Comment by jjk166
Can the average person tell the difference between a pager battery and a bomb professionally made to look like a pager battery?
Can the average person tell the difference between a pager battery and a bomb professionally made to look like a pager battery?
The tampered pager likely looks nearly identical, and even un-tampered pagers will vary a little bit from manufacturing. It's possible an expert might be able to visually distinguish that a particular strand of wire is the wrong gauge or the soldering pattern suggests it wasn't made on the appropriate machine, but there shouldn't be something obvious.
presumably the only difference between an explosive-laden battery and a normal battery is it's capacity. All else will appear identical. And tearing down the battery to inspect it destroys the battery.
Lot's of pager batteries are the shrink-wrapped cylinders with 2+ cells, so I'm guessing it might be possible to dress up one of those cells as a dummy w/ explosives instead.
Probably not but the average person can buy a pager with a replaceable battery and buy a new one over the counter.
Assuming the stock of replaceable batteries is large enough to handle them all being replaced simultaneously, that the replacement batteries are not likewise compromised, and that the battery is indeed the compromised component.
Realistically just replacing the pagers is not only safer but also probably cheaper.
You only need to vet what the inside of a pager should look like once, and spread the knowledge around... using them will become more of a hassle, but not entirely impossible.