go. Oh my gosh.
Been in there for about 14 minutes. That's an excellent time. Yay! So now that you've passed both of the physical assessments, you've got the experience of how the bomb suit feels. Now we're going to give you some practical experience on how to defuse and recognize devices and render them safe.
The blue. The biggest misconception about what bomb squads do, it's what we see in the media all the time. It's go down, put your face next to something, and cut the red wire. We're almost never going to go down and actually put our physical hands on a device and clip whatever you want.
Now, who can tell me what he did wrong? He made up a song about cutting wires. He made up a song about cutting wires. Unless there is a human life that I can't move away from that suspicious device, I'm never going to go touch it with my hands until I know it's safe to do so. So that's where the cutting-the-wire thing comes from? That's where the cutting-the-wire thing comes from.
And that's when I realized that my idea of what bombs look like and how they're disabled is almost entirely based in fiction. Bombs that we encounter, they don't look like a lot of the stuff we see in the media, right? They're not the sticks of dynamite with a timer on top and a red wire going to a detonator. They look like a box, a backpack. They look like everyday items.
IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, are composed of a variety of components, often everyday items, that work together to cause damage or injury when detonated. And it's the job of a bomb tech to separate those components so that the IED can no longer go off. And they do this by using a device called a PAN disrupter.
A percussion-actuated non-electric. You don't need to remember that. What our idea is with disruption is to hopefully make it so that these components are no longer touching, so they can't function together anymore.
This is a 12-gauge shotgun barrel. Oh, we're actually going to shoot something out of here? Yes. What we'll do is we'll put a blank in, and then we'll fill the barrel with water. You had this package earlier. Yeah. And we were aiming the laser. Yep. You aimed the laser. That's going to shoot that water into that package, and as it comes out, the water is going to expand. It's going to rip that package apart, and it's going to hopefully accomplish our task. So we're literally shooting a water projectile at a bomb? For the most part, yeah.
But the only way to determine if a suspicious package is an IED is by confirming that it has all the components necessary to detonate. And to figure that out safely, the first task in any bomb threat call is to take an X-ray.
And then that's your X-ray panel right there. Cool. So that gets X-ray imprinted on it. So this gets placed behind the package. We shoot the X-rays through the package and onto the film. And then you go and pick up your X-ray panel without touching... Without touching the package. There you go. So now we'll go into the truck, and we'll develop these. The red lights. This is our scan developer.
Wow. Like this? Yep. And it'll start sucking it through. So you can see it scanning in here. Now we have one complete image. What kind of things do you immediately see? That looks like a battery. Battery, that's exactly what it is.
Does this look like anything you recognize from earlier? Think about the box that was up at the top of the stairs. Ooh, like one of the lights sticking out on the outside. That's an LED. All right, what else do you see that you recognize? That looks like a roll of measuring tape. Close. Look at it a little bit differently. Is it a kitchen timer? It's a kitchen timer. Yep. Good job.
All right, what about this guy? Does this look familiar to you at all? No. Have you ever taken the cover plate off of an electrical outlet or electrical switch at home? Oh, is that what it is on the inside? Mm-hmm. This is the switch. That's a toggle switch on a... So this is just an example of things we could see in an X-ray in the final challenge? Yep. This itself is not a device. We don't have the explosive materials. Yeah, it's not a bomb. There's no bomb.
But if an X-ray does show that the device is an IED, the next step is to safely move it away from any property or civilians. And the safest way to do that is through the use of robots.
Good morning. Rob Porath, Arapahoe County Bomb Squad. Well, first of all, I know we just met, but I have a question. Go ahead. Do you go by Bob? Because it starts with a B, and everyone's name on the bomb squad starts... Right. My name's Robert, but a lot of the guys do call me Bobby.
Let's talk robots. Yes. So today I'm going to drive this? You are going to drive this. Robots allow us to do some analysis on a suspicious item without ever having to send a human down there. If I blow up a robot, yeah, they're expensive, but they're not a human.
All right, let's start with just some basic driving. This stick right here, push forward on it and see what the robot does. See, it's starting to move. Yeah. Push to the left. Bring it towards us. That gets it to turn. All with that simple stick right there? Right. Okay. Cameras are located here. Push that one. That is your gripper camera.
So now let's talk about maybe some arm functions. Press that button down there. That is moving the arm and the shoulder at the same time. And you can even move just the wrist, and you can also go up and down. Wow. Let's try to pick up that water bottle down there. You're on the right track. Oh! Feel like you have a good grip? I think so. Beautiful. Yay! Now I can bring a water bottle to Garrett. Are you thirsty, Garrett? Wait, don't take it. Let me offer it to you.
So what's next? We want you to run an obstacle course that we have set up, but you're going to do it blind. And by blind, I mean your eyes are the robot's, actually. Okay. Okay, so we have the robot positioned at start. What are the rules and objectives for this obstacle course?
First off, you're not allowed to hit any of the cones. There's a bridge that you're going to go over. It's a wooden bridge. Don't fall off of that. Once you make it to the end of the course, you need to find your suspicious item. Your mission is to use the robot to pick up that pipe bomb, and you're going to place it into a fragmentation bag. Oh. And there's one other rule. Okay. Do not break my robot. Okay.
Three, two, one, go. Oh, this perspective is so difficult to use. Okay, I'm approaching the bridge. Don't fall off that bridge. How expensive is this robot? $75,000 for this one.
Well, as you guys know, these videos are expensive to make, so I want to say a huge thank you to SoFi, who is sponsoring this video and literally helping me give away $10,000 to one of you watching. Bob, do you SoFi? I don't. Well, let me tell you why you should.
In case you didn't know, SoFi is the all-in-one finance app that lets you bank, borrow, and invest. With SoFi Checking and Savings, you can earn up to 4.60% APY with direct deposit, which is ten times the national average savings rate. Isn't that crazy? That is. Yeah. And in just five weeks, the money sitting in your savings account can earn more money than it would in an entire year at a big bank savings account. Who are you currently banking with? We'll bleep it.
Oh, oh, oh, there's the bomb. Okay, I'm going for it. Here we go. Did you know that SoFi lets you get paid up to two days early, pay no account fees, and cash in on up to $300 when you sign up with direct deposit? Go on, tell me more.
Oh, I missed it. My depth perception is off. Well, the best news is SoFi has helped me give away $10,000 to one of you guys watching to pursue whatever your dream ambition is. Grabbing the bottom nut and going back.
To enter, sign up for a SoFi Checking and Savings account right now using my link. You can click the link in the description or scan the QR code on screen to enter for your chance to
Win. Just make sure to use my link because it's the only way to enter for a chance to win. Oh no. Oh God. So I want to say a huge thank you to SoFi for sponsoring this portion of the video and literally making this whole thing possible.
Oh, I missed. So that was bad. That was bad. I was right at the finish line. Potentially an explosion where you don't want it to happen.
However, robots are not always available, and so sometimes bomb techs will instead have to use a much more dangerous option, a technique known as rigging.
So let's go look over here. Okay, if we wanted to take this box to where we were just standing, and if you were to just hook this line right up to this, what's going to happen as soon as you start pulling? It's going to hit these. Going to hit these. It's going to get stuck, right? So we have some tools in our rigging kit that allow us to change direction.
This pulley right here is designed to open up and break away. So we can put this ball on the rope here. So now if we run this rope through this pulley, as you're pulling along, as that ball goes through, that pulley opens. Then just clip on that carabiner, attach to the handle there, and then let's go back to where we started, and you can pull it. There you go.
Oh, that would be really bad. What do we do in this situation? So we would come back down and fix it. And why is this better than me just picking it up? So in a situation like what just happened, moving this is still potential to anger it. So you picking it up, you might still could set it off.
So it changed direction, and now it's coming right back to you.
These techniques are crucial to do with precision because even a slight miscalculation could be devastating. And so engineers are constantly improving the technology of bomb suits to keep the technician inside safe.
We have in the museum at our sheriff's office an old, old bomb suit. It looks like a combination between the Iron Man suit and a knight in shining armor suit. It's literally got slits in the eyes.
But even with modern bomb suits, a bomb tech's feet and hands are actually still exposed.
She's going to realize that we don't have gloves on when we're in the suit. We don't have a lot of protection on our feet. So if something goes wrong, even if I survive, I might come out of it without hands. I might come out of it without feet. I might come out of it with severe injuries. That's one of the realities I have to accept, and that's a reality that my family had to accept also.
One of the activities we're going to do with Michelle this week is we're going to take her out to our explosive range. We're going to demonstrate to her the effects of explosives.
And although this is a controlled demonstration set up by professionals, we have to treat the tests as a serious danger because when it comes to explosives, anything can happen.
Coming down. So we're going to start small. We're going to show very small explosives, very small energetic items.
First I need to show you is this. The button. These are the buttons. The button. The buttons. So you're going to hold down charge until the green light lights up, and then you're going to push fire. I got very scared when you pushed that. Just like so.
What I need from you first: left, downrange, and right. Okay. Fire in the hole. Loud. Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! All right, now hold down charge until you get a green light. And then press fire at the same time? Yep. Good.
Whoa! Oh, it actually looks really cool. It makes so much smoke. Happy Fourth of July! Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Fire in the hole. It sounds so weird.
That was a good one, right? I didn't have my glasses on. Oh no. You're okay behind the trucks.
Then we're going to work our way up to some pretty big charges. When I say big charges, it's not a large amount of material, but it's very powerful material. We're going to use the actual explosive that was used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
A massive car bomb exploded outside of a large federal building in downtown Oklahoma City, shattering that building, killing 168 people, including 19 children. It was a huge explosion, and the explosive used was most likely a simple combination of fertilizer and fuel oil.
The explosives used in the Oklahoma City bombing, so we've got some of that. That's what's in this big bag down here. Wow. It was well publicized in those days that it was basically fertilizer. That's what this is. This will look very much like the fertilizer you put in your lawn, the white pills, but it's also an explosive when it's mixed with a fuel. And we're going to show how an incredibly small amount of that explosive, what damage it does. So you can basically translate that into someone who has thousands of pounds of that doing bad things.
We're armed. Oh my God, this is crazy. You guys ready? Here we go. Fire in the hole! Woo! Coming down. Whoa!
It's all right. So for reference, this is how deep we are. Wow. So this is about 12 pounds of ammonium nitrate. What they used in Oklahoma City was significantly more than that. It was basically a rental truck full. So if this is what just 12 pounds and a couple little bags will do, thank goodness that those things don't happen every day.
Now I know what I am up against and why it's so important to render safe quickly.
It's unfortunate we have a need for a bomb squad, but unfortunately history through the existence of mankind has proved to us that humans are going to do bad things.
At the Boston Marathon, twin explosions shatter a celebration, turning a day of joy into a deadly nightmare. But the real horror story here was in the garage level of the World Trade Center. That's where the explosion was, and they found people dead, trapped in their cars.
So we have to have units like the bomb squad to go out and deal with these things. Explosive devices, they can target police officers. They can target civilians. They can target all kinds of different entities. And my initial goal being a police officer is help protect the community, help solve problems.
Oh my God, no. The window blew out on our production van from that explosion.
So for my final challenge, obviously I won't be dealing with a real explosive device. However, when I imagine having to do that with these ramifications in real life, it's absolutely terrifying.
Michelle's final challenge this week, we're going to present her with as close as possible a real bomb response. A local fire department recently fired an employee. This employee has made several threats. When the chief walked out to his vehicle, he found a toolbox underneath his car. There is the package right underneath the driver's side tire.
Okay. Will I have comms in the suit? Something we haven't covered yet, interestingly, why you're not going to have comms: someone could theoretically build a device that's sensitive to radio frequencies. So if you were to have comms down there, you could potentially set something off. We don't want to do that.
My mission is to enter the parking garage, locate the suspicious item, and then determine if it's an active IED. If it is, it'll be my responsibility to use the tools at my disposal to render it safe.
All right, if you're ready, it's time to get you suited up. I'm ready. Let's do it.
When I'm walking down the long walk, I'm alone, wearing a 65-pound suit with limited mobility, heading for an unknown situation which could be very dangerous or deadly. If something goes wrong, I could be severely injured. I could lose my life, and that's a reality I have to accept.
Every step feels like molasses.
Oh my God.
Body is so warm. My hands are freezing cold. Where is it? Okay, here's the car. There's a silver Ford. Put the panel down first. Okay, put the X-ray down.
I can't see. Okay, I think this is in the right position. I have 60 seconds before I have to get up, though, so that I'm far enough away from the X-ray.
I hope I did that right. I really hope I did. Okay, let's see what's in the box. You go pull it all the way through. I'm still catching my breath. It's tiring. It's just all the residual fatigue is just catching up to me.
We've got an image. Did it work? It worked. Yay! All right, what do you see? Immediately tell me what you see. I see a battery right there. Right. And it looks like it is connected to a switch. Okay. Do you remember what kind of switch that is? Microswitch. It's a microswitch. Where are these wires going? Into something dark and mysterious in the back. Is that C4? It looks to be potentially some sort of plastic explosive, right?
Is this device safe to move? I mean, the switch there, it makes me nervous. But you diagnosed that switch correctly. What has to happen for that switch? It has to be unlocked. Yep. The lid has to be open. So what's the only thing that you should not do to this? Open it. Open the lid.
Now that we have confirmed that the device is an active IED, I now need to use rigging to safely move the device away from the truck to avoid the destruction of property. And though this device is not a real explosive, it is rigged with sensors and alarms that will go off to signify that it has been detonated, resulting in an instant failure.
Here. Here. I should carry it.
Okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, put it in here.
Okay, do this. This.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Hell yeah!
Welcome back. How are you feeling? Exhausted.
All right, how long was that? Like three hours later? It's about an hour. That was a long one. You got the package where we wanted it. Hope so. You got the disruptor set up. Yeah. All right, it's time to push the button.
This button is going to feel so satisfying to push after all that. I just hope it works. I do too. All right, we need some fires in the hole from you. Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire button's right there. Please work.
Oh, I really hope that worked. Me too. Holy smokes. Holy cow. The battery. There's the battery. It's the initiator and the explosive.
Okay, it needs to be 25 feet apart. Here we go.
Mission accomplished! Yes! You kicked butt. For all your hard work, your dedication, we want to present you with this plaque. Honorary member. Honorary member of the Arapahoe County squad. Thank you so much for bringing attention to what we do.
I really, really hope that everyone watching can see what a privilege it is to have a bomb squad in our communities, especially one like this, where you guys are just incredible. It's our pleasure. Thanks again. Thank you.
After this whole week, I finally realized how to accurately describe what it feels like to be in the suit. Do tell. Feels like being Boo in Monsters, Inc. when she's disguised as a monster, except that costume weighs 65 pounds. Let's get you out of this, Boo. Yay!
Article published · Updated