[Gorzaloon]

What sucks is that if a terrorist is ever successful at a plot like this, we will never know about it. We will just know that a plane crashed.

We'd know, in a couple of hours. n-Nitrosamines and other post-blast products are very detectable, in the part-per-billion range. And when a "piece of meat" was found with extremely high levels, then comes DNA.

We would know who, and with what. PBA can diffrentiate between RDX/PETN etc. quite easily.

[doug from upland]

Thanks for the input. What is your background?

[ALASKA]

We'd know, in a couple of hours.

The "we" in the government would know. I'm not so sure WE, the people would know unless this happened multiple times.

[SauronOfMordor]

"What sucks is that if a terrorist is ever successful at a plot like this, we will never know about it. We will just know that a plane crashed."
We'd know, in a couple of hours. n-Nitrosamines and other post-blast products are very detectable, in the part-per-billion range.

Correction: govt investigators would know. We (the general public) would be kept in the dark to avoid killing the airline industry. If 9/11 had involved just one plane hitting WTC, it would have been "a freak accident involving a faulty navigation computer" (which was the official story that was being broadcast right up to the point where the 2nd plane hit