To: Mark Felton
This is just a form of TNT, it is commonly called "gun cotton". It has been around for about 100 years. It was the primary source of explosives for artillery rounds for a very long time. There is nothing new about it. If they could come across a stash of WW II artillery shells they could take it out of them and use it. They don't need to invent the wheel again. Just use what is out there. It has a distinctive smell and a bomb sniffing dog could pick it up from 100 yards away.
2 posted on
10/14/2003 7:16:42 AM PDT by
Flint
To: Flint
It's not TNT, which would be nitrated toluene. It is nitrated cellulose (or nitrated cotton or gun cotton as you mention.) You are correct that dogs would pick it up easily.
One can stabilize gun cotton with a liquid such as nitrated glycrine (nitro glycerine) and use gun cotton to stabilize the nitro glycerine. Theses are old technologies in the explosives field.
4 posted on
10/14/2003 7:30:14 AM PDT by
Doctor Stochastic
(Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
To: Flint; All
It has been around for about 100 yearsA LOT more than 100 years. Nitrocellulosewas first employed as artificial Billiard balls in place of Ivory in the 1870's.
Further treating with more nitrate yielded Photographic film.
But tri-nitrating cotton gives "Gun Cotton", a starting point for Cordite, or "Smokeless Gunpowder".
10 posted on
10/14/2003 8:31:34 AM PDT by
Lael
(Bush to Middle Class: Send your kids to DIE in Iraq while I send your LIVELIHOODS to INDIA!)
To: Flint
Ah, "guncotton". Back in the very politically incorrect mid-1960s, one of the experiments in my freshman chemistry class at VMI was making guncotton. I have long since forgotton the exact formula, but it was really astounding how easy it was (as long as one was careful with the acids). Apparently, guncotton was historically the staple of cadet "bombs" which were hurled into the courtyard on random nights, and, I'll attest, it was easier to make guncotton in the Chem labs than it was to obtain the preferred substitute M-80s.
It would be easy enough to stuff a teddybear with guncotton and have some poor unsuspecting kid carry it on board, I suspect.
14 posted on
10/14/2003 9:13:14 AM PDT by
CatoRenasci
(Ceterum Censeo [Gallia][Germania][Arabia] Esse Delendam --- Select One or More as needed)
To: Flint
It has a distinctive smell and a bomb sniffing dog could pick it up from 100 yards away.
A human could smell it from a few yards away. It's kinda hard to mask that nitro smell.
25 posted on
10/14/2003 4:22:17 PM PDT by
SSN558
(Be on the lookout for Black White-Supremacists)
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