'Bottle Bombs' Seen as Prank But Can Be Deadly

HOUSTON - A warning about home-made explosives called “bottle bombs”. They’re usually planted as a prank, but they can be potentially deadly.

An email listing the danger signs has been circulating on the Internet over the past few weeks.

Unlike a lot of those forwards that are full of baloney, this one is legit. And with school getting out, it’s timely too.

As for the bombs, all the ingredients are innocuous - chemicals in your cabinets.

And you don’t give them a second thought.

“They're using household ingredients for this, nothing that they have to really hunt real hard for,” says security consultant Mike Fjetland.

But the results can be dramatic. Even explosive.

We won’t reveal the two main components, but when they’re mixed, they react.

Go to the video-sharing site YouTube, and you can find clips of teenage boys blowing up plastic bottles.

Just last week in Austin, five young men were charged with bottle bombing their teachers’ homes.

The active ingredients, purchased at a local Walmart.

The suspects? All current or former students of Brentwood Christian School.

“If somebody had gone outside and touched one of these, before it exploded, that person could have been seriously injured or even killed,” said Corporal Scott Perry with the Austin Police Department.

Even more malicious are those who plant a bottle with the two components inside — unmixed.

Basically, says Fjetland, it is a bomb just waiting for a victim.

“If you touch it, you move it, you start the chain reaction and you could be holding it when it blows up.”

And if you think that kind of thing just doesn’t happen, well, it already has.

In southwest Houston, in 1993, Lorraine Scalise ended up losing some of her hearing after finding what she thought was litter outside her home.

“I picked up the bottles in the yard and put them on my drain board,” Scalise told FOX 26 at the time. “And then as I was leaving to go through my kitchen to come pick them up, that's when two of the bottles exploded.”

The Houston Bomb Squad was called to collect evidence. But experts say the police should have been called before — not after.

“Have them come out, let them deal with it.”

How do you know when to make that call?

Beware if the bottle contains some liquid and metallic material.

And if the contents start bubbling—and the bottle begins swelling—you are just seconds away from detonation.