If Americans fighting in Vietnam felt like the jungle war was rigged against them, that’s because it literally was. In the War on Terror, troops got a taste of what it felt like to worry about every road, as any bit of trash, dirt, or even animal corpses might have contained an IED. In Vietnam, the Americans had to worry about everything on the trails. Every branch, mound, leaf, or even what was unseen could mean absolute disaster for the unaware—or the unlucky.Also Read: 5 terrifying things US troops faced in Vietnam’s junglesVietnam War booby traps weren’t about winning a battle, the war, or sometimes even killing U.S. troops. They were about making every American feel like their patrols were a game of Russian roulette in the jungle. The Viet Cong wired trails, tunnels, and abandoned positions with punji stakes, snake pits, and tripwire grenades, turning one unchecked step into a medevac.The nasty traps that follow were responsible for 11% of deaths and 15% of wounds suffered by American service members in Vietnam. They were a cheap way to take a cheap shot. 1. Punji Sticks View from the top into a booby-trapped box filled with punji sticks. (National Museum of Health and Medicine) Booby-trapped box (MIS 72-9987-17), National Museum of Health and Medicine. View from the top into a box which is booby-trapped with punji sticks. Wikimedia Commons Punji sticks are a part of traps made with sharpened bamboo stakes, often smeared with urine, feces, or another substance that would cause infection in the victim. The Viet Cong would dig a hole and put the sticks in the bottom, then cover it with a thin, easily broken frame. The victim would put his foot through the cover and fall on the spikes below.A more insidious version of the punji stick trap used sticks with downward-pointing barbs, so victims would be injured even more when they tried to pull themselves out of the trap. 2. Snake Pits Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like. Viet Cong guerrillas were known to carry Bamboo Pit Vipers in their packs to (hopefully) kill any American who searched through them if they were left behind. The VC would also tie the deadly snakes to bamboo and hide them throughout their tunnel complexes. When the Bamboo was released, so was the snake—right onto the unsuspecting tunnel rat who was more concerned with the humans trying to kill him. The Bamboo Pit Viper was nicknamed “three-step snakes,” because three steps was all you could make before the venom kills you. American tunnel rats had to be specially trained to navigate and disarm these traps. Magnus Persson (Getty Images) Persson, Magnus, Per via Getty Images 3. Grenade-In-A-Can The grenade in a can was a tripwire-based booby trap. One or two cans were mounted on trees along either side of a path. The safety pins on the grenades were removed and the explosives were put into cans, which held down the striker levers. The tripwire was then tied to each grenade. When the wire was tripped, the grenades were pulled out of the cans to detonate instantly. This could also be done with one can and a stake. (National Archives) 4. Flag Bombs The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the VC loved to fly flags, and they knew U.S. troops loved to capture enemy flags. So when they were forced to leave a base or location, they often rigged the flags with an explosive of some kind, so when the Americans started to take down their flag, it would set off the charge. (U.S. Army) In fact, any attempt to move the pole or flag set off the booby trap. This is similar to a “keepsake, lose hand” trap, where the NVA would intentionally rig anything a U.S. troop would consider a war trophy with an explosive. 5. Cartridge Trap This trap was an awful one because it was very difficult to detect. A cartridge—a round of ammunition—would be set into a piece of bamboo and lowered into a shallow hole in the ground. At the bottom of the bamboo was a board and a nail.The regular weight of someone walking on the cartridge would drive the nail into the primer, turning the nail into a firing pin and firing the bullet upward through the unsuspecting victim’s foot. (U.S. Marine Corps) 6. Bamboo Whip This is another sharpened bamboo trap, but in this one, the “whip” consisted of spikes over a long bamboo pole. The pole was pulled back into an arc using a catch attached to a tripwire. When the wire was tripped, the catch gave out and sent foot-long spikes into a trooper’s chest at a hundred miles an hour. The ol’ whip trap. (Museum of Military History) 7. The Mace Another tripwire trap, the Mace may have been the worst of all Vietnam War booby traps. Once the wire was triggered, a 24-inch metal or wooden ball with spikes welded onto it, weighing 40 pounds or more, would swing down from a tree, sending anyone in its path straight to Valhalla. (Universal Images) David Henley 8. Tiger Traps A tiger trap was another booby trap that is what it sounds like. In this case, the VC dug a large, deeper pit, concealing it with an easily breakable covering—like one might use to trap a tiger. But instead of being merely a pit, the bottom of the tiger trap used punji sticks to kill or maim any unlucky troops who might be on point. 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A pair of Big Tech shareholders sued the Trump administration on Thursday over the deal it reached with TikTok in January, claiming the deal violates a 2024 law that calls for Chinese owner ByteDance to cease its operation with the app in the United States. Zhaocheng Anthony Tan, an investor in Alphabet Inc., and Garrett Reid, an investor in Meta, are the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who argue the administration’s TikTok deal did not cut off ByteDance’s “operational relationship” with the U.S. TikTok entity. The suit was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “In short, under the announced deal, ByteDance would still control all the essential elements of TikTok,” the lawsuit reads. “Such a deal would subvert the very purpose of the TikTok Law, as ByteDance could continue to push Chinese propaganda and censor the content it does not like, exactly the harm that the law was intended to prevent.” The petitioners refer to the “Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” as the “TikTok Law.” The law gave TikTok a Jan. 19, 2025, deadline to completely divest from its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the U.S. Trump announced several extensions of the deadline over the course of 2025 before unveiling a plan to save the app, used by hundreds of millions of people in the U.S., in September 2025. After TikTok vowed to sell its U.S. entity to a joint venture group of several U.S. investors in December 2025, the Trump administration finalized the deal in January 2026. Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX each own 15% of the venture as the three managing investors. The CEO of Dell, Michael Dell’s personal investment firm, is another investor in the company. Dell is a financial backer of Trump’s new Trump Accounts, and Oracle was co-founded by Larry Ellison, another ally of the president. THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW JD VANCE ‘LANDED THE PLANE’ ON TRUMP’S TIKTOK DEAL The petitioners of the lawsuit said they “suffered financially” after the deal was announced, as they are investors in TikTok’s competitors. The petitioners also claim that “the deal the President approved rewarded allies who personally enriched him,” pointing to Ellison and political donations to MAGA, Inc. from Jeff Yass of Susquehanna and William Ford of General Atlantic. The Washington Examiner has reached out to the White House for comment.