Neighbors were as blind as the media.
Not really. I was in my work room the other day doing some soldering and building an antenna. In the cabinet at the end of the room is where i keep my reloading supplies. In the next room over, I have some threaded pipe used when I rebuilt my furnace. In the next room beyond that, have remote triggers that I used to set off flash units from my camera.
Clearly, if you put all that stuff together, it could be problematic. And my neighbors would say they never saw anything suspicious. Because there is NOTHING suspicious—all of those things are legit, and not worthy of a second look.
It would require some “intent” and that cannot be seen from the outside.