All In The Name of Education, Folks!

My wife and I got a new, snazzy computer around 12 years ago. It was a Mac. We loved it.

As computers do, it aged as gracefully as it could... which was not at all. We haven't used it in at least 5 years. Fortunately, we both have high-speed Internet access at work, as well as Internet-capable laptops at home.

The time finally came, recently, to get rid of the old computer (which is so old that Macintosh hasn't supported the system for many years). There was nothing wrong with the monitor, so it went to Goodwill with a ton of books and too-small children's clothes a few weeks ago. The problem was that you hear so many horror stories about personal data being retrieved from discarded hard-drives, we didn't know what to do with the CPU.

Being the forward-looking fellow that I am, I decided to use the old CPU as a teaching aid.

I took the aforementioned CPU to my range, and decided that I would take a series of photographs showing what bullets would (and wouldn't) do to various things.

Please see below:

This is what the CPU looked like during it's life.



This is what the CPU looks like, standing on end, with three rounds of .357 copper jacketed hollow-point bullets in it. NOTE: Although the bullets easily penetrated the casing and smashed parts of the drive, they did not penetrate all the way trough to exit the CPU.





Next, I decided to see what kind of damage I could do the CPU with standard shotgun ammunition, so I loaded my Remington 870 (nicely modified, don't you know!) with 12 gauge, Magnum deer slugs.



And this is the result:



The deer slugs did the job, as usual, and penetrated so thoroughly that they even tore great chunks out of the steel bottom-plate of the CPU.

Here is what a rifled, magnum deer slug looks like after having impacted the parts and pieces of a CPU.



The CPU is well and truly demolished, as is the internal hard drive. Not only have I properly disposed of any personal information, I have given new life to the old computer as a device to train new agents.

Stephen Covey would call this a Win-Win situation.

Some less than charitable souls might say that I was just having fun with all of this.

I assure you... it was nothing of the sort.

Mostly.

GF