You, reasonably, cautioned against axiomatic reasoning --- I do feel like I'm bringing quite a bit of empiricism into this, though I am rejecting the ratio of casualties we're attributing to Lebanese and Hezbollah reporting --- so let me add a couple more empirical observations:
* We have reporting (Reuters, others) that the pagers were packed with 6 grams of PETN.
* 6 grams of PETN produces ~35kJ of explosive force.
* That's about 7x more powerful than a cherry bomb, or about 2% of the explosive force of a standard fragmentation grenade.
Later
In considering that yield statistic bear in mind also that the lethality of an M67 (lethal within 5m, casualties within 15m, well studied) is mostly a function of its construction --- its explosive charge, 50x greater than that of 6g of PETN, is designed specifically to propel fragments of a hardened steel case out through its blast radius.
The pagers were just pagers, with the explosive payload specifically designed not to have metal components (which would have been detectable by Hezbollah.)
You, reasonably, cautioned against axiomatic reasoning --- I do feel like I'm bringing quite a bit of empiricism into this, though I am rejecting the ratio of casualties we're attributing to Lebanese and Hezbollah reporting --- so let me add a couple more empirical observations:
* We have reporting (Reuters, others) that the pagers were packed with 6 grams of PETN.
* 6 grams of PETN produces ~35kJ of explosive force.
* That's about 7x more powerful than a cherry bomb, or about 2% of the explosive force of a standard fragmentation grenade.
Later
In considering that yield statistic bear in mind also that the lethality of an M67 (lethal within 5m, casualties within 15m, well studied) is mostly a function of its construction --- its explosive charge, 50x greater than that of 6g of PETN, is designed specifically to propel fragments of a hardened steel case out through its blast radius.
The pagers were just pagers, with the explosive payload specifically designed not to have metal components (which would have been detectable by Hezbollah.)