Most useful high explosives, like ammonium nitrate, are enormously violent. once they're triggered. But they will remain seemingly inert when beaten, burned, variously punished--until the particular shock required comes along....
Man has developed many a deadly weapon. Today, the weapon most effective in destroying a man's hopes and security is the file folder. and that was the weapon Morely knew and loved. But there was something more potent to come.
There are devices a high-level culture could produce that simply don't belong in the hands of incompetents of lower cultural evolution. The finest, and most civilized of tools can be made a menace.
A Playboy is someone with power, too much time on his hands, and too little sense of a goal worth achieving. And if the Playboy happens to belong to a highly advanced culture....