Do they say what kind of explosives? 400 pounds of most of 'em would be a heck of a bomb. 400 pounds of TATP would be insane. Even 400 pounds of plain old black powder would not be anything to mess with. It's slightly more than the weight of the explosives in a MK-83 1,000 pound bomb (385 lbs Tritonal, Minol II, or H-6), And of course an old Lincoln Town car would provide plenty of fragments.
Whatever type of explosives in the car, the NPD took it to their bomb disposal dump in small quantities because they feared doing it in large quantities as it could have blown up the motorcade and everything around it. When it was blown up by NPD, it left a crater in the ground, it was very loud heard all over Norman, and shook my front window which is about five miles away.
I really don't believe those numbers--400 pounds of explosives in his car trunk and 1000 pounds in his apartment.
Unfortunately, I may have contributed to the spreading of that rumor, when I brought it over here from a blog comment--and many other statements by the same blog poster were very erroneous. In fact, when I posted it here, it was to show how ridiculous the rumors had gotten. *sigh*
The kid who watched the whole bomb squad operation of removing the items from Hinrichs' apartment only saw a very small amount of *anything* removed. I can't imagine 1,400 pounds of anything being *hand-carried* anywhere, not even by a robot.
If the 13 plastic bottles were full of something, I still can't imagine them weighing 400 pounds, that's 30 pounds apiece--IF that is what they were referring to. Isn't that triacetate peroxide a liquid? If even a tiny, tiny amount of it is volatile, then these numbers don't make sense to me.
Data following is for a 2005 Lincoln Town Car, but I bet his older version was pretty similar:
Find a Car
2005 Lincoln Town Car
Fuel Type Regular
MPG (city) 18
MPG (highway) 25
MPG (combined) 21
Miles on a Tank 359 miles
Tank Size 19.0 gal