Posted on 04/16/2013 9:33:09 AM PDT by kristinn
A person briefed on the Boston Marathon investigation says the explosives were in 6-liter pressure cookers and placed in black duffel bags.
The person says the explosives were placed on the ground and contained shards of metal, nails and ball bearings.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
When I was a kid, we shook the gunpowder out of about 100 dud firecrackers and packed them into a cardboard box about the size of a cigarette package and lite it on fire. Quite a fizzle and short burst of fire and smoke. Thank God we didn’t have access to a pressure cooker.
Did they have pistol grips and bayonet lugs!
How about 30-round carrying straps?
Yeah, I have a Crockpot but I don’t think I can kill anyone with it...well, wait a minute. My cooking has killed before...
I think that the cell phone idea is "over thinking" it. They have created a bomb in a sealed vessel, they know the event timing fairly accurately, so they used a cheap wrist watch with an alarm function as a timer and some batteries for ignition, and put all the parts into the kettle to become part of the shrapnel.
That way the perp(s) could prepare the devices 24 hours in advance and deploy them in the dead of night (after garbage pick-up of course), then get out of town and watch TV.
Boston could learn from NYC cops and get rid of all receptacles (garbage cans, mailboxes, &c) along the potential target zones. Or they could do as the French do in Paris and convert their "garbage cans" into hardened bomb containment vessels which direct the blast upward and away from street traffic.
Regards,
GtG
I think we’re on to something here. I’m all for smaller capacity pressure cookers.
Remind me not to eat your chili. LOL.
OTOH, I make mine with peanut butter, unsweetened chocolate, chipotle chili powder, a couple of fresh habaneros and several tablespoons of Montreal steak seasoning. Imparts nice glow...
Who among us haven’t done some sort of stupid crap when we were kids? Sometimes I wonder how any of us made it to adulthood!
Cell signals are probably quite good in the area in question.
However, even if they used a cell phone, it might have simply been used as a timer, not as a means of remote control. In the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 and injured a couple of thousand, that's what they did. There were several duds. In one case the cell phone alarm was 12 hours off. In another, the wires had come loose from the detonator. The police traced the SIM card from one of the phones to the perps.
No, not outlaw them . . . merely make legal possession of them a government monopoly.
There's no need for anyone who isn't a policeman or member of the armed forces to own a pressure cooker!
I’ve got a nephew who did that and it cost his parents several thousand dollars in legal fees to get the terrorism charges dropped.
You’re absolutely right.
No, I had not yet seen the crime scene photos. They are not surprising as the components of the timer and the shrapnel will not "vaporize" in the blast. It will be interesting to see what form of explosive was used. My first guess was a mix of smokeless powder and a sugar/potassium nitrate mix which is often used by the Palestinians to fuel their "junkyard" rockets. Both would be low explosives but the the materials are relatively easy to obtain. Another possibility would be acetone peroxide (TATP) also known as "mother of Satan" by Islamic terrorists. It is a primary (high) explosive which may be prepared from commonly available materials but requires great care in the manufacture as it is extremely sensitive and subject to premature detonation (hence the nickname).
TATP is almost certainly a positive link to Islamic terrorists as it has been used by the "underwear" bomber, the "shoe" bomber (both unsuccessfully) and the planned destruction of multiple commercial flights. The "airplane" plot was aborted when the TATP exploded during preparation and took out the apartment the terrorists were using as a home base. Their plot was documented from their abandoned computer's hard drive. The use of a pressure cooker as a bomb casing is also a link to Islamic terrorists. All though once information becomes available on the Internet, it becomes much harder to isolate the actual transgressors.
Regards,
GtG
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