Topic: Does this look like a bomb?

[SkepticalSlug]

That looks like the prototype of BlackBerry's upcoming tablet.

[Sordid]

Wow. Just wow. How fucked up does the world have to be for a bunch of people to look at a picture of some random junk in a shopping cart and seriously discuss whether or not it's suspicious and potentially a bomb? It's a pile of random junk, obviously so! What the fuck is wrong with you, Canada?

[spawnstar]

I'd have to say no. It seems to missing a couple of important components from what I can see.

An I.E.D. is pretty easy to make, in the image the wiring is too complicated for an amatuer and too messy for a professional. That's assuming it isn't just randomly joined which would be my assumption. It always makes sense to err on the side of caution though. Best case scenario the bomb squad get to play with their toys on some harmless junk.

[Desert Fox]

Wow. Just wow. How fucked up does the world have to be for a bunch of people to look at a picture of some random junk in a shopping cart and seriously discuss whether or not it's suspicious and potentially a bomb? It's a pile of random junk, obviously so! What the fuck is wrong with you, Canada?

Actually makes perfect sense. . . .
You see a bush shake, you think 'leopard' and run. If it turns out to be the wind, no foul except having burned the energy to run
You see a bush shake, you think 'wind' and don't worry. If it turns out to be a leopard, you are dinner.

[Zabulon]

As Desert Fox said.

I've been participating in digging IEDs out of the sand in Afghanistan. Of course that's a different ballgame than domestic US / Canada, but I'm used to treating suspicious objects with caution until their true nature is ascertained.

If it looks like a threat, the only thing you lose in treating it like one, is time.

On the opposite scale, if something is a threat and you don't treat it like one... either it's your own life, or your colleagues' at stake.

[Sordid]

Like I said, how fucked up does the world have to be for that to even be a thing. It makes me sad.

[seaotter]

This is where being a country boy will get you blown the fuck up. It would never occur to me that it was suspicious at all. Looks like the shit that bubba has in every other front yard next to the camero from my home town. Hell, my grandfather needed some money for Christmas so we collected over a thousand dollars of scrape metal in the woods next to his house.

[MikeHz]

I've learned from movies that a real bomb is clean, has blue and red wires, and a big clock face counting down the seconds until detonation.

[Demosthenes]

Wouldn't have thought it was a bomb for a second.
I probably would have rummaged through it a bit to look for interesting looking things I could pilfer for something artistic.

Obviously if it was sitting in the middle of Kandahar or had bags of ammonium nitrate laying around I would feel differently.

[pandamonium]

I think you spoiled it by priming us to look for bomb-like things--in the future, ask "What does this look like?" rather than tell people what to look for, if you really want a more unbiased opinion.

Anyway, it looks like a bunch of junk to me, but I don't think your wife was wrong in alerting the police. It's not like Canadian police have anything better to do

[amysrevenge]

The best part is that the traffic closures meant that all the players for my softball game were late arriving.  And when they were swearing about traffic, I had to take the blame. 

[superdave]

That definitely looks suspicious enough to merit calling the police.