VERY interesting article debunking the liquid explosive myth - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Mephisto2 · 08-18-2006, 04:03 AM

Quote:

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?
Let's whip up some TATP and find out
Published Thursday 17th August 2006 09:42 GMT

Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who've employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed, immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace, like the seven angels of God's wrath pouring out their bowls full of pestilence and pain.

The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn just which two chemicals can be handled safely when separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to believe in these substances, chiefly because action movies wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't.

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.

Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard.

Better killing through chemistry
Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.

First, you've got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.

But let's assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got them on hand.

Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.

It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.

Easy does it
Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to crash the plane, and you must make it with care to assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," as Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it's true that a slapdash concoction will explode, it's unlikely to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly depressurizes, but that's about all you're likely to manage under the most favorable conditions possible.

We believe this because a peer-reviewed 2004 study (http://www.technion.ac.il/~keinanj/pub/122.pdf) in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) entitled "Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide is an Entropic Explosion" tells us that the explosive force of TATP comes from the sudden decomposition of a solid into gasses. There's no rapid oxidizing of fuel, as there is with many other explosives: rather, the substance changes state suddenly through an entropic process, and quickly releases a respectable amount of energy when it does. (Thus the lack of ingredients typically associated with explosives makes TATP, a white crystalline powder resembling sugar, difficult to detect with conventional bomb sniffing gear.)

Mrs. Satan
By now you'll be asking why these jihadist wannabes didn't conspire simply to bring TATP onto planes, colored with a bit of vegetable dye, and disguised as, say, a powdered fruit-flavored drink. The reason is that they would be afraid of failing: TATP is notoriously sensitive and unstable. Mainstream journalists like to tell us that terrorists like to call it "the mother of Satan." (Whether this reputation is deserved, or is a consequence of homebrewing by unqualified hacks, remains open to debate.)

It's been claimed that the 7/7 bombers used it, but this has not been positively confirmed. Some sources claim that they used C-4, and others that they used RDX. Nevertheless, the belief that they used TATP has stuck with the media, although going about in a crowded city at rush hour with an unstable homebrew explosive in a backpack is not the brightest of all possible moves. It's surprising that none of the attackers enjoyed an unscheduled launch into Paradise.

So, assuming that the homebrew variety of TATP is highly sensitive and unstable - or at least that our inept jihadists would believe that - to avoid getting blown up in the taxi on the way to the airport, one might, if one were educated in terror tactics primarily by hollywood movies, prefer simply to dump the precursors into an airplane toilet bowl and let the mother of Satan work her magic. Indeed, the mixture will heat rapidly as TATP begins to form, and it will soon explode. But this won't happen with much force, because little TATP will have formed by the time the explosion occurs.

We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable assumption, and she tolds us that merely dumping the precursors together would create "a violent reaction," but not a detonation.

To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 neatly illustrates), it's necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.

Jack Bauer sense
So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.

Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.

It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA - and the "terrorism experts" who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear - have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.

We've given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.

But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.

Action heroes
The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).

It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.

For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.

You won't hear about those fellows until it's too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.

Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer. ®

REF:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08...t_terror_labs/

Now I found the above article very interesting. Whilst I do not doubt for one second that terrorists were probably plotting an attack with liquid explosive, I found this article both disturbing and reassuring in its analysis of the reality of the situation.

I dont' believe it's trying to deny the plot existed, but perhaps throwing some cold eyed reason on the recent hysteria. As a regular cross-Pacific flyer to the US, I'm not particularly keen on being blown to smithereens by some crazies, but this article strikes a chord with me. It seems that there is a lot of misplaced panic out there.

I don't know... The whole thing makes my head hurt.

I hate flying as it is, being a crime against nature and laws of physics as it is. This is the last thing I need...

Mr Mephisto

The_Jazz · 08-18-2006, 04:45 AM

Very interesting article. Thanks for posting it. I need to think about it, especially before I get on a plane again.

Daniel_ · 08-18-2006, 04:51 AM

The chemiustry that they mention is all true, certainly.

Odd isn't it?

Seaver · 08-18-2006, 09:22 AM

Thank you for this article. While I knew the formula for the peroxide-sulfuric acid mix I didn't know of the workings behind it.

However, you can make an extreamly intense flame with hydrogen peroxide with only pressure and silver. While I'm not going to pretend I fully understand all the mechanics and chemistry behind it, it does not seem to me that once it is concentrated there is much a person can not do to use it as a weapon. While there is a big difference in the making of an explosive than the makings of a flame, I'm sure there are chemists out there that can describe how provided that the people doing the act do not care about self-safety.

host · 08-18-2006, 09:57 AM

Mr Mephisto, as a rule, I don't read your ridiculously long, OP cut n' pastes. If you want the rest of us to participate, consider excerpting your article to cover just the key points. If you eliminate the interest of the rest of us who come here to relax, but are confronted with huge volumes of text to wade through, just to qualify to participate in a discussion on your thread, I for one....am not going to bother.

I would rather read your own comments; anybody can google up someone else's research and past it into a comment box on a TFP thread. For some reason, I skimmed through a quarter of your OP, and I gleaned enough to become alarmed that you provided a path for any "would be" jihadist....and I suspect that there are many more out there, to the technical info required, to fabricate a liquid bomb, or to become curious about trying out the technique.

I hope that it was worth the tradeoff.....of "enlightening" us, and at the same time:

Quote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,133712,00.html
Transcript: Bush Talks to O'Reilly
Tuesday, September 28, 2004

BUSH: Because people want to defend their country. I believe that. You know why I believe that, and this is really important, it's because I believe everybody yearns to be free. I believe Muslims yearn to be free. And this is tough. Look, no question it's tough times. But if we send mixed signals, if we waver, the times will be tougher. That's what the terrorists are watching, they're watching us like hawks.......

filtherton · 08-18-2006, 10:47 AM

Heh, good one host.

Willravel · 08-18-2006, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto

It seems that there is a lot of misplaced panic out there.

That's the name of the game. EVERYTHING is a terrorist plot that can kill ANYONE. It seems we're more in danger from snakes on planes than water bottles.

Host, I haven't laughed that hard in a while...but it's also starting to get creepy.

stevo · 08-18-2006, 11:06 AM

I like the "new" host.

Jimellow · 08-18-2006, 11:34 AM

Quote:

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

The only real difference I see between boxcutters/plastic knives (a "successful" hijacking weapon in 9/11) and these chemicals are the the latter doesn't rely on involving/threatening others on the plane directly to get results.

Prior to 9/11 a similiar article could have been written stating how ineffective a mere boxcutter would be against a plane filled with numerous people, that ultimately would be able to overpower and restrain an assailant. Yet, that has proven to not be the case at all.

Studying and intense examination is easily done on paper, or in an article, after the threat has been neutralized, but in reality the chemicals the terrorists had, if they hadn't been caught, could certainly have caused harm in my opinion.

I would rather read an article like the one above, written as a result of a failed attack, than one on the front page of a major newspaper about yet another terrorist attack that has claimed as many, or more, lives than the attacks on 9/11 did.

It's easy to write articles that make light of people smuggling chemicals onto planes, comparing their plots to those of a Hollywood director, and generally making it seem like the smuggling was totally benign, but if the same article were to be written after an identical chemical attack was successful, the article would never reach publication, and if it did, the author would be crucified by the mass populace.

Seaver · 08-18-2006, 11:37 AM

Host you're wrong, there are no Muslim terrorists. It's Bushco trying to keep everyone scared so that he can run for a 3rd term. I hear through my sources he is trying to pass an amendment to get rid of the term limit.

That and I hear Rove eats baby kittens because they are labeled "unamerican."

JimmyTheHutt · 08-18-2006, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Host you're wrong, there are no Muslim terrorists. It's Bushco trying to keep everyone scared so that he can run for a 3rd term. I hear through my sources he is trying to pass an amendment to get rid of the term limit.

That and I hear Rove eats baby kittens because they are labeled "unamerican."

The sad thing, that sounds more plausible than any announcements made by the current administration.

Veritas et Lux!

Jimmy The Hutt

Mephisto2 · 08-18-2006, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jimellow

The only real difference I see between boxcutters/plastic knives (a "successful" hijacking weapon in 9/11) and these chemicals are the the latter doesn't rely on involving/threatening others on the plane directly to get results.

Prior to 9/11 a similiar article could have been written stating how ineffective a mere boxcutter would be against a plane filled with numerous people, that ultimately would be able to overpower and restrain an assailant. Yet, that has proven to not be the case at all.

Yes, but it won't happen again. The reasons 9/11 was successful was because, paradoxically, of the humanity of the people and crew aboard those planes. We are led to believe that the doors to the cockpit were opened (in some circumstances) because the terrorists were murdering people outside, demanding access.

Also, the only flight where people fought back was Flight 93. On all others, the crew and the passengers believed it was a "regular" hijack. Indeed, up to 9/11 air-crew were generally trained to obey hijackers, as are robbery victims in banks to this day.

Flight 93 was different because the passengers had been in contact with the ground and knew what was going to happen. This is why they fought back.

So, I don't believe a similar hijacking could occur today. Horrible as it may sound, you can be sure that the pilots will not open the doors even if someone is having their throats cut directly outside. They know that there is more at stake than just the lives of the people on board. And many pilots are now armed.

9/11 was terrible, but it really was a "once off" attack. Hence the new liquid explosive bomb plots we are hearing about today.

Quote:

Studying and intense examination is easily done on paper, or in an article, after the threat has been neutralized, but in reality the chemicals the terrorists had, if they hadn't been caught, could certainly have caused harm in my opinion.

No one is disputing that fact. Indeed, the article expressly says that an explosion could happen that would kill the terrorists and probably several passengers. But that "mass murder on an unbelievable scale" was probably unlikely.

Quote:

It's easy to write articles that make light of people smuggling chemicals onto planes, comparing their plots to those of a Hollywood director, and generally making it seem like the smuggling was totally benign, but if the same article were to be written after an identical chemical attack was successful, the article would never reach publication, and if it did, the author would be crucified by the mass populace.

Well, the use of satire and sarcasm are proud traditions in British journalism. Perhaps they are not so common in the US. And, I have no idea where you inferred the article was implying the smuggling was benign.

I found the article interesting. It shows that the use of TATP is not as easy as it all seems. Remember all the hysteria about "dirty bombs"? No one hears much about these today, because even the US military and intelligence services, let alone most independent commentators (obviously not including Fox et al) now accept that the concept of a "dirty bomb" is nonsense.

I don't believe the concept of liquid explosive is nonsense. And I'm happy to go through the increased security. But I'm also interested in an alternative viewpoint that shows liquid explosive is not the most dangerous thing out there, and that it's not as easy or as dangerous as implied by the popular media. As the article says, someone with dimethylmercury in an aerosol vector could do a lot more harm. And that's not too hard to come by either...

Mr Mephisto

smicer · 08-18-2006, 08:04 PM

It appears something very similar to this alleged plot occured back in 1994.

"Yousef planned to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific and even carried out a test bombing in December 1994, smuggling nitroglycerine onto a Philippine Airlines jet in a contact-lens solution bottle.
The explosive detonated near Okinawa, killing a Japanese man after Yousef had gotten off the plane in Cebu. The plane landed safely in Okinawa."

http://www.azstarnet.com/news/141654

and another artice better describing this scenario,
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/s...15136307c.html
"Security officials got a glimpse of the future in 1994, when al-Qaida operative Ramzi Yousef smuggled explosive nitroglycerin onto a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo in a contact lens solution bottle. He hid the bomb under his seat, rigged it to go off about four hours later and got off the plane at an intermediate stop.

The explosion -- a test run for a plot to bring down as many as a dozen airliners over the Pacific -- killed the passenger who took Yousef's seat and forced an emergency landing in Okinawa. Yousef and the other plotters were arrested before they could launch a full-scale operation."

Daniel_ · 08-19-2006, 06:28 AM

Interesting to note that the Yousef operation happened in 1994 (i.e over a decade ago) - it was not done using a binary liquid explosive, but using a nitrogen rich explosive (exactly the sort that are now checked for very easilly, but at the time were hard to detect).

The Register story in the OP talked about the near imposibility of taking two stable safe liquids and blending them with little of no special equipment into a powerful and deadly explosive.

The fact is that the chemistry is not in your favour.

Explosives have to have lots of energy to give up in a large BANG!

Stable reagents tend to have their energy trapped in strong chemical bonds.

This means that to make an unstable explosive from stable reagents generally takes either the input of a large activation energy, or a very long time.

Explosives are hard to make. Even gunpowder (where it is the reaction of the stable reagents that causes the explosion) is hard to blend reliably without special equipment.

One scenario that did occur to me as possible (but not likely and would be very dangerous to carry out) would be to drop a large amount of sodium metal into a plane toilet - this reacts with water and liberates hydrogen and generates heat. It might be enough to blow a small hole in the skin of a plane, but frankly it probably wouldn't down it. To bring a plane down you must damage the airframe so much that it loses integrity, or set fire to the fuel.

The problem with stories about terrorists catastrophically bringing down dozens of flights is that bringing down just one is bloody hard.

Think about planes downed by explosions historically - even Lockerbie (probably the biggest such loss of life) was achieved by a nation using it's security sevices and all of its abilities and finances.

A bunch of guys plotting in a living room, and using equipment that they've bought at CostCo or Tesco or whatever just are not going to be able to cook up an explosive that is ( a ) undetectible by current screening equipment, ( b ) stable enough to carry on board, ( c ) powerful enough to down a plane for certain.

To imagine that they could do this multiple times, on the same day, without anyone finding out about their plan, without one of then blowing themselves up on the way to the airport, or chickening out and confessing, or haivng their bomb fail to work, is to my mind (as a qualified and highly experienced Chemistry researcher and Project Manager) unlikely in the extreme. The cemistry and logistics are both insurmountable obstacles - it's just James Bond territory.

That doesn't mean we can be complacent, but it does mean that most of the security measures are heavilly overblown, and disproportionate.

Seaver · 08-19-2006, 08:15 AM

Quote:

Even gunpowder (where it is the reaction of the stable reagents that causes the explosion) is hard to blend reliably without special equipment.

Since when is a mortar and pestle considered special equipment?

host · 08-19-2006, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel_

........The problem with stories about terrorists catastrophically bringing down dozens of flights is that bringing down just one is bloody hard....

.....To imagine that they could do this multiple times, on the same day, without anyone finding out about their plan, without one of then blowing themselves up on the way to the airport, or chickening out and confessing, or haivng their bomb fail to work, is to my mind (as a qualified and highly experienced Chemistry researcher and Project Manager) unlikely in the extreme. The cemistry and logistics are both insurmountable obstacles - it's just James Bond territory.

That doesn't mean we can be complacent, but it does mean that most of the security measures are heavilly overblown, and disproportionate.

Daniel.......Dan..........nielllllll......it doesn't have to be a dozen.....it's important enough to repeat.....that I include it in my "sig" (below..... along with the newest revelation.....it wasn't "about the oil", when we "went in".....but it is now.....).......it only has to be one.....with a dozen "shots" to achieve that one....the rest are just icing on the cake!

Let's stop this....okay ? "We" ARE AT WAR !!!!!! It is unacceptable to "agree to disagree", so.....fall in line, shall we?

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea.../20060812.html
......The terrorists have to succeed only once to achieve their goal of mass murder, while we have to succeed every time to stop them. Unfortunately, some have suggested recently that the terrorist threat is being used for partisan political advantage. We can have legitimate disagreements about the best way to fight the terrorists, yet there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face........

The "man" is the "decider"..........

Okay.....one mo' time....for any of you liber-rulls who still don't fully get it:
"The enemy has got an advantage when it comes to attacking our homeland. They've got to be right one time, and we've got to be right a hundred percent of the time."

Daniel_ · 08-19-2006, 11:31 AM

OK - as for the pestle and mortar - making gunpowder by pestle and mortar is inefficient (i should know, I've done it) and the ammount of powder you'd need to blow up a plane would require three rather large sacks of ingredients (potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur), a pestle and mortar, and a container to pack the resulting gunpowder in.

You'd have to get these things through customs (who run detection systems for nitrates, as I said earlier), and you'd to mix the ingredients and pack your bomb without anyone on the plane stopping you.

As for how easy it is to blow up a plane - there have been groups all over the world that have been interested in doing it for decades. The current round of percieved terroists (and I use the phrase perceived, because pretty much everyone that has been arrested has been not yet convicted in a reputable court).

I lived in London at the height of the IRA bombing campaign, and with much lower levels of security than are in place currently, they managed a handful of significant bombs.

The bombs used on 7/7 were large enough to totally fill a moderate sized rucksack, and still only managed to tear open a train carriage or demolish the roof of a bus.

The amount that you could smuggle onto a plane if you had to hide it in the lining of a bag simply would not have the destructive force to blow a plane out of the air.

The most likely source of any terror attacks on planes remains the threat of violence agaist passengers and crew, and to be frank, a group of attackers who don't care about their own lives could probably hijack a planewith shoelaces if they were skilled and fit.

Threaten to garotte a small child and see how many people rush you.

The fear of terror attacks far outweighs the reality - the lawmakers and intelligence gatherers have seen too many bond films and really believe that there exists some compound that can be fitted inside a drink can that has the destructive force to destroy a plane.

A well equipped design laboratory MAY be able to come up with a grenade that was shaped like a can, was triggered by the ringpull, and was not detectable by x-rays or neutron scans, and was sitably washed to remove all chemical residues, but somehow i think that ( a ) it would be out of the reach of mst countries, let alone terror groups, and ( b ) if you had the tech and the backing to do it, you'd be better off investing that tech and money into using a ground to air missile.

Look at the REAL strikes that have taken place in the past few years, and you'll note that the most effective have been very low tech.

September 11th was achieved with craft knives, the damage to a US warship was achieved by a speedboat and an RPG, the 7/7 killings were a few kilos of TATP cooked up in a home laboratory and lugged onto trains in backpacks.

I'm not saying that terrorists will never down a plane, but I am prepared to bet doughnuts to dogshit that it won't be by mixing innocuous liquids that were in carry on bagage.

Dragonlich · 08-19-2006, 11:28 PM

Daniel, just a question: you say that the bombs on 7/7 only managed to do relatively light damage to the train/bus. You don't need to do a lot of damage to a plane to cause serious trouble. If that "trouble" causes the plane to crash, the plot will have succeeded. Failure to bring down a plane will still be a (slight) succes, because of the fear it would spread. ("Next time it could be me, and they might succeed then!")

It seems to me that the original article was rather short-sighted. It only focuses on *one* type of explosive that someone said the plotters were going to use. The article then says that that type of explosive is hard to make. I'd say that you cannot conclude that the "myth" is debunked just because one type of explosive is hard to create.

FYI, the BBC had an interview with an explosive expert. He says that liquid explosives could take down an airplane.

"Dr Clifford Jones, an explosives expert from the University of Aberdeen, says even a small amount of liquid explosives carried on to an aircraft would result in a catastrophic explosion."

<a href = "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4780391.stm">the article</a>.

Without full information on what kind of explosives the plotters were going to use, it's pretty silly to try to "debunk the myth". But then again, the police are not going to release that information because it might help other would-be terrorists... I'll let a judge decide if it's a myth or not; at least (s)he will have all the information necessary.

Elphaba · 08-22-2006, 03:01 PM

I was surprised to see this small blurb in my morning paper:

Quote:

Officials confirmed for the first time that the plot involved the manufacture of explosives, which were to be used to assemble and detonate bombs inside as many as 10 airliners. U.S. officials previously had said the plot appeared to involve mixing liquid-based chemicals to make explosives aboard the aircrafts.

IIRC the various US officials, including Chertoff, asserted that liquid-based explosives were to be used. It would certainly elevate the fear factor if people believed explosive materials could be so easily disguised in bottled water or a tube of toothpaste.

I need an industrial grade of tin hat.

Paq · 08-25-2006, 11:25 AM

just something to consider...

for the few who have met me, i'm a pretty average looking person, I normally fly alone and i normally carry a camera bag with me when i fly. I recently flew from phoenix to atlanta then to charlotte..like yesterday...i passed throuhg the people at phoenix with a camera bag and laptop bag...i passed through the people in atlanta with the same camera bag and laptop bag...

only to get home and realize i had my eclipse fluid in my camera bag. not hidden, not even out of any real site, just in the bottom of the front pocket under my 30 spare AA batteries..(camera backpack). Eclipse fluid is just a pretty pure alcohol used for cleaning image sensors. I just forgot it was packed in there and 4 separate people doing a cursory scan of my bag missed it...

now...couple that with the fact that i was passed through security in phoenix w/out a single hiccup other than i put my laptop on top of my shoes and wallet. three young ladies behind me, caucasion, mid twenties, dressed in shorts and flipflops and chatting about their vacation, etc. were selected for 'random security screening"...which took almost 20 minutes with a special security person giving them questions and joking about such things....

my point:
airplane security is an absolute joke. period. not even a funny joke, just a joke.

08-18-2006, 04:45 AM	#2 (permalink)
The_Jazz Asshole Administrator Location: Chicago	Very interesting article. Thanks for posting it. I need to think about it, especially before I get on a plane again. __________________ "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin "There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush "We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

08-18-2006, 04:51 AM	#3 (permalink)
Daniel_ Evil Priest: The Devil Made Me Do It! Location: Southern England	The chemiustry that they mention is all true, certainly. Odd isn't it? __________________ ╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗ Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air, And deep beneath the rolling waves, In labyrinths of Coral Caves, The Echo of a distant time Comes willowing across the sand; And everthing is Green and Submarine ╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

08-18-2006, 09:22 AM	#4 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Thank you for this article. While I knew the formula for the peroxide-sulfuric acid mix I didn't know of the workings behind it. However, you can make an extreamly intense flame with hydrogen peroxide with only pressure and silver. While I'm not going to pretend I fully understand all the mechanics and chemistry behind it, it does not seem to me that once it is concentrated there is much a person can not do to use it as a weapon. While there is a big difference in the making of an explosive than the makings of a flame, I'm sure there are chemists out there that can describe how provided that the people doing the act do not care about self-safety. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

08-18-2006, 11:06 AM	#8 (permalink)
stevo Rail Baron Location: Tallyfla	I like the "new" host. __________________ "If I am such a genius why am I drunk, lost in the desert, with a bullet in my ass?" -Otto Mannkusser

08-18-2006, 11:37 AM	#10 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Host you're wrong, there are no Muslim terrorists. It's Bushco trying to keep everyone scared so that he can run for a 3rd term. I hear through my sources he is trying to pass an amendment to get rid of the term limit. That and I hear Rove eats baby kittens because they are labeled "unamerican." __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

08-18-2006, 10:47 AM	#6 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Heh, good one host.

08-18-2006, 08:04 PM	#13 (permalink)
smicer Tilted	It appears something very similar to this alleged plot occured back in 1994. "Yousef planned to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners over the Pacific and even carried out a test bombing in December 1994, smuggling nitroglycerine onto a Philippine Airlines jet in a contact-lens solution bottle. The explosive detonated near Okinawa, killing a Japanese man after Yousef had gotten off the plane in Cebu. The plane landed safely in Okinawa." http://www.azstarnet.com/news/141654 and another artice better describing this scenario, http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/s...15136307c.html "Security officials got a glimpse of the future in 1994, when al-Qaida operative Ramzi Yousef smuggled explosive nitroglycerin onto a Philippine Airlines flight from Manila to Tokyo in a contact lens solution bottle. He hid the bomb under his seat, rigged it to go off about four hours later and got off the plane at an intermediate stop. The explosion -- a test run for a plot to bring down as many as a dozen airliners over the Pacific -- killed the passenger who took Yousef's seat and forced an emergency landing in Okinawa. Yousef and the other plotters were arrested before they could launch a full-scale operation." Last edited by smicer; 08-18-2006 at 08:07 PM..

08-19-2006, 06:28 AM	#14 (permalink)
Daniel_ Evil Priest: The Devil Made Me Do It! Location: Southern England	Interesting to note that the Yousef operation happened in 1994 (i.e over a decade ago) - it was not done using a binary liquid explosive, but using a nitrogen rich explosive (exactly the sort that are now checked for very easilly, but at the time were hard to detect). The Register story in the OP talked about the near imposibility of taking two stable safe liquids and blending them with little of no special equipment into a powerful and deadly explosive. The fact is that the chemistry is not in your favour. Explosives have to have lots of energy to give up in a large BANG! Stable reagents tend to have their energy trapped in strong chemical bonds. This means that to make an unstable explosive from stable reagents generally takes either the input of a large activation energy, or a very long time. Explosives are hard to make. Even gunpowder (where it is the reaction of the stable reagents that causes the explosion) is hard to blend reliably without special equipment. One scenario that did occur to me as possible (but not likely and would be very dangerous to carry out) would be to drop a large amount of sodium metal into a plane toilet - this reacts with water and liberates hydrogen and generates heat. It might be enough to blow a small hole in the skin of a plane, but frankly it probably wouldn't down it. To bring a plane down you must damage the airframe so much that it loses integrity, or set fire to the fuel. The problem with stories about terrorists catastrophically bringing down dozens of flights is that bringing down just one is bloody hard. Think about planes downed by explosions historically - even Lockerbie (probably the biggest such loss of life) was achieved by a nation using it's security sevices and all of its abilities and finances. A bunch of guys plotting in a living room, and using equipment that they've bought at CostCo or Tesco or whatever just are not going to be able to cook up an explosive that is ( a ) undetectible by current screening equipment, ( b ) stable enough to carry on board, ( c ) powerful enough to down a plane for certain. To imagine that they could do this multiple times, on the same day, without anyone finding out about their plan, without one of then blowing themselves up on the way to the airport, or chickening out and confessing, or haivng their bomb fail to work, is to my mind (as a qualified and highly experienced Chemistry researcher and Project Manager) unlikely in the extreme. The cemistry and logistics are both insurmountable obstacles - it's just James Bond territory. That doesn't mean we can be complacent, but it does mean that most of the security measures are heavilly overblown, and disproportionate. __________________ ╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗ Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air, And deep beneath the rolling waves, In labyrinths of Coral Caves, The Echo of a distant time Comes willowing across the sand; And everthing is Green and Submarine ╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

08-19-2006, 11:31 AM	#17 (permalink)
Daniel_ Evil Priest: The Devil Made Me Do It! Location: Southern England	OK - as for the pestle and mortar - making gunpowder by pestle and mortar is inefficient (i should know, I've done it) and the ammount of powder you'd need to blow up a plane would require three rather large sacks of ingredients (potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur), a pestle and mortar, and a container to pack the resulting gunpowder in. You'd have to get these things through customs (who run detection systems for nitrates, as I said earlier), and you'd to mix the ingredients and pack your bomb without anyone on the plane stopping you. As for how easy it is to blow up a plane - there have been groups all over the world that have been interested in doing it for decades. The current round of percieved terroists (and I use the phrase perceived, because pretty much everyone that has been arrested has been not yet convicted in a reputable court). I lived in London at the height of the IRA bombing campaign, and with much lower levels of security than are in place currently, they managed a handful of significant bombs. The bombs used on 7/7 were large enough to totally fill a moderate sized rucksack, and still only managed to tear open a train carriage or demolish the roof of a bus. The amount that you could smuggle onto a plane if you had to hide it in the lining of a bag simply would not have the destructive force to blow a plane out of the air. The most likely source of any terror attacks on planes remains the threat of violence agaist passengers and crew, and to be frank, a group of attackers who don't care about their own lives could probably hijack a planewith shoelaces if they were skilled and fit. Threaten to garotte a small child and see how many people rush you. The fear of terror attacks far outweighs the reality - the lawmakers and intelligence gatherers have seen too many bond films and really believe that there exists some compound that can be fitted inside a drink can that has the destructive force to destroy a plane. A well equipped design laboratory MAY be able to come up with a grenade that was shaped like a can, was triggered by the ringpull, and was not detectable by x-rays or neutron scans, and was sitably washed to remove all chemical residues, but somehow i think that ( a ) it would be out of the reach of mst countries, let alone terror groups, and ( b ) if you had the tech and the backing to do it, you'd be better off investing that tech and money into using a ground to air missile. Look at the REAL strikes that have taken place in the past few years, and you'll note that the most effective have been very low tech. September 11th was achieved with craft knives, the damage to a US warship was achieved by a speedboat and an RPG, the 7/7 killings were a few kilos of TATP cooked up in a home laboratory and lugged onto trains in backpacks. I'm not saying that terrorists will never down a plane, but I am prepared to bet doughnuts to dogshit that it won't be by mixing innocuous liquids that were in carry on bagage. __________________ ╔═════════════════════════════════════════╗ Overhead, the Albatross hangs motionless upon the air, And deep beneath the rolling waves, In labyrinths of Coral Caves, The Echo of a distant time Comes willowing across the sand; And everthing is Green and Submarine ╚═════════════════════════════════════════╝

08-19-2006, 11:28 PM	#18 (permalink)
Dragonlich 42, baby! Location: The Netherlands	Daniel, just a question: you say that the bombs on 7/7 only managed to do relatively light damage to the train/bus. You don't need to do a lot of damage to a plane to cause serious trouble. If that "trouble" causes the plane to crash, the plot will have succeeded. Failure to bring down a plane will still be a (slight) succes, because of the fear it would spread. ("Next time it could be me, and they might succeed then!") It seems to me that the original article was rather short-sighted. It only focuses on one type of explosive that someone said the plotters were going to use. The article then says that that type of explosive is hard to make. I'd say that you cannot conclude that the "myth" is debunked just because one type of explosive is hard to create. FYI, the BBC had an interview with an explosive expert. He says that liquid explosives could take down an airplane. "Dr Clifford Jones, an explosives expert from the University of Aberdeen, says even a small amount of liquid explosives carried on to an aircraft would result in a catastrophic explosion." <a href = "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4780391.stm">the article</a>. Without full information on what kind of explosives the plotters were going to use, it's pretty silly to try to "debunk the myth". But then again, the police are not going to release that information because it might help other would-be terrorists... I'll let a judge decide if it's a myth or not; at least (s)he will have all the information necessary.

08-25-2006, 11:25 AM	#20 (permalink)
Paq Junkie Location: South Carolina	just something to consider... for the few who have met me, i'm a pretty average looking person, I normally fly alone and i normally carry a camera bag with me when i fly. I recently flew from phoenix to atlanta then to charlotte..like yesterday...i passed throuhg the people at phoenix with a camera bag and laptop bag...i passed through the people in atlanta with the same camera bag and laptop bag... only to get home and realize i had my eclipse fluid in my camera bag. not hidden, not even out of any real site, just in the bottom of the front pocket under my 30 spare AA batteries..(camera backpack). Eclipse fluid is just a pretty pure alcohol used for cleaning image sensors. I just forgot it was packed in there and 4 separate people doing a cursory scan of my bag missed it... now...couple that with the fact that i was passed through security in phoenix w/out a single hiccup other than i put my laptop on top of my shoes and wallet. three young ladies behind me, caucasion, mid twenties, dressed in shorts and flipflops and chatting about their vacation, etc. were selected for 'random security screening"...which took almost 20 minutes with a special security person giving them questions and joking about such things.... my point: airplane security is an absolute joke. period. not even a funny joke, just a joke. __________________ Live. Chris