I suppose the IRA was motivated more by real-world issues whereas Islamic (or otherwise) suicide bombers are often motivated by some kind of mythology involving

I suppose the IRA was motivated more by real-world issues whereas Islamic (or otherwise) suicide bombers are often motivated by some kind of mythology involving an afterlife. Of course, IRA members were (almost all?) Catholic, but Christianity's notions of martyrdom are much more passive than those of Islamic fundamentalists. I googled it and discovered that the pIRA did use human bombs, except that the human involved was under coercion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bomb You're right about there being far fewer terrorist incidents now. I believe the London tube bombings of 2005 and Manchester arena bombing of 2017 were the only suicide bombings in the UK this side of the millenium.