Think of all the movies you ever saw in which the hero races against time to find and disarm some sort of evil doomsday device. It’s a common plot element that has been used and abused in cinema, television and books countless times. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson, Nicole Kidman and George Clooney, Nicholas Cage, Kiefer Sutherland, and many others, have had to deal in recent years with these manifestations of a dastardly villain’s twisted mind. James Bond movies, 24, even MacGyver (ahem - Ed)... we’ve all watched in horror shouting "No, noooo! Cut the (insert colour here) wire!!", or held our breath as fragile green globes of nerve gas have teetered on the brink of destruction, before the day/city/country/planet is once more saved from a hellish nuclear winter at, literally, the last second. All a bit Hollywood really.

Anyway, following in the footsteps of the aforementioned twisted minds and with a healthy ’can do’ attitude inspired by DIY TV shows, the breakdown of the former Soviet Union and the looting of certain sensitive Iraqi facilities, I decided to build one myself. I didn’t want just any ’ol WMD, however. I wanted a squat, menacing device that oozed danger; all tough, machined, stainless steel complete with keylocks, illuminated warning lights and requisite aura of ’I’m-about-to-wreck-your-day-asswipe!’. I wanted a huge timing device that blinked away the hours, minutes and seconds with glowing red finality - silent, electronic footsteps of doom counting down to evil nuclear annihilation Bwahahahahhahhaaaa! There was only one slight problem with my mad plans...

...weapons-grade Plutonium. As in I didn’t have any. Hrm. Oh well, might just put a kickass PC in it then.

... This article follows on from "WMD Part II", if you haven’t read Part II, or "WMD Part I", you better go read those first!