[paul cotter (OP)]

Watching the news about the exploding pagers in Lebanon I see some nonsense being disseminated. So called defence "experts" are suggesting this was done by software to short the batteries and having seen some of the blasts I discount this. This was obviously carefully planted explosives, assuming the batteries involved don't use ethyl perchlorate as solvent!

[Halc]

A weird news story indeed.  They all got new pagers from a new supplier, which was apparently made by their enemy.  The drive to do this was because their cell phones could be tracked, but if that was the reason, these new pagers would easily do the same tracking if they were made by those with such intent.

Yes, since they all went off at the same time, it was software/remote controlled.  Was it battery or explosive?  Hard to hide the latter from the forensics guys, let alone from those initially evaluating the product.  There are reports from those that were using their devices at the time that it got hot first, and then exploded.  That spells a battery explosion, not explicit explosives.  Batteries are known to explode, and it wouldn't be a huge stretch to design an interface to leverage it rather than just prevent it.

[paul cotter (OP)]

Did you see any of the videos? I am convinced some explosive material was used as it did not resemble the normal battery failure at all. These events were sudden and short lived and quite brisant with none of the flames we normally see in a battery failure. A shorted battery would likely start smoking before disassembly and would not be a reliable booby trap.

[Petrochemicals]

But to kill someone outright, surely beyond the potential of any pager battery.

It will have a terrible effect i fear. Who can guess of the retaliation now.

[alancalverd]

The drive to do this was because their cell phones could be tracked,

The genius element was persuading the targets that their phones were dangerous (not merely trackable, but potentially explosive), then setting up a company to manufacture and sell exploding pagers under a trademark licence from an entirely legitimate manufacturer who no longer made them. Getting all the pagers to explode simultaneously simply required activating the original software "alert all" command.