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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.
but what about SNAKES on a plane, ever thought of that?
Borat is able to do liquid explosions
Let's not all suck at the same time please
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? Blowing up a plane is a one-time deal but scaring people into not taking drinks onto planes, making people take off their shoes before boarding, checking their ipods in with their luggage, these annoyances are going to be with us for decades to come! Why terrorize when irritating is so much easier?
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.
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.
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_ uk_terror_p.html
I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane t
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Firstly, the 7/7 bombs were reported to be TATP. This compound is made with acetone, hydrogen peroxide and drain cleaner. The ingredients are liquid, yes, but the end product is a powder. Creating TATP requires access to a cooler or ice water bath, it is not something you can whip up in a bathroom.
The hysteria this has caused is mind boggling. There are an infinite number of ways terrorists could attack random innocent civilians. It is not, repeat not, possible to protect everyone from everything. Banning iPods and water bottles is not making anyone safer. It is an attempt to appear that something is "being done". It's a pacifier for the masses.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
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 know, I've read several articles now talking about the potential difficulties in mixing a binary explosive on a plane. And you know, I'll buy that. But, for my dollar, and ease of use, why not just carry on some bleach and ammonia? When mixed they do some pretty nasty stuff. And there's no concern about explosion beforehand, and no strange requirements for mixing them properly. Plus, once you mix them, you can't stop the reaction. The end result is the same. Everyone on the plane dies, and it falls out of the sky. That was the whole point, right?
--Brian
Of course, if you don't believe him you can try it for yourself. Remember to pack a hydraulic jack in your carry-on.
What I see there is a Pakistani woman caught with a water bottle full of "possibly explosive" material. They don't know what the material was yet.
This certainly could be "a terrorist caught with explosives", the conclusion you jump to; given that it was a real possibility, evacuating the airport and investigating further as they have done was of course the appropriate course of action for the time being.
But it also seems possible this is a false alarm, similar to this morning when a bomb sniffing dog detected a suspicious container that turned out to be full of completely ordinary rags, or the day before when an "unruly passenger" was widely reported to have "Vaseline, a screw driver, matches and a note referencing al-Qaeda" and then it turned out she had nothing of the kind and was just having some kind of nervous breakdown and peeing in the plane aisles (?), or a couple days before that when three men of Arabic descent were arrested with a bunch of cell phones on suspicion they were going to blow up a bridge but then turned out only to be buying cell phones to resell in Dallas at a profit.
Again, it could be that this woman arrested in West Virginia was part of a real terrorist plot, and it could be that some unhinged lady was inspired by recent media reports about plane bombs to pour lighter fluid in a couple of water bottles and attempt to board a plane. Perhaps there really was a legitimate threat to passenger safety there. I shall be watching the news on this one with interest to find out exactly what happened.
But until we do find out exactly what happened, it seems awfully odd in this case to say "reality has intervened" when in fact what you mean is "partly speculative media reports have intervened".
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.
I rest easier on an airplane knowing that we're soundly protected from the most bizarre Hollywood movie plot type attacks, desperately trying not think about all the simple, easy practical things the idiots running things have overlooked.
The real terrorists have got to be laughing their asses off at the way we snarl air traffic, tie up millions of dollars in police resources, botch up air travel and twist ourselves in nervous knots over nothing. I'll bet they're more than a little amused at the video of people throwing toothpaste and hair gel into dumpsters.
If the terrorist plan is to make us live in fear, scared of our shadow and squander our national treasure on security that doesn't work while we go into staggering national debt spending 5 billion a month in a no-win war half-way around the world, then I'd ask which political party is really helping the terrorists?
A small group of people could cause mass panic and a surprising amount of damage armed with nothing more dangerous than a little training and a cigarette lighter or box of kitchen matches. We are so easily spooked, then our over-reaction and fear takes the little bit of damage the terrorists actually do and magnifies it to absurd proportions. Remember the panic and fear on the east coast when the sniper and his kid were on the loose? There were road blocks, random searches, helicopters, overtime for police...one guy with a rifle. Un-fucking-real.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
As a follow up, some people aren't realizing that it isn't necessary to actually have a chemical reaction and form an organic peroxide molecule to make an explosive. A solution of oxidizer and fuel can easily be a shock sensitive explosive. This requires higher concentration peroxide than is available off the shelf, but concentrating a modest amount is not very challenging.
The feasibility of this really isn't open for debate. There is no doubt that you can reliably mix two liquids and produce a high explosive that can be detonated with a sharp impact.
A quest for perfect safety from all conceivable threats is, of course, ridiculous, but I'm sure there will be many more added security measures thrown in as a result of this, to little real benefit and much general annoyance. Personally, I would have been completely comfortable flying immediately after 9/11 with absolutely no additional security measures. Statistics and probability leave me with no fear of terrorism.
John Carmack
How is that relevant? The Wikipedia article clearly states that he used liquid nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin will be easily detected by regular modern airport explosives-detection means, which puts nitroglycerin out of consideration. The whole point of The Register article, if you read it carefully, is to research the possibilty to create explosives from apparently _innocent_ liquids.
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.