Appropriate Containers?

I have been holding back this post for a while trying to decide how to best write it. My inspiration came a few days ago when geocaching made the local news in a very negative way.

My original post was going to talk about this type of container:

We found this container in May. Over the years we've found a number of these containers. Our first response is almost always a groan followed by "Oh no, another pipe bomb cache!" These are a throw-back to the early days of caching. They are cheap and easy to make and usually stay quite dry. Those are the good points. The bad points are the next finder is completely at the mercy of how much the previous finder tightened the container AND the fact that these things look like pipe bombs.

We've found them in the woods where they are a lot less at risk of being mistaken for a potential bomb. We've also found them in places where there is a risk that someone will eventually raise an alarm. The one we found in May was a between hide. Unfortunately, it wasn't in the woods so there was some risk a passerby on a road with regular traffic would wonder why we were standing beside a sign holding what could be a bomb. Fortunately, it wasn't in a commercial area where an alarmed citizen could summon the bomb squad. Our biggest pain was it was part of a geotrail, and we absolutely had to sign the log to complete the geotrail. If not, we would have passed by the find when we saw the container. If not immediately, we would certainly have left without a find when we realized the previous finder had tightened the cap to a point where I had to search the geomobile for an appropriate tool.

Fast forward to this week. I was out of town when a friend called me to ask if I had heard the news that the bomb squad had been called to a cache in a Northeastern Ohio suburb. Uh oh... it appears the cache was a round cylinder hanging in a tree behind a gas station. From the size of the ring in the picture, it appears to be about 2-2 1/2" diameter and 10-12" long. I'm not a bomb expert, but it's a fairly large container in an odd shape in an urban setting.

For the good of our game, I hope to see the day where these types of containers are no longer used for geocache hides. It isn't worth the risk.