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Just wait til someone invents the first practical incendiary drone that can be easily made on a consumer 3D printer.
In principle, it's quite simple. All a drone has to do is take off, travel to a fixed set of GPS coordinates, land, and then activate an incendiary of some kind. Maybe a thermite charge, maybe something simpler to set off.
This tech already exists due to the Ukraine conflict. But to my knowledge, it's never been packaged in a form that's easily replicable by an average random person in their home. But I see no reason why it couldn't be. And when it does, all Hell's going to break loose.
On the more class liberation side, it will make burning down the assets of the rich much, much easier and harder to stop. On the other hand, it will also make it easier for fascists to target those resisting fascism. You're an activist of some sort. One night, a drone lands on your roof at 2 AM and sets fire to your house. Who did it? Who knows. Good luck finding out.
Hell, on a large scale, this will make it possible for a single individual to cause a disaster on the scale of the firebombing of Dresden. Consider the extremely dry weather and accompanying fires in Los Angeles. That moment, when the city was dry as tinder and the winds were blowing strong. Imagine if at that moment, someone had decided to release a few thousand incendiary drones on the city. Maybe they saved them up, just for this purpose. Consider how valiantly the fire fighters there worked to protect Los Angeles. And now imagine an alternate history where at that moment 5,000 structure fires erupted simultaneously across the city, including multiples started on the roof of every fire station.
The technology already exists. It's just a matter of someone figuring out how to package it in an accessible form. When that happens, God help us all.
Cheap gps enabled drones are very plentiful on the internet. You don't need to 3d print anything except maybe the parts to hold the bomb. Just need to reprogram them to have them go to a fixed point and trigger a relay with an explosive. It's trivial, and the fact that it is not common for most people with the skills to do it is because they have a lot to lose if they are caught. Once you take away enough rights and liberties that smart techy people have nothing left to lose then you will see more remote drone attacks.
This is the reason the federal government has been trying to ban drone companies like DJI, they are afraid of the cheap throw away bomb delivery vehicles.
Buying the Drone leads to easier tracing. They can investigate anyone who bought any Drone for a certain amount of time. But printing one of your own and having far less traceable electronic components makes that job much harder.
https://lemmy.world/comment/15454137
Given the safety record, you could probably drive by and throw a ballpeen hammer at them
2 am high-speed Molotov cocktail?
There are plenty of low tech solutions to some problems.
Those are pretty damn traceable. There are cameras everywhere. Even if you manage to burn a building down, the buildings next door and every building for blocks around have cameras. Plate reader cameras are everywhere. Etc. It is almost impossible to move through a city in a vehicle in a way that cannot be traced. If you cover your license plate, then you have to worry about being pulled over just for that. And even if you making your plate invisible, you still have to worry about your face being visible through the windscreen. Hell, they might be able to just track your vehicle, one camera to the next, all the way back to your front door. You could try doing this on foot or bicycle, but look at how well that worked for Luigi.
Compare that to a drone. You go for a hike into the woods in a city park or reserve, in a city hours from where you live. In your backpack, you have the drone. You carry the drone to a remote clearing in the woods that is rarely if ever visited. You leave the drone in the clearing. Three days later at 2 in the morning, at a time you conveniently have an air-tight alibi, the drone's timer activates, it flies upward, and goes on its mission. In the unlikely event that the drone is discovered before it launches, have a self-destruct mechanism built it. Once placed, have it enter an "armed" state. If the drone is moved or picked up by someone, have it audibly broadcast a warning. Literally "this drone will self destruct in 20 seconds." Then it counts down and sets off the incendiary, immolating itself.
Hell, if you were clever enough, you might even manage to launch such a drone from hundreds of miles away. Have it travel from one remote rooftop to another. Launch it from a different state. Have it fly to different remote locations or rooftops, flying as far as it can on each hop. Then land and charge its batteries for the next leg.
These things will make very terrifying weapons. They allow someone to commit an act of destruction with far far less traceability than any other method.
Three days
There’s a lot of parts in there that may be traceable
Only to a certain extent. What's key is that those parts have applications far outside drones. You might even be able to scavenge the non-printable components from old electronics bought for cash at thrift stores, craigslist, Facebook marketplace, etc. There's a big difference in the traceability of a generic motor that can be used for thousands of applications vs. a fully assembled drone. Hell, if you want to go full unabomber, you could draw your own wires, wind your own motors, and use chips salvaged from old GPS navigation devices and cell phones, everything bought in cash.
The other big issue with traceability is that these devices would be deliberately intended to cause a large fire. They would be far less traceable than a bomb. A bomb blows itself to pieces, but it still leaves many fragments. An incendiary? If it works, the entire building it lands on will be reduced to ashes. There will be precious little of that drone remaining, especially considering that it will be at the very center of the fire.
Like I said, "nothing to lose" sure they may be able to trace it but by then they are fighting for their life against all odds. Also they could have a "freedom fighter team" where they buy the drones 2nd hand, in bulk, illegally, or just steal them. This would not be a covert operation, it would be a rebel force.
Something like that would be damn near untraceable. As long as you are far away enough and are long gone before anyone notices... and maybe even have a timer to start to give you even more time to disappear they would never be able to find you.
This goes double if you are in an area without a lot of cameras and thus video surveillance canvassing won't be of much else.
You could even launch it from an extreme distance away. Launch it from the middle of a state forest, in a different state from the target. Have it programmed to fly to a remote location at the limit of its range, then land in a discreet location. Charge its batteries via solar power, then go again. A drone could hopscotch its way to target hundreds of miles away with this method. If you're worried about a drone successfully making it, then launch a dozen of them. You could even build in a self-destruct mechanism. If the drone ever becomes stuck, or if someone tries to pick it up or move it, have it literally announce "this drone will self-destruct in 20 seconds." As soon as anyone picks it up, this sequence activates. it gives a warning and then sets off the incendiary. Every incendiary drone has a built-in self-destruct.