subject: Identifying Suspect Packages From A Parcel Delivery [print this page] Unfortunately due to the current high levels of terrorist threats around the World, in particular United States and British citizens are at more than a threat than ever, with an ever amount of attacks happening at home and abroad with two major attacks in London alone in recent years. This means that you have to be more vigilant wherever you are in the World.
Of particular note though is that the police and intelligence services are foiling an ever growing number of planned attacks on home grown soil in the USA and Britain. This means that sooner or later a major terrorist attack is likely to take place in one form or another.
Soft targets are a key problem. As an example your average office has little or no protection against a terrorist attack, indeed poison attacks in the USA in recent years have shown just how vulnerable innocent office workers are.
This means that you need to look out for suspicious parcels, unfortunately they come in many different sizes and shapes, a bomb capable of destroying an office could come in a tiny envelope and not in a big parcel, the same applies to poison.
So how do you identify a suspicious device? Well firstly if you can have an X-ray machine put in your post room and X-ray every item of post. Also invest in a chemical Sniffer to check letters and parcels for chemicals. Both of these items are now lower in price as sadly they are now being used far more for carrying out just such checks.
However many small companies cannot afford these devices, so what should you look out for? Well it is a good idea to lightly shake all letters to listen for movement of powder inside them. This is because virtually no letters have any reason at all to have powder in them. So if it sounds like they have treat them as suspicious.
When it comes to a suspected bomb, actually shaking it is unlikely to set it off, as it will already have moved around in transit. Look instead for loose wires, small but heavy parcels, and irregularly shaped parcels. Check with the person who the parcel is addressed to that they are expecting a parcel, if they are not then treat it with suspicion, likewise it if comes from a country that you are not dealing with as a company then treat it with caution. The same rule applies to parcels addressed just to the company and not a person.
