Getting text messages from your service provider is incredibly annoying. Especially if you are a suicide bomber, and your bomb is triggered by incoming texts. As one Russian woman learned the hard way.
You know how kids are always "sexting" each other these days? Well, so are Russian Muslim extremists! Except, instead of "sexts," "suicide bombs detonated via SMS." See, a lot of suicide bombers—in Russia and elsewhere—trigger their bombs via text messages to cell phones wired to the explosives. The thing is, though, you have to keep your phone off until the right moment. Because if you get an errant text ("wat r u doin"), you will blow up.
According to The Telegraph, Russian authorities believe a would-be suicide bomber did not follow this advice so well:
The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt on a busy square near Red Square on New Year's Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.
Security sources believe a spam message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her but nobody else.
So: Turns out unwanted texts from your mobile provider can actually save lives. And yet, they're still not worth it.
[Telegraph; image via Shutterstock]
Send an email to Max Read, the author of this post, at max@gawker.com.
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