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Bottles of Honey Shut Down Airport
The suspicious material found inside luggage that shut down Bakersfield's Meadows Field Airport turned out to be five soft drink bottles filled with honey. A routine swabbing of the luggage tested positive for TNT. When the bag was opened authorities found the bottles filled with an amber liquid. Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood said, "Why in this day and age would someone take a chance carrying honey in Gatorade bottles? That itself is an alarm. It's hard to understand."
What 'fumes' exactly come from honey?
100% psychological of course. They expected to smell something evil, and thus they got sick. Makes no difference what they smelled. No surprise.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Well, that part was just incredibly stupid.
If you are suspecting something bad, why would you want to open the container? If it's an liquid explosive of some sort, how do you know that it won't react badly to the air? It could be sealed in a nitrogen environment. How do you know it's not a biological weapon? Chemical weapon?
Since the sensors say 'TNT' and your eyes tell you it's not TNT, my gut reaction is to call in a crew that knows what to do with ptentially dangerous substances that might have been in contact with TNT, might be some kind of new explosive, chemical or biological weapon.
What I wouldn't do when handling an unknown substance is take a deep breath and try to guess what it is. For all I know it could be some way of storing Hydrogen Flouride in such a way, that upon contact with air, it will release a couple of gallons of it into the air. Or how about Sarin gas in a new kind of liquid containment?
Whomever opened those bottles should be fired for completely neglegent behaviour and wilfully exposing the public to an unknown and potentially lethal danger. Actually, bring criminal charges against them as well.