Lolz. The downside of leaving Geocaches

[+janinealcox]

This was in the herald this morning.

 

Web prize in bomb alert

5:00AM Thursday February 14, 2008

By Beck Vass

 

Police were last night unsure if charges would be laid after a computer buff's "internet treasure hunt" sparked a bomb scare which disrupted central Auckland for three hours yesterday.

 

Police cordoned off an area of Aotea Square along Mayoral Drive and called in the defence force bomb squad at about 3pm after security guards saw a person leaving behind a suspicious package.

 

Senior Sergeant Junior Abraham of Auckland police said the scare caused some traffic congestion along a major road during peak traffic times and tied up police resources.

 

The "suspicious" package turned out to be a "geocacher", which Mr Abraham said was an "internet treasure hunt" involving leaving a parcel for other geocachers to track down using encrypted clues on the internet and GPS locations.

[+GageGecko]

Here is a link to the site with one of the guys that was involved in the incident.

 

Geocache Bomb Scare

[+EScout]

Global Incident Map Select a country and enter New Zealand and do your search. Click on the details for the 2008-02-13 incident, for this one.

 

Fun to search the "incidents" around the world and see how many are geocaches.

Edited February 16, 2008 by EScout

[+VuurVos]

There was a similar incident in the Netherlands a couple of months ago...

[+qlenfg]

You'd think it was the Mooninites in Boston all over again.

 

If you absolutely must leave a cache someplace like that, make it a micro or nano. At least it won't be mistaken for something worse.