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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.
Christ, this has .
Except Nitro Glycerine would most likely detonate the second you had any turbulence, or even upon takeoff, given how unstable it is. Now if you wanted to make a bomb out of liquids - why not just bring a bottle of water and a piece of rubidium or cesium? Remember what happens when alkali metals hit water? BOOM! Two grams of cesium and a quart of water is enough to make an explosion roughly equivalent to about three or so hand grenades going off. Water and rubidium can blow apart a bathtub. Cesium is far, far more reactive.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Bruce Schneier, the dean of crypto and security processes generally, yesterday debunked this plot as "implausible".
A British diplomat (to Uzbekistan, an actual center of the Qaeda War) warns us to be skeptical of the plot. Especially its timing, which was premature for destroying a possible network, but right on time to steal headlines from a primary defeat from a leading neocon that drew defensive scare propaganda from Bush and Cheney even though it's a Democratic primary.
As we see more and more of our Republican government terrorizing us on their campaign schedule, we have more chances to turn against them, and fight our own war against terror ourselves, in our own minds and at the polls. We can replace anyone in the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate.
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make install -not war
The republicans are losing support big time over here. Finally the majority of people in this country do see through their bullshit, and short of another 9/11, there is no way the republicans can stop it.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Occam's Razor, unless I'm greatly mistaken, basically states that the simplest answer is probably correct.
Which is the most simple explanation? That a bunch of people who don't have passports, plane tickets or (if the Register article is to be believed) the remotest understanding of explosives presented a genuine threat? Or that someone didn't really care what kind of threat they represented wanted to present themselves as the good guys by having "saved" us from this threat?
I'm slightly scared to post this, as I don't want to mysteriously commit suicide in the woods.
Because the detectors are sensitive to incredibly small quantities (hundreds or thousands of molecules/parts per trillion when airborne). As in: you'll need a truly great seal on the bottle, two clean rooms and a remarkable cleaning protocol to make sure that the remaining residues are below the detection threshold.
Not that it can't be done, but the cost is unbelievable (and the number of people that need to cooperate increases the risk of detection). Someone from the first room being within several feet of the bottle for a few minutes after cleaning would leave a detectable explosive residue on the bottle's surface.
Regards,
Ross
Sooo.. Roll back to the 90'ies. Research facilty for Norwegian Oil company Hydro in Oslo. They're handling lots of nitro-glycerin and various high-explosives.. and they have all these safety measures, because for some reason, people don't like being blown up,
So.. one day, one senior researcher, fairly hung over, is handling a glass-tube (shut) with the nitro-glycerin.. and drops it. So, the guy sees his life pass by in slow-motion, curses a little for not having had sex with his wife this morning and closes his eyes waiting to die.. Except nothing happens. So, he runs out and calls for evacutation. Eventually, they clean the mess up and everybody gets back to work. Turns out, the container didn't break, and the nitro-glycerin was still lying happily on the floor.
Now, the leading researcher and head of the facility was a really hands-on-guy. He knew all the theory and stuff, but he was really hands-on. So.. they had all these tests on how much pressure it takes to make nitro-glycerin blow up, but how do you test how much turbulence it takes to make a closed container filled with the stuff blow up? You could probably put it in a shaking-machine, but that'd hardly be realistic conditions now would it?
Now, the rest of this story is verified. This guy fetches some containers of nitro, drags it out in the woods behind the factory along with a fishing rod. He finds a big ledge, when at the bottom, he ties a container to the line, and being carefull not moving the nitro at all he walks up the top of ledge, and using his fishing rod hoists the stuff up and starts swinging it around wildly.. without hitting the rock ledge of course.. He stood there for 10 minutes just waving the stuff around.
Sadly, or maybe luckily for him, he was not able to make it explode as long as it was within a closed container. The scientific, now empirically tested, conclusion was clear, the risk of explosion within a closed container was grozzly exxagarated.
(This guy also ran an experiement with was I think was paint-thinner(not sure, it was poisonous atleast) and a sealed off cabin. Himself, another researcher acting as a secretary and a psychologist locked themselves in the cabin to find out the effect the stuff had on human beings, all the while writing logs of what they were experiencing. Reviewing the log-books the day after, they found they had started drawing stick-men instead of writing logs after three hours)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
This actually isn't as stupid as it sounds. Had the explosion gone off properly, the truck (meaning the identifiable marks of the truck) would have been vaporized and buried. The truck wouldn't have been identifiable for months, at least.
That being the case, it would have been suspicious not to report the truck stolen and claim the deposit. Imagine you're the rental agent. The WTC just blew up, and an appropriately sized truck that you rented out has had no one claim the deposit. That's a direct line to the renter, which is how they actually caught the guys (but only because they identified the truck almost immediately).
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.