By TOI Lifestyle Desk / etimes.in / Updated: Sep 18, 2024, 18:31 IST

An explosion of over 5000 Hezbollah pagers led to at least nine deaths and nearly 2800 injuries. Reports claim Israel's Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside these pagers, ordered by Hezbollah.

At least 9 people were killed and nearly 2800 injured in a massive explosion of more than 5000 Hezbollah pagers. Reportedly, Israel's Mossad spy agency had planted explosives inside 5000 Taiwan-made pagers which were ordered by Hezbollah, Lebanon's militant group five months before this week's detonations, multiple reports claimed, according to senior Lebanese security sources.

At least 9 people were killed and nearly 2800 injured in a massive explosion of more than 5000 Hezbollah pagers "redactor-invisible-space"(Representative Image, Generated with Canva)

Representative Image -Pager (Generated with Canva)

What is a pager?
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A pager, commonly referred to as a 'beeper,' is a small, handheld messaging device that receives short messages, numeric or alphabetic, over radio frequency. Long before the cell phone became the major communication tool, the pager was an indispensable means of communication for professionals such as doctors, journalists, technicians, and managers who needed to get hold of important messages from locations they found themselves in.

The devices allowed important messages and alerts to reach subscribers even when they were far away, keeping them hooked and updated.
The function of pagers was simple yet efficient. The radio wave transmission of a message would have a special beep going off on the pager that would alert the user to respond by finding a public or a landline phone somewhere nearby. That way, no delay was observed in the communication process, which was of utmost importance in all the professional modes.

Date back a pager to when?
The history of pagers can be traced to 1949 with Alfred Gross who patented the first in the United States. The term "pager" was registered by Motorola in 1959. Motorola is one of the early innovators in producing and making popular use of pagers. In 1964, it introduced its first pager, Pageboy 1, permitting an audible alert to be sent over the telephone. This early version of the pager paved the way for future advances in technology.

By the 1980s, pager technology added the ability to send written messages, making them all that much more functional. With such development, pagers became more important in the communication world since users could receive written detailed information besides the alert signals. Even though pagers have been wholly substituted by cell phones in modern society, pagers are a wonderful example of early portable communication technology and their impact on professional communication practices.

Explosions of smartphones occur very seldom and are more or less associated with overheating. Representative Image : Generated with Canva.

How can a pager explode?
Hezbollah shifted to pagers, which they viewed as more secure than smartphones, mainly due to surveillance fears coming from Israeli intelligence. Pagers have simple hardware which is much harder to track than smartphone hardware and less prone to digital hacking. Still, the same underlying core technology — that of lithium-ion batteries that powers both pagers and smartphones and this technology carries inherent risks.

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used because they have high energy density and are rechargeable, but failure mechanisms are not an exception either. Overheating conditions due to excess heat, overcharging, or physical damage. In very rare cases, this results in a battery explosion. Manufacture defects and design weaknesses are significant contributors to the problem.

For instance, explosions of smartphones occur very seldom and are more or less associated with overheating due to protracted use or external damage as well as faulty components. These appear to be more incidents of a production/ manufacturing or usage nature rather than an orchestrated attack.

The Hezbollah pager explosions present a more diabolical scenario, perhaps devices set up with explosives material by tampering during manufacturing. An NYT report stated that Israel hid explosives in a shipment of pagers ordered from Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo; Gold Apollo has since denied the media reports.

It was said to have a detonating switch installed that could detonate them remotely. If this approach is applied to smartphones, it will be a rather subtle interference in the supply chain or a method that would explode from a remote distance, probably due to a coordinated radio signal or an electronic pulse.

Editor Comments.

The idea itself and the long planned special order from Taiwan allowing a space for later insertion of explosives was not only cunning but also evil against innocent users. Batteries had to be present for the normal use until the communal button was executed causing the explosions. Planning and execution obviously by Israeli know-hows. QUE BONO?