I know nails can be delivered via a “gun” from what we call a nail gun. But I didn’t thought (until these days) it could be used as a bombing implement, like in the pillbox. Probably not a recent invention, but more dangerous nonetheless.

Take a hint from what these terrorists has been doing nowadays, using nails as bomb fragments to maim people and not to punch a hole into a concrete wall. Another misguided ingenuity?

Of the bombing victims that I operated on after that last bombing here in our place, majority of them got hit by concrete nail fragments that is so frustrating to take out. The nail, after being thrown by the explosion and blast wave, do not travel in a straight line, unlike a hand gun slug. It spins in all directions and creates a larger and longer wound outside and a small wound inside (or vice versa). Thus it can create cavitations and create more damage to the tissues inside our body. More ever, it deceives an untrained eye from believing that a small wound outside is just an ordinary wound, needing just a little attention. Thus for us surgeons, it poses a challenge that sometimes we hate concrete nails were invented! It makes our work a lot difficult.

At the bottom end is the mutilated victims who suffers the brutality of such concrete nail bombings. If they survive the initial blast and injuries from the nail fragments, they’d probably stay longer in the hospital, get operated more, and succumb to many complications peculiar to this type of carnage.

I hope this misguided ingenuity be stopped soon. It just worsened the so called Mindanao problem.