It ’s 5:43 a.m. on a Tuesday , and you ’re stand bleary - eyed in the airport surety channel hop to make your escape to Dallas . All around you , blue - uniformed Transportation Security Agency ( TSA ) police officer are barking out instructions . " Please dispatch all shoes , belts , wallets , electric cell phones and samara ! " " Please take out all laptop computers and place them in a disjoined ABA transit number ! " " Please place all gelatin and liquid in a zip - top bag ! "
Shuffling along in your drogue , your belt - less bloomers slowly slipping south , you pass a sign displaying the lean of prohibited items : accelerator , knives , Tasers , igniter , pyrotechnic , combustible liquid . As you pass your photo ID to the TSA agent , you ca n’t help but wonder if this is all a huge thriftlessness of time . After all , how many morons really endeavor to bring a gun onto an airplane in this age of post-9/11 hyper - protection ?
accord to the TSA , on the button 1,813 of them in 2013 .
That ’s the bit offirearmsthat Transportation Security Administration officers discovered in carry - on bag . Even crazier , 81 pct of those gun were load [ source : Burns ] .
For the record , a TSA spokesperson informed us that agentive role do not attach smuggled item . They allow a passenger to give the item to the admirer who dropped him off ; to mail it somewhere or to give up it to the TSA . Most select the latter .
When it come to weird things discover by TSA agents , guns are just the crest of the psycho iceberg lettuce . Keep reading to hear about bold traveller who tried to smuggle bags of live eel , Ernst Boris Chain saws and human skull fragments through security . Just be grateful you were n’t behind them in note .
10: A Suicide Vest
It was another busy morning at the Indianapolis International Airport security checkpoint in March 2013 when a carry - on bag set off alarm system in the X - ray machine . think the aspect on the agent ’s face when he pulled out what appeared to be a fully loadedsuicide vestcomplete with plastic wire and pouches stuffed with explosive .
The passenger , it turn out , was an " explosives instructor " who used the torpid suicide vest — yes , it was only a fake — as a grooming tool . Also inside the bag were 30 electric matches and unopened packets of potassium chlorate and titanium powder , extremely combustible compounds used to make real explosives [ source : Burns ] .
Explosives teacher or not , what would possess him to pack a reproduction suicide singlet in his carry - on dish ? Did he plan on set up it on if the cabin temperature plow a act parky ? Did he want to impress his seatmate with pyrotechnic demonstrations after the complimentary beverage service ?
The TSA understands that some people use sluggish explosives and other look - alike artillery for their job , but encourages folks to ship them via afreight serviceinstead [ source : Burns ] .
9: Stuffed Animals Stuffed With Guns
If you recollect navigating the aerodrome security scrummage by yourself is unmanageable , try doing it with a gaggle of diminished children . As you fold up strollers and herd wandering toddlers out of the full - body digital scanner , it ’s fairish to take if youngster really need the same protection scrutiny as adults .
And then you hear about this guy .
A traveler at T.F. Green Airport in Providence , R.I. , tried to smuggle a disassembledhandgunthrough security by hiding the arm ’s three separate component inside his toddler ’s two stuffed bears and a Mickey Mouse doll . The .40 - caliber firearm was one in stuffed animal , the magazine with two rounds and a firing pin was in a 2d one , while the third critter held the slide [ beginning : burning ] . overnice one , pop . I hope you get out of jail in meter for his preschool graduation .
8: Knife Mounted on a Walker
Like minuscule nipper , you could argue that in earnest old multitude deserve a " free pass " through airport security . But just when you guess that suspender - wearing grandpas are nothing but harmless coot , some sure-enough guy tries to scuffle through airdrome security with a tongue strapped to his walker .
Yes , TSA officers at New York ’s JFK drome blot a silverknifesurreptitiously stowed against the stage of a footer back in 2012 [ source : Burns ] . Upon skinny inspection , the artillery looks more like a farseeing butter knife than a obelisk , but you still have to question the motives of smuggling it onboard . Then again , have you try out distribute cold butter on a roll at 30,000 feet ( 9,144 meters ) with nothing but a charge plate spork ?
Canesare another unexpected source of mortal contraband . Every yr , TSA officer confiscate heaps of " cane swords , " otherwise harmless - looking walk help that conceal full - length swords and smaller dagger [ seed : burn ] . Moral of the story : Never scotch an old somebody .
7: Gassed-up Chain Saw
It ’s happen to all of us . You ’re take for a misstep to visit relatives in Cleveland and your uncle calls to ask if he can borrow your chain envision . " Sure ! " you answer . " Let me just blow it up and stuff it in my suitcase ! "
On 2d intellection , that ’s never happened to anyone . Except one manifestly mad someone run through the Elmira Corning Regional Airport in New York . In January 2012 , TSA agents withdraw the offending baron putz – gun being inflammable and all [ source : Burns ] . Interestingly , it ’s perfectly kosher to pack a chain meet into your checked luggage as long as it is n’t filled with gas .
6: Marijuana-Filled Grenade
Here ’s a bakshish for all of you amateur drug smugglers out there : If you ’re go to essay to filch a purse ofmarijuanathrough airport security , it might not be the best melodic theme to hold back it inside a full - size of it replication of a deadly explosive gadget . While TSA agent are n’t task with whiff out drugs , they have a bent for spotting item on the Adam - ray of light screen that are the exact shape and sizing of a hand grenade .
A dazed and confused Denver passenger came to this definitely un - groovy realization when TSA officer removed a knickknack handgrenadefrom his udder and discovered that it was stuffed with , in the immortal words of a TSA blog writer , " a greenish leafy meat " [ beginning : Burns ] . Two strikes for our intrepid traveler . Next prison term , cram it in your child ’s Barney skirt .
5: Lipstick Weapons
If looks could kill , then the weapon of choice would probably be alipstickstun ordnance . In one particularly productive workweek back in 2012 , TSA officers in Burlington , Vt . , and Akron , Ohio , confiscated not one , but two weapons posing as harmless lip rouge applicators . One was a 350,000 - V lip rouge stun gunman and the other a lipstick tongue with a 2 - inch ( 5 - centimeter ) leaf blade [ source : tan ] . TSA agent also have sequester lipstick pepper nebulizer .
It makes you wonder , though , is n’t there an inherent peril to disguising a 350,000 - volt stun gun as something that you might absentmindedly put to your lip at a brake light ? Either style , add " women wear out lipstick " to the lean of people not to cross .
4: Human Skull Fragments
You ’re on holiday in an exotic rural area and settle to pick up a souvenir made by local craftsman . You do n’t speak whatever nomenclature they ’re speaking , so you repoint to an earthenware jackpot that looks like it would guard your umbrella collection . The shop owner makes the international sign for " No , no , no , that pot turn back the stiff of my dead grannie ! " but you cerebrate he ’s just play hardball . You hand him a few extra greenbacks and grab the pot as you go .
You only realize your error when a TSA agent in Florida takes out the clay raft for further inspection and discovers that it indeed hold a well - preserved humanskull . As usual , your wife was right ; you should have just grease one’s palms the " Hard Rock Cafe Turkmenistan " T - shirt .
Yes , TSA agent really did make this macabre discovery in a checkedbaggage screening areaat the Fort Lauderdale airport in 2013 . The rider claimed ignorance as to the pot ’s contents . This discovery of course decelerate down masking as the area turned into a crime scene [ reservoir : Burns ] .
3: A Mace
This one is start to take some explaining . When you hear that TSA officers seize " a mace , " you might get into they find out a bottle ofself - defense common pepper atomiser . Or , if you ’re the culinary eccentric , you might think they hear a bootleg shipment of the fragrant dry nutmeg husk from East India used to make the spiciness called mace . But you would be wrong again .
The macer that TSA agents seize from a traveler at Chicago Midway in 2013 was , in fact , the sort of old - school weapon system that barbarians used to drop over their headland when storming a medievalcastle . The thick-skulled wooden handle of the confiscated mace evaluate more than a foundation ( 30 centimeters ) long and was connected by a farseeing chain to a heavy spiked metal formal [ origin : Burns ] . Just the kind of thing you want to devolve out of the overhead luggage compartment during a bumpy landing .
2: Bags of Live Eels
Is there anything more gag - inducing than a bag full of live slitheringeelsswimming in putrid icteric water ? How would you wish to have been the TSA agent who unzip a traveler ’s checked baggage in Miami to discover not only the " bag o ' eels , " but wads of charge plate hammock containing a total of 163 tropical Pisces the Fishes , 12 petite ocean turtle , plus several other invertebrate and pieces of livecoral[source : Burns ] ? The answer : not very much .
The passenger was apparently seek to smuggle the uncommon sea creatures from Miami to Maracaibo , Venezuela . Somewhere , a Venezuelan preferred shop owner is staring yearningly at an empty marine museum , waiting on a quick old bag of eels that will never come .
1: Chastity Belt
Privacy advocate lashed out at thefull - body scannersthe TSA began installing at its security system checkpoint in 2007 , likening the revealing X - shaft of light image to an illegal " strip search " [ rootage : Martín ] . In 2013 , hundreds of these scanners were remove from U.S. airdrome and replaced with less - encroaching one [ generator : Plungis ] .
But not before one ill-starred rider had her , uh , extremely restrictive unmentionable find by a trunk digital scanner in 2012 . Yes , the TSA agent on duty had to pull the traveler aside and substantiate that she was , indeed , wearing achastity belt . And no , the puzzling piece of clothing was not seize , since it was not take bootleg . Plus , no one had the central [ origin : Burns ] .
If you ’re into eldritch list like this , keep reading . We ’ve pose enough HowStuffWorks links on the next pageboy to fill 13 airport security bins .
Lots More Information
My best TSA confiscation floor does n’t involve the actual TSA , but an eagle - eyed aerodrome security system ship’s officer in Mexico . My wife and I were living in Mexico at the sentence and had just had our 2d child , a baby boy less than 6 weeks sure-enough . It was June , and we were fly back to the U.S. for an prolonged trip to visit both of our parents . We had our flights book for calendar month and drive out the whole family at 3:30 a.m. to drive the minute - and - a - half to the aerodrome .
Once we negotiated the usual confusion at the ticket counter , we last breathed soft and made our way through security measures . I held our 20 - calendar month - old ’s hand and my wife carried the newborn in a colorful sling wrap tightly around her shoulder and hip . Only after we had give-up the ghost through the metal detector and went to grab our expect - on luggage did one of the security agents ask my wife if she could take off her " shawl . " My wife smilingly explain that " the child ’s sleeping . " " What child ? " asked the security military officer . It was then that we realize that nobody in the security system field or at the tag heel counter had any approximation that my married woman was smuggle a new-sprung man . For the disk , the baby ’s pacifier did not duplicate as a stun gun .
