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Are Liquid Explosives on a Plane Feasible?
permaculture writes "The Register describes the difficulty of mixing up a batch of liquid explosives on a plane. Further, it opines that such a plot might work in a Hollywood film, but not in the real world. Liquid explosives were used for the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, according to the official account — or not, as now seems more likely."
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
I was shocked to hear the media talking about the possibility of bring nitroglycerin onto an airplane. The entire reason that dynamite was invented is because the liquid is horribly volitile. Some people have speculated that the terrorists were not attempting a large scale explosion as CNN and Fox News would have you believe. Instead they were waiting until the plane was in the middle of the Atlantic and starting a fairly large fire. There are many substances that can create a dangerous fire on an airplane in the middle of the ocean at 30,000 feet. There is no need for a Holywood style explosion at all. I am being intentionally vague in this post, but three men with drink containers full of certain substances starting three fires at three different parts of the plane would be extremely difficult to control, especially considering the lack of fire surpression systems in the passenger cabin. I am not a firefighter (rookie EMT and will be training to be a rescuer) but I cannot imagine trying to put out three fires with the 1-2 fire extingueshers available.
The first World Trade Center bombing and OK City show that everyday chamicals can be combined with horrific results. In those situations, however, there were truckloads of the two ingredients. I agree in part with TFA that it would be hard to perform an explosion the size of Pan-Am 103's with liquids, but that is not necesary.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Bruce Schneier linked to another post which had an interesting take by a chemist in a graduate program. He describes details of the chemicals involved and what it would take to detonate them effectively onboard a plane.
The summary: improvised explosives involve pretty nasty stuff that you'd be hard pressed to mix in an airplane lavatory without killing yourself in the process.
That reinforces my main take on this: the creator of the article has this silly preconceived notion that "murderous" implies "stupid".
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.
Nope. You can distill H2O2, but not through boiling; boiling breaks it down faster than it will concentrate it. You can do it through creating a partial vaccuum and using lower temperatures.
Besides, it's not like concentrated H2O2 is hard to come by.
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.
And I've seen the mythbusters make a lethal paper crossbow out of newspaper and a lunch tray, as well as eat through an inch thick steel bar with a DC transformer and salsa. Sure, they took their time, but once you've done it once, how hard is it to recreate? You'd be surprised what desperate people who have time to practice beforehand can accomplish. Just because they're "murderous" doesn't mean that they're stupid or uncreative.
Did you really name your son "Robert');DROP TABLE Students;--"?
Perry Metzger wrote an excellent post to the interesting-people mailing list last Friday. He goes into more detail than the Register article does, offers first-hand information, and packs in more irony and sarcasm besides.
You mean as Brainiac shows in this video.
Does anyone else think that these terrorists' true purpose is not to kill the passengers on a few planes but to inconvenience travellers for years to come?
Their immediate goal is to kill as many infidels as possible, with the final objective of wiping out the US and Israel. It's their mission statement, they make no effort to hide it and anyone who thinks otherwise might as well believe in unicorns.
Of course, if you don't believe him you can try it for yourself. Remember to pack a hydraulic jack in your carry-on.
The article quoted is by Craig Murray - an ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan, who gained notoriety by blowing the whistle on the UK's support for Uzbekistan's torturers.
Needless to say, Mr Murray paid a heavy price for his candour.
Read up!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Not only is this plan feasible, but a terrorist had already detonated such a device on board an aircraft. In 1995 Philippines Airlines Flight 434 was the target of a bomb left by al-Qaeda terrorist Ramzi Youssef on an earlier leg of the flight. The bomb cut Japanese businessman Haruki Ikegami in half, and ripped through the passenger compartment into the cargo hold. The aircraft lost primary and backup hydraulic controls and had to be flown in via throttles -- a difficult and dangerous maneuver.
Not only that, but the bomb that Youssef left on board that flight was one tenth the power of the bombs he intended to detonate as part of Operation Bojinka. The argument that such a weapon is not feasible is itself more FUD. It is quite possible, and it has been done before. Al-Qaeda operatives are trained in explosives, and they knew exactly what was doing.
Yes, there's a good chance of killing yourself while mixing such a bomb, but I rather doubt that any of the plotters of this attack had any qualms about killing themselves in the process.
Actually, their goal is world domination under their hardline view of Islam.
Believe it or not Osama's goals were more secular than religeous.
After he returned from Afghanistan he was sort of a semi-hero in his home country of Saudi Arabia. When Saddam invaded Kutwait in 91, Osama personally offered King Saudi access to Al Queda's 100,000 volunteers and his personal fortune to fight off Saddam from a Saudi invasion.
But... The King's delegation (Osama wasn't allowed to talk to the royal family himself) laughed at Osama's offer because Saddam had over 1,000,000 troops and they were well armed at that.
Then King Saudi invited the American to be based in Saudi and attack an attack on Iraq. This infuriated Osama because no only was his offer rebuffed, but infidels were on holy ground. At that moment he swore revenge and packed his bags and moved to Sudan.
Later... Osama assisted the muslims in Somalia to drive out the Americans. His support was negliable and some say didn't really help as much as he said he did.
The problem with this was that Osama mistakenly thought that if you killed a few Americans they would run with their tails behind their legs because they had no stomach for fighting.
So he mistakenly went about and concocted 9/11 thinking if he brought the fight to their home land the Americans would give in and leave Saudi Arabia.
Of course we know that he was horribly mistaken and would have done better attacking military targets in Saudi Arabia, but that is neither here nor there but there are very secular reasons or at least political reasons that the terrorists do what they are trying to do to us.
Many of them use the banner of religion to carry out that agenda.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
It has been pointed out elsewhere that bombs in relatively open areas (like check-in areas) tend to be a lot less effective than bombs in enclosed spaces (like aircraft), although some of the extra-large backpacks and suitcases could hold a much larger bomb than you could possibly smuggle onto an aircraft, and a bomb packed with lots of shrapnel can kill people in open spaces much more effectively than a straight explosive.
An effective check-in attack would probably involve detonating relatively small devices in the entrances to the check-in area so as to block exits simultaneously with large backpack shrapnel bombs further inside.
Sporting stadiums, however, are perhaps the ideal non-aircraft target, since there are limited exits to disable. You wouldn't even have to kill that many people directly - just detonate the exit-blocking devices first, then detonate the in-stands devices one-by-one so as to demonstrate a continuing threat - the crowd will take care of the rest by crushing people to death in the blocked exits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bojinka
These guys actually blew up the bathroom in a plane with a cut down bomb for testing. After blowing up a movie theater seat.
Take off every 'sig' !!
Occam's Razor, unless I'm greatly mistaken, basically states that the simplest answer is probably correct.
Actually, Occam's Razor states that the most parsimonious answer is probably correct, not the simplest. In other words, the answer which introduces the least new ideas and/or causes you to throw out the least old ideas, but which still fits the evidence. A little pedantic to point this out, I know, but it's not exactly the same as simplest.
Who said anything about brewing the explosive onboard?
From TFA: "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."