One dead, seven injured as Cybertruck explodes outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas
www.theverge.com
The vehicle was parked directly outside the hotel doors.

A Cybertruck ‘blew up’ outside Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas

  • BadlyTimedLuck@lemmy.world
    51·
    7 days ago

    Wait, your telling me this was on purpose? I just thought the cyberjunk was so shit, someone visiting the building just HAPPENED to blow up

    • psud@aussie.zone
      34·
      6 days ago

      The vehicle’s battery was not damaged and did not catch fire.

      The cargo area was full of fuel and explosives - in the form of firework mortars.

      Explosives and fuel make a good fireball and fire. Fireworks being a 2 stage explosive (launch and pretty explosion), they may have expected the initial bang to disburse the fuel and the second to detonate it as a fuel/air explosive which would be very damaging, enough to take down the building.

      Obviously were that their goal they did not sufficiently test. The vehicle contained the initial explosion and all they got was a fire

      And the blast and fire exited through the passenger cabin, killing the driver. I hope it wasn’t a valet.

      I wonder if it was triggered accidentally early or badly set up and detonated on its own or remotely triggered too early.

      I bet they thought they’d light up the battery. Poor quality bombers

      • perestroika@lemm.ee
        7·
        6 days ago

        Poor quality bombers

        I’ve seen a source (poor quality source, won’t quote) that identifies the likely suspect as a former green beret. Also, CNN says:

        Authorities suspect that the driver had a background in military service, according to several law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.

        They should not be poor quality bombers. In fact, they should be able to build a decent bomb by heart in several ways, if they learned anything at all.

        I’m at loss regarding what this guy actually intended to happen, and whether he achieved that.

        • Hypothesis A, inspired by claims of links to the New Orleans attack: failed terrorist suicide bombing?
        • Hypothesis B: intended to do big time vandalism and live, but something went wrong?
        • Hypothesis C: some sort of a suicide pact?
        • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
          10·
          6 days ago

          Military experience doesn’t necessarily equate to McGyvering. I did a tour as an Army scout. I can shoot a lot of weapons, use knives and other non pyrotechnic weapons, set-up mines, claymores, use plastic, even creative uses for mortar rounds and grenades, but we were never given training on things like making bombs out of windex and a mars bar

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
            2·
            6 days ago

            Military experience is so random sometimes. I was in the regular, not special in any way, infantry and came away with how to do everything for an IED from make the ANFO, to putting it together, and how to hit a moving vehicle with it. To be fully honest it was also quite a while ago and now some of it is pretty vague in my head. But I would be unsurprised to find out other people kept notes from those days.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          2·
          6 days ago

          The presence of fuel suggests he wanted to do major damage but did not know how to properly capitalize on it’s use. Sadly special operations guys are at high risk for CTE stuff. So it’s entirely possible he was living a distorted reality.

    • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      There are reports of a firework mortar and gas canister in the back. Looks very intentional and showy from the video. Stupid way to end one’s life, but that was part of it I think as well.

  • andyortlieb@lemmy.sdf.org
    591·
    7 days ago

    The weirdest thing about a cybertruck bomb is that the world has become so shit that it’s not even interesting. Like, I just cannot care because every day something insane happens.

    That’s the real fucking signal IMO.

  • moopet@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    37·
    6 days ago

    It’s like the opposite of early-2000s games, where the car models had an ever-growing poly count but the fire was still an animated 2d sprite.

      • psud@aussie.zone
        5·
        7 days ago

        The explosion looked like it included fireworks and the fire looked like a liquid fuel fire - movie explosions are petrol (gasoline) bombs

        The vehicle contained it all pretty well, with the main exit for force and fire was via the window between the trunk and the cabin

        • lurklurk@lemmy.world
          1·
          7 days ago

          The vehicle contained it all pretty well, with the main exit for force and fire was via the window between the trunk and the cabin

          Engineered like a tank… but the tank is a T72

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
    22·
    7 days ago

    Says a lot that like nobody knew what to make of it until the propane tanks were found.

    Its still unclear if the driver intended for it to explode or if somebody tossed a bunch of flammables in the back and the truck lit it.

    • hansolo@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      6 days ago

      Thinking this through, they probably filled the car with gas until they couldn’t breathe and then hit the firework mortar to set it all off. Also gives them a higher chance of ending it all then, as opposed to the “oops, all fire!” version, which would have been a lingering way to go.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    13·
    7 days ago

    That entrance doesn’t even look 2nd rate, it looks more like a 3rd rate hotel.
    I thought Trump liked things to look expensive, but this looks like it’s built with the cheapest of the cheapest standard parts available.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      this looks like it’s built with the cheapest of the cheapest standard parts available.

      That’s on brand for Trump. A thin veneer of flashiness hastily slapped onto a decaying carcass.

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
    7·
    7 days ago

    the fire was put out within an hour

    How does that work? I thought that with electrical car battery fires, you basically just had to spray water to keep it cool until it was done with what it wanted to do.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
      3·
      7 days ago

      Thats one option, but just because the battery caught fire doesn’t mean the entire battery pack is going to catch fire.

      There are fire walls in the battery, so if you get to it in time, you could cool it off and prevent a breach of the next firewall, and then the fire will be stopped when those existing cells use all their energy.

      Within an hour doesn’t seem unreasonable in that case if everything went right.

        • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
          1·
          6 days ago

          Oh, I assumed the explosion caught the battery on fire. Why would it take an hour to put out then? Wouldn’t it just go out immediately once watered?

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
        2·
        7 days ago

        I saw some gizmo that was supposed to go under the car, puncture the battery compartment from the bottom, and then flood the whole thing with water which was supposed to put the battery out. I couldn’t tell if it was bullshit or not, though.

      • psud@aussie.zone
        1·
        6 days ago

        I think battery fires are self oxidising, you cannot suffocate them. The advice for small lithium cells for radio control toys was stand up wind, ideally have a steel bucket of sand to put it in.

        Also discharge them completely as you can before disposal. The RC batteries had no protection so we could take them to zero volts