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A booby trap with punji sticks. A booby trap is a device or setup that is intended to kill, harm or surprise a human or another animal. It is triggered by the presence or actions of the victim and sometimes has some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it.
The modern name "caltrop" is derived from the Old English calcatrippe (heel-trap), [6] [7] such as in the French usage chausse-trape (shoe-trap). The Latin word tribulus originally referred to this and provides part of the modern scientific name of a plant commonly called the caltrop, Tribulus terrestris, whose spiked seed cases resemble caltrops and can injure feet and puncture bicycle tires.
The Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices, or Protocol II, is a United Nations treaty that restricts the use of land mines, remotely delivered mines, and booby traps. It is Protocol II to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. [1] [2]
The North Vietnamese forces made extensive use of a variety of homemade booby traps including the old French trou de loup set with Bengali punji sticks.. The North Vietnamese termed the smaller mines đạp lôi (đạp lôi "step-mine") or mìn muỗi (mìn muỗi "mosquito mine").
Ernst Jünger mentions in his war memoir the systematic use of IEDs and booby traps to cover the retreat of German troops at the Somme region during World War I. Another early example of coordinated large-scale use of IEDs was the Belarusian Rail War launched by Belarusian guerrillas against the Germans during World War II.
In medieval fortification, a trou de loup (French for "wolf hole"; plural trous de loup, also commonly referred to as a tiger pit in the East) was a type of booby trap or defensive obstacle. Each trou de loup consisted of a conical pit about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) deep and 1.2 to 2 m (3 ft 11 in to 6 ft 7 in) wide at the top.
Anti-vehicle traps ranged from mines to buried artillery rounds. Helicopter traps were often deployed in trees surrounding a potential landing zone, triggered by an observer, or the rotor's wash. Booby traps were also made from American and ARVN trash in the field.
A spring-gun, booby trap gun etc. is a gun, often a shotgun, rigged to fire when a string or other triggering device is tripped by contact of sufficient force to "spring" the trigger so that anyone stumbling over or treading on it would discharge the gun. Setting or maintaining a spring-gun is illegal in many places.