A 17 year old student detonated two pipe bombs in a San Mateo, California high school on Monday before being subdued by faculty members.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the boy was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with an additional eight pipe bombs, a two-foot long sword and a chainsaw. Police said that the student planned to set off the bombs and then attack survivors with the other weapons.
Gadget blog Gizmodo wonders whether there may have been a video game connection:
If you're wondering why this is on Gizmodo—and you guys always do—it's because those weapons inherently remind me of movie and video game weapons. I'm not trying to say that video games cause violence or don't cause violence, but what I'm saying is that when a 17 year old man-child thinks he can corner his classmates while dual wielding a chainsaw and a sword probably played a lot of doom and zelda and didn't do very well in gym class, so would get tired very quickly.
A second report by the SF Chronicle describes the boy as a "techno wizard." His mother thought the bomb-making components were being used to build model rockets.
Comments
Re: Was High School Attack Inspired by Video Games?
For Chrissake... It's not enough that a legitamite news source didn't even pursue that line of thought, but you have somebody else already propogating that thought because it "inherently reminds" him of movie and videogame weapons.
Here's an easier answer- The kid got his hands on a chainsaw (easier than you'd think), probably had a cheap-ass "battle ready" sword made of stainless steel (which holds an edge well- before breaking into dozens of pieces smacking it against a table), and scoured the internet for 5 minutes before finding the necessary materials and procedures to creating a pipe-bomb, because he was obviously having issues. It's not that fucking hard, trying to make a "connection" at this point is useless.
Re: Was High School Attack Inspired by Video Games?
Frankly the mention of chainsaw is going to make me thing of Evil Dead and Army of Darkness before any video games if people are going to make arbitrary connections.
Re: Was High School Attack Inspired by Video Games?
So it was a model rocketry inspired bombing. Got it. Someone get Estes on the line, they have some serious explaining to do.
Re: Was High School Attack Inspired by Video Games?
Model Rockets, Comics, Video Games, Movies, Television, Cartoons, you name it, someone will scape goat it. The only reason Alcohol isn't being mentioned is it probably has no play in the current factor.
+5 if anyone mentions Weed or some other drug parapheneila.
Anyway, I'm trying to figure out exactly WHAT game he would have been playing...
Games in recent times with pipe bombs:
Left 4 Dead.
Swords in Left 4 Dead? Negative.
Chainsaw in Left 4 Dead? None that I've seen, not even in these third-party add-ons.
Bulletproof Vest? Wouldn't mind it, might stave off those 1 shot team kills for people who can't aim with Shotguns. But all the same, negative.
Resident Evil 4
Chainsaw wielding plaga. Outside of that, no other weapons...
Let's roll back a few years; roughly a decade...
Unreal Tournament Game of the Year edition. The add on pack featured:
Swords. Check.
Chainsaw. Check.
Sword. Oh hell yes, check.
Pipe Bombs. Negative.
I just can't seem to figure out what game he could possibly have been playing and I know of no movie that features all 4 elements toghether.
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Papa Midnight
http://www.thesupersoldiers.com
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Papa Midnight
Re: Was High School Attack Inspired by Video Games?
If you take Duke Nukem and mix in Shadow Warrior and Blood, I think you get all the weaponry listed...