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Did I garble that? A deadman switch is usually momentary open, normal closed. wire it in with your thumb off the button and complete the circuit as you fasten the lead.

The live switch would be normal open, momentary closed (push the button) or a simple toggle (flip the switch).

Other types mentioned were my musing that the unexploded devices which were reported in an earlier post to have been gathered up for study might have been intended for the busses.

If that was the case, then he might have had several devices rigged with either timers or motion activated switches.

The simplest of the latter would be safe as long as a seperate switch to arm the circuit was open.

If, however that device was at the wrong attitude in the pack, and the arming switch were inadvertently closed, the device would go off.

Just one possibility, especially as most vest type suicide bombers attach nails or other junk to the outside of the vest to get shrapnel, and there were no acounts of shrapnel, only blast effects.

The guy is a Mechanical Engineering student, chances are that the device would be tailored to the intended task.
No shrapnel? May have been intended to be attached to the busses' fuel tanks to increase the effect...

Hinrichs' father, Joel Hinrichs, Jr., said he's confident his son didn't intend to harm anyone and wasn't motivated by a political agenda.

"He was pretty disengaged from politics," the father said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "And he took the care to select an open area where there was no one around."

Hinrichs said his son did not leave a suicide note and that FBI agents told him hydrogen peroxide was used to construct the bomb. On Sunday, FBI investigators searched the younger Hinrichs' Norman apartment and his family home in Colorado Springs.

As a father, Hinrichs said he wants to believe that the explosion was an accidental death, but said the evidence clearly points to suicide.

"He was checking out," Hinrichs said.

A "hydrogen peroxide" bomb?

And I'm not really buying into the father's confidence that "his son didn't intend to harm anyone and wasn't motivated by a political agenda"

When his father only sees him for a half hour in a year I highly doubt he knew what was going on in his son's life.

Hinrichs last visited his family this year, when he stopped by for about a half hour while on a road trip, his father said.