Actually, they miscalculated just how much…
Suspected robbers in Germany appear to have miscalculated the quantity of explosives needed to blow their way into a rural bank.
The building housing the bank in the northern village of Malliss was largely destroyed by an overnight explosion.
The bank’s cash machine survived intact and the suspected thieves are not thought to have made away with any money, Germany’s Welt Online reported.
No-one was injured, though the blast damaged nearby cars and buildings.
Investigators were working on the assumption that robbers had placed their explosives, possibly made from petrol or acetylene, at the entrance to the bank, German broadcaster NDR said.
The presence of a delivery van near the site of the explosion indicated that the suspected thieves may have intended to drive off with the cash dispenser, local media reported.
It also indicates that they didn’t need a carload of gasoline to do it, nor a bunch of really useless (except for propaganda) firecrackers. Gas is really touchy stuff, you know. Fuel + Air + spark = KABOOOOOOM!! It doesn’t take much either, get a couple of 5 gallon cans and just enough gas to fill them with THE FUMES. Liquid gasoline doesn’t explode.
Take for instance the truckload of Ammonia Nitrate fertilizer that Tim McVeigh used in Oklahoma City. Peeled off the front of the building. and the front of the buildings across the street. Very powerful, but to knock down buildings, bridges, railroad trestles, you need more than the half dozen sticks of dynamite they used to show in the old Western movies. More than just a barrel of black powder. The structures are made to withstand the forces of nature, over long periods of time, with minimal maintenance.
The Oklahoma City buildings had withstood at least one tornado. And, of course, they used a small truckload of the Blasting Powder (not giving away secrets here, hillbillies who can’t read their own names use this to clear stumps. Easier than chopping and digging, and a helluva lot faster) and it peeled the fronts off the buildings.
Witness, however, THIS destruction.
...from a device they hand-carried to the front of the building...
Terrorists? Maybe. Simple thieves more like it. Police still haven’t caught up to them, if you noticed from the article.