Molniya (explosive trap)

Molniya, Russian for lightning, was an explosive booby trap the Soviet KGB used to protect concealed equipment caches hidden abroad, reportedly emplaced from at least 1955 into the 1970s at sites across Europe and North America. Defusing a cache required following a precise sequence of steps before it could be safely moved or opened, and any deviation was meant to trigger a lethal explosion that destroyed the contents of the container. One such device, identified from information supplied by the KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, was found near Belfaux, Switzerland, in 1998 and detonated when Swiss authorities probed it with a water cannon, with a Swiss prosecutor stating that anyone who tried to move it by hand would have been killed.