The Classics - The 1986 Cokeville Elementary Incident

In 1986, a former police officer named David Young, his wife Doris, and their teenage daughter Penny drove up to Cokeville Elementary School in Wyoming. David was pushing a shopping cart that contained a bomb he had built and tested on a school bus in the Arizona desert. His plan was to take the entire school hostage and demand two million dollars per student, plus a personal phone call with President Ronald Reagan. Penny had second thoughts at the door and ran to alert the authorities. David and Doris walked in anyway, rounded up 136 students and 15 staff members into a single classroom, and began a standoff that would last two and a half hours.

The bomb that leaked and the birthday that broke the tension

The bomb was designed to be especially destructive. It contained a milk jug full of gasoline, wired to two tuna cans packed with aluminum powder and flour. When detonated, the powder was meant to make the fire sticky and hard to extinguish. David wore a dead man's switch on his hand, so if he relaxed his grip or was shot, the bomb would go off. But the bomb had a flaw: it leaked gasoline the entire time. After two and a half hours, the fumes were so strong that even David and Doris noticed the children getting woozy. They told the teachers to open the windows, which let fresh air in and gasoline fumes out—a decision that would later reduce the force of the explosion.