Posted on 08/10/2006 9:49:54 AM PDT by Sax
Q&A: Liquid explosives
An alleged plot to blow up planes from the UK mid-flight and cause "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" has been disrupted, Scotland Yard has said. It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.
BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera said the plan "revolved around liquids of some kind". One theory is that the attack may have involved liquid explosive being carried on to a plane in either drink bottles or cans. Dr Clifford Jones, an explosives expert from the University of Aberdeen, says even a small amount of liquid explosives carried on to an aircraft would result in a catastrophic explosion.
What are liquid explosives? The best place to start is with the term "high explosive"; these can be either solid or liquid. Of course, the most famous ones are solid, such as Dynamite and TNT.
One liquid explosive is a general use explosive that is used in quarries. However, I would not be surprised if it is possible to produce solid explosives in liquid form.
How do they work? Usually when something burns, it is subsonic and there is very little pressure effect. With high explosives, the rate of burning is extremely rapid and exceeds the speed of sound. As a result of that there is something called "overpressure" - pressure greater than the surrounding atmospheric pressure. Massive overpressure is not needed to cause damage. An excess of 1% can break windows, and an overpressure of 10% can harm or kill people and cause structural damage to buildings. An overpressure of just 2% could break the windows of the aeroplane, and 10% would wreck the aircraft and possibly kill the people in it before it reached the ground. By the time the damage is caused, the chemistry has finished and physics has taken over.
How are they made? There are such things as liquid explosives that are high explosives and they behave in exactly the same way as solid explosives, such as TNT. But there are also explosives that are made by mixing a solid and a liquid - one being the oxidant and the other being the fuel. Unlike most high explosives, they do not contain the fuel and oxidant in the same molecule but they do contain them in sufficiently close contact to cause a blast.
Are the components difficult to get hold of? No, it is very easy. Ordinary household substances could be used. Specialist knowledge or equipment needed to make? If someone wanted to obtain a solid high explosive in a liquid form, it would not be difficult for a trained chemical technologist. But if someone was using a backyard laboratory it is more likely they would go for the two component approach. Not a lot of experience is needed, the principles are quite simple but it would be a hazardous process of trial and error. I would not want to be messing about these things. It has been known for schoolboys to go home and attempt this and blow their house up.
Could an explosive device be carried on to an aeroplane? The size of a device necessary could be carried in hand baggage. Explosives in a toilet bag, certainly inside a shoulder bag would be enough to meet the terrorists' needs. They could be quite hard to detect because I do not think any of the things we have mentioned would respond to x-rays. For example, a liquid hydrocarbon fuel could pass as mineral water.
The question is how do you get something packed into a bag so it does not look suspicious?
Or you can taste it in front of security to ensure it is safe.........
A North Korean suicide bomber, female IIRC, used a liquid explosive to bring down a Korean Airlines 707 back in the 1980's.
Astrolite = ammonium nitrate and hydrazine.
Your's is a very good point especially if it had some type of detonation device which could be set off by something as innocent looking as the remote door opener for your car.
Due to Astrolite G's high detonation velocity, only small amounts are needed for demolitions use. An antipersonnel or antivehicular land mine poured DIRECTLY into the dirt would only require 4 ounces detonated by an electrical or mechanical detonating cap. Such a small amount would be devastating in antipersonnel applications and would be sufficient to disable even a light armored vehicle.
Back in about late September 2001, I recommended that all passengers shall be stripped naked, catheterised, anaethsetised, and shackled to their seats for the duration of the flight. First Class gets the job done by cute nurses who could be employed at "Hooters". The rest of us get Helen Thomas look-a-likes.
What does that picture represent?
If you think muzzies need to consult FreeRepublic to formulate bombs, you haven't surfed the internet much.....
The Big Valley's was a two-part episode in 1967, "Explosion!"
At any rate, most of what I know about nitroglycerin I learned as a kid watching TV westerns.
Thanks for bringing back the memories.
IIRC, it was some type of camera that can see through clothing, not an actual x-ray.
Everyone's a winner!
Let's work to make FR a place where there is NO information that will help someone fabricate an explosive device.
Let them use google instead.
Imagine what would happen if I posted a recipe for TATP, someone used it, and said where they got it?
You can make a boom with salt, sugar, and a car battery, but it would be stupid to say how to do it here.
People don't realize that washing your toilet with bleach forms the acid too and can make you very sick. Cleaning up animal urine, cleaning litter boxes with bleach also form hydrocloric (?) acid?
They have thought of that too, just read an airline employee brief. No Keys are allowed out of the UK with computer chips & no remotes, including car alarm types.
***I think of nitroglycerin and the episode of Bonanza ***
Same plot on HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL except the wagon blew up.
In the early 1960's SUPERMAN opened the FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE to tours. One man brought in some coffee he was sipping on.
Another used a fountain pen to get Superman's autograph. When alone, one squirted his pen ink into the other's thermos making it a lethal bomb to blow up the fortress.
The little people heard and telepathicly got the message to Superman who took the thermos bomb and got rid of it.
Just a rememberance.
Cat pee smells exactly like ammonia. That why, much to his chagrin, my older son takes care of the cat box. He does know not to use bleach. Never really considered the toilet bowl though.
Didn't Charles and Jonathan or Mr. Edwards also haul nitro on Little House episode?
**A North Korean suicide bomber, female IIRC, used a liquid explosive to bring down a Korean Airlines 707 back in the 1980's.***
Wasn't that a Russian air to air missle or am I thinking of a different incident. KAL700
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