What they actually used it as it is supposed to be used...as a primer??
The London subway bombs were just pure primer TATP, yes?
Posted on 10/04/2005 8:53:21 PM PDT by hispanarepublicana
Yep, looks like my post was wrong. I was not aware that TATP is hard to detect.
These are people who don't value life, not even their own. Unstable is not a problem to them, as long as they can go out with a big bang. These are intelligent but not rational individuals driven by religious hate. Dying to advance the cause is among the greatest honors members of that cult can achieve. Given that this culture has already delivered to us the child suicide bomber, this is not particularly outrageous in the scope of activities that our enemies engage in.
Thanks for posting this:
"The delicate nature of TATP might warn off sensible people, but not terrorists. TATP comes with two big advantages. First of all, unlike other types of explosive, it cannot be detected by sniffer dogs, so it is easier to smuggle into airports and onto airplanes. The second advantage is one of the main reasons that this explosive is used at all - it is very easy to synthesise in clandestine labs.
On 7 July, four bomb blasts on London’s transport system killed at least 54 people and injured hundreds more. Evidence led investigators to search houses in Leeds, where three of the four suspected suicide bombers lived. In one house they found traces of triacetone triperoxide (TATP). The white crystalline powder is so unstable that police immediately widened the cordoned-off area and employed a no-fly zone around the site.
The substance is extremely shock-sensitive – knocking or grinding the powder can cause it to explode – and is also highly flammable. Even trained chemists have been injured while attempting to use it. Because of this, experts believe that a stabiliser was used to allow it to be transported.
Reid claimed that his explosives were obtained from a Czech or Slovak contact in Amsterdam. The source of the London bombers’ explosives is currently unknown, though Blair says that Pakistan is among the countries included in the search."
It's not a big deal, but it's wise to always consider who might use the information you put on the web and for what purpose. When you do a lot of posting on FR, it's easy to start unconsciously thinking that this is a closed network and only FReepers read your posts. Of course it is not, so I'm just suggesting that you always consider who outside of FR might read your posts. If there's no particular benefit to anyone from talking in detail about explosives or weapons, then why put that knowledge out on the web?
Well, I don't know which hall you were assigned to watch but I do know that if it comes down to even the least informed being the most concerned and the free dissemination of knowledge is compromised by the timorous, then I must conclude that the terrorists have won.
What they actually used it as it is supposed to be used...as a primer??
The London subway bombs were just pure primer TATP, yes?
A dirty secret is that there are a few families of lesser known high explosives that have completely different chemical signatures such that standard detection methods would not pick them up. Most detection methods depend on nitrogen compounds, which make up virtually all modern industrial and military explosives.
Fortunately, most terrorists buy this stuff rather than manufacture it, and even then it would take some technical competence to know how to defeat detection mechanisms as virtually all well known explosives are detectable. TATP is a lousy explosive, but happens to be in that very tiny family of peroxide explosives, a subset of which (like TATP) avoid conventional detection -- most organic peroxide explosives are so insanely unstable that they spontaneously and/or violently decompose on formation. There is only one organic peroxide I know of that has any plausible use as an explosive and TATP ain't it.
Definitely indcons. Thank you very much... (o:
Rank nonsense. Acetone emits a powerful smell, even in powdered form.
Most people know it by its more common name: nail polish remover.
Dogs can't smell it?! Oh, that's rich!
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/main.html
'Texas City just blew up'
A powerful chemical explosion 50 years ago propelled a small port town into an unwelcome national and world spotlight
Paul S. Howell / Chronicle
By STEVE OLAFSON
Houston Chronicle
TEXAS CITY - On the morning of April 16, 1947, shortly after 8 a.m., the hatch on the No. 4 hold of the French ship the S.S. Grandcamp was opened so that stevedores could resume loading a shipment of fertilizer bound for Europe.
snip
Just an historical note on fertilizer blowing up.
"The blast took nearly 600 lives and millions of dollars in property, and it scarred the town. A half-century later, people in Texas City celebrate their recovery, but still mourn their loss."
Yup. Makes it easy for amateur hour though, since you can treat it like black powder with a slightly bigger bang. Real high explosives take a bit more skill to deploy, particularly if you are rolling your own suicide bomb rig from scratch.
Who fabricates and disseminates such rank nonsense?? Look below:
"Acetone peroxide (triacetone triperoxide, peroxyacetone, TATP, TCAP) is an organic peroxide. It is a high explosive that can be made from common household items: acetone, hydrogen peroxide, and sulfuric acid. Other strong acids such as hydrochloric acid may also be used as a catalyst. Since its precursors are readily available, it is commonly used by amateur chemists and explosive makers, often for detonators, and is sometimes found in improvised explosive devices. It takes the form of a white crystalline powder with a distinctive acrid smell.
It is highly heat, friction, and shock sensitive. Professional chemists have been injured attempting to use it. Once manufactured the material can degrade during storage, becoming less likely to explode. For its instability, it has been called the "Mother of Satan"."
http://tinyurl.com/almxp
The course of the world is such that either the world will become rational or that all the people of the world will become casualties of the devout; a critical mass is a principle of aggregate instability.
While some religions have a history of non-aggression, many have a history of intolerance; the two shall always meet and contend.
The philosophy of Mutual Self Destruction is useless as a bargaining chip in this Texas Hold-em game we now find ourselves playing with the wrong hole cards.
No, it's the other way around.
First, "high explosives" means that no container is required for something to go "boom." That's it. That's all that "high explosives" really means.
Low explosives are things that require containers...such as gasoline and black powder. Torch gasoline or black power out in the open (i.e. no container) and you'll just get a flash fire...no "boom."
So it's actually low explosives that require extra steps to go "boom." You've got to wrap them inside the right containers (e.g. cylinders in your car engine on a small scale, or a paper wrapper to make a firecracker).
Once the road to knowledge is closed, the journey itself loses meaning.
Probably because hexamethylene tetramine is slightly more of a nuisance (though still easily accessible) to procure and/or fabricate compared to acetone, which you can get at half the stores in town. Also, it does not appear that they were particularly selective as it stands. If they really cared, they could have fabricated much more powerful explosives of marginal stability relatively easily. They were just looking for a cheap-n-easy high explosive, and TATP was it. Difficulty of detection might have also been a desired property, though I would have gone with a different family of cheap and stable high explosives to do the same job (which I will refrain from naming) had I been doing it. But then, I'm neither a terrorist nor an idiot.
This is very rusty knowledge off the top of my head; I haven't been involved in that line of work or chemistry for many years. It is fortunate that most terrorists are only slightly more technically competent than crack-addled monkeys.
You can't play Mutual Self Destruction when the enemy considers that a win and you consider it a loss or tie.
Yes indeed that is the only reason they have not already destroyed us.
A lot of primaries require containment if you want a bang instead of a burn. Yes, the burn will eventually go critical with a big enough uncontained pile, but it may take a while. By "real high explosives", I was referring to secondaries that cannot undergo detonation triggered by a spark, even in containment.
As an interesting example, double-base smokeless powders are both high and low explosives. They deflagrate even under high pressure in a cartridge when popped with a primer, but will detonate vigorously if you put a heavy detonator or detcord to it under strong confinement, yielding military-level output.
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