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Are Liquid Explosives on a Plane Feasible?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Aug 17, 2006 03:05 PM
from the shaken-not-stirred dept.
from the shaken-not-stirred dept.
permaculture writes "The Register describes the difficulty of mixing up a batch of liquid explosives on a plane. Further, it opines that such a plot might work in a Hollywood film, but not in the real world. Liquid explosives were used for the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, according to the official account — or not, as now seems more likely."
This story selected and edited by LinuxWorld editor for the day Saied Pinto.
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Explosives? dunno.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Explosives? dunno.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Explosives? dunno.... (Score:5, Funny)
No, you want that other movie. We're talkin' about muthafuckin' liquids [craphound.com] on a muthafuckin' plane, and there ain't a got-damn thing you can do about it!
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_ uk_terror_p.html [craigmurray.co.uk]
I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane t
Re:The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, I agree with a lot of the rest of your post. Particularly the comments about John Reid's speech.
Re:The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:5, Interesting)
The republicans are losing support big time over here. Finally the majority of people in this country do see through their bullshit, and short of another 9/11, there is no way the republicans can stop it.
Craig Murray (Score:5, Informative)
Needless to say, Mr Murray paid a heavy price [wikipedia.org] for his candour.
Re:The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is the most simple explanation? That a bunch of people who don't have passports, plane tickets or (if the Register article is to be believed) the remotest understanding of explosives presented a genuine threat? Or that someone didn't really care what kind of threat they represented wanted to present themselves as the good guys by having "saved" us from this threat?
I'm slightly scared to post this, as I don't want to mysteriously commit suicide in the woods.
Re:The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:5, Insightful)
If memory serves, he stood down over the principle of Western intelligence agencies relying on evidence provided by the Uzbek secret police from torture victims. Or he might have been pushed. Can't quite recall the details right now.
Re:The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the policies grant them more power. Are protestors throwing molotov cocktails at the white house? No? Then the government can afford to let them cry conspiracy -- there's no real opposition yet.
Do you really think a man like Bush has the intellect to decieve an entire nation?
Fear is what deceives. All Bush has to do is control the fear and he controls the nation.
Re:The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? (Score:5, Insightful)
And... I guess you just commented on it for Mod points without providing any thing intuitive except a name from the link that he supplied at the top of his post. Pot calling the Kettle Black?
Liquid Explosion (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Liquid Explosion (Score:5, Funny)
Terrorist true mission? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Terrorist true mission? (Score:4, Informative)
Believe it or not Osama's goals were more secular than religeous.
After he returned from Afghanistan he was sort of a semi-hero in his home country of Saudi Arabia. When Saddam invaded Kutwait in 91, Osama personally offered King Saudi access to Al Queda's 100,000 volunteers and his personal fortune to fight off Saddam from a Saudi invasion.
But... The King's delegation (Osama wasn't allowed to talk to the royal family himself) laughed at Osama's offer because Saddam had over 1,000,000 troops and they were well armed at that.
Then King Saudi invited the American to be based in Saudi and attack an attack on Iraq. This infuriated Osama because no only was his offer rebuffed, but infidels were on holy ground. At that moment he swore revenge and packed his bags and moved to Sudan.
Later... Osama assisted the muslims in Somalia to drive out the Americans. His support was negliable and some say didn't really help as much as he said he did.
The problem with this was that Osama mistakenly thought that if you killed a few Americans they would run with their tails behind their legs because they had no stomach for fighting.
So he mistakenly went about and concocted 9/11 thinking if he brought the fight to their home land the Americans would give in and leave Saudi Arabia.
Of course we know that he was horribly mistaken and would have done better attacking military targets in Saudi Arabia, but that is neither here nor there but there are very secular reasons or at least political reasons that the terrorists do what they are trying to do to us.
Many of them use the banner of religion to carry out that agenda.
It has been done! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It has been done! (Score:4, Insightful)
Weren't most of these terrorists British-born and thus pretty well off? Actually, none of the 9/11 hijackers were poor either. Heck, Osama bin Laden himself is a millionaire.
No need for an explosion (Score:5, Informative)
I was shocked to hear the media talking about the possibility of bring nitroglycerin onto an airplane. The entire reason that dynamite was invented is because the liquid is horribly volitile. Some people have speculated that the terrorists were not attempting a large scale explosion as CNN and Fox News would have you believe. Instead they were waiting until the plane was in the middle of the Atlantic and starting a fairly large fire. There are many substances that can create a dangerous fire on an airplane in the middle of the ocean at 30,000 feet. There is no need for a Holywood style explosion at all. I am being intentionally vague in this post, but three men with drink containers full of certain substances starting three fires at three different parts of the plane would be extremely difficult to control, especially considering the lack of fire surpression systems in the passenger cabin. I am not a firefighter (rookie EMT and will be training to be a rescuer) but I cannot imagine trying to put out three fires with the 1-2 fire extingueshers available.
The first World Trade Center bombing and OK City show that everyday chamicals can be combined with horrific results. In those situations, however, there were truckloads of the two ingredients. I agree in part with TFA that it would be hard to perform an explosion the size of Pan-Am 103's with liquids, but that is not necesary.
Nitro on a plane (Score:5, Informative)
Read up! [wikipedia.org]
Another chemist's view (Score:5, Informative)
Bruce Schneier linked to another post [schneier.com] which had an interesting take by a chemist in a graduate program. He describes details of the chemicals involved and what it would take to detonate them effectively onboard a plane.
The summary: improvised explosives involve pretty nasty stuff that you'd be hard pressed to mix in an airplane lavatory without killing yourself in the process.
Re:Another chemist's view (Score:5, Insightful)
And, to a suicide bomber, this is a downside how?
Dying from the noxious fumes in a small bathroom before you can make enough explosives to blow up the plane isn't really meeting the goals of most suicide bombers. I suggest you read the actual articles before posting from now on.
In a word? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
The hysteria this has caused is mind boggling. There are an infinite number of ways terrorists could attack random innocent civilians. It is not, repeat not, possible to protect everyone from everything. Banning iPods and water bottles is not making anyone safer. It is an attempt to appear that something is "being done". It's a pacifier for the masses.
Re:In a word? No. (Score:5, Insightful)
As Jon Steward said the other night, "You are more likely to die in your bathtub than in a terrorist attack."
You are more likely to die in a car crash than in a terrorist attack.
You are more likely to die in the bathtub, due to a car crash, than in a terrorist attack.
Basically, it is time to start contacting the media in droves and tell them that we are sick of their reporting of government misinformation, we are willing to take the chance of another 9/11, and that they should report on the crimes against the nation and humanity being perpetrated by the people in power.
Now I'm off on an unscheduled vacation to Gitmo. See you again after the trial (never.)
An even better article (Score:5, Informative)
It's all hype anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
In any event I just took a flight from China to Los Angeles and they claimed you couldn't bring liquids aboard, but no one was checking. It's all just noise to make people feel like they are being protected.
Why so complicated. How about bleach + ammonia? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Manipulating Elections With Terror Feasible? (Score:4, Interesting)
A British diplomat (to Uzbekistan, an actual center of the Qaeda War) warns us to be skeptical of the plot [dailykos.com]. Especially its timing, which was premature for destroying a possible network, but right on time to steal headlines from a primary defeat from a leading neocon [google.com] that drew defensive scare propaganda from Bush and Cheney even though it's a Democratic primary.
As we see more and more [msn.com] of our Republican government terrorizing us on their campaign schedule [usatoday.com], we have more chances to turn against them, and fight our own war against terror ourselves, in our own minds and at the polls. We can replace anyone in the House of Representatives [wikipedia.org] and 1/3 of the Senate [wikipedia.org].
Redox rules (Score:5, Insightful)
Another reader pointed out that, while the explosive scenario is problematic, incindiary devices are easy. A soup-can full of Potassium Permanganate and a rougly equal volume of Glycerine will make a heck of a blaze -- or a really nice igniter for a thermite bomb. I suspect all of these materials could be smuggled aboard (though I'm not about to try).
Another potential venue is nerve agents. Without going into any real detail, hydrofluoric acid is the foundation for several nasty nerve agents, some of which COULD be whipped up in the lav in just a few minutes. Probably not enough to kill the whole plane, and I'm assuming the pilots have a seperate air supply, but killing half the passengers on a loaded airliner might be good enough to interest a terrorist.
Then there's biological agents. Some years ago I worked with cyanotoxins, primarily anatoxin. Nasty stuff, and available at any nice warm, eutrophic lake in the U.S. I was playing around with extracting the toxin, and ended up with a protocol that used DMSO as a solvent to help seperate the toxin from cellular membranes. This stuff used to scare me to death -- a nice liquid that, if splashed on your skin (or clothing) would cause death in a matter of minutes. Imagine a squirt-gun or a water-balloon filled with this on a plane.
For the record, I'm far more frightened of the current Government that I am of terrorists, and I'd rather just take my chances that submit to the "protections" that are being provided. However, it doesn't take a lot of effort to come up with some plausible scenarious where a lunch-box might conceal some fairly deadly things.
Protection from Hollywood movie plots (Score:5, Insightful)
I rest easier on an airplane knowing that we're soundly protected from the most bizarre Hollywood movie plot type attacks, desperately trying not think about all the simple, easy practical things the idiots running things have overlooked.
The real terrorists have got to be laughing their asses off at the way we snarl air traffic, tie up millions of dollars in police resources, botch up air travel and twist ourselves in nervous knots over nothing. I'll bet they're more than a little amused at the video of people throwing toothpaste and hair gel into dumpsters.
If the terrorist plan is to make us live in fear, scared of our shadow and squander our national treasure on security that doesn't work while we go into staggering national debt spending 5 billion a month in a no-win war half-way around the world, then I'd ask which political party is really helping the terrorists?
A small group of people could cause mass panic and a surprising amount of damage armed with nothing more dangerous than a little training and a cigarette lighter or box of kitchen matches. We are so easily spooked, then our over-reaction and fear takes the little bit of damage the terrorists actually do and magnifies it to absurd proportions. Remember the panic and fear on the east coast when the sniper and his kid were on the loose? There were road blocks, random searches, helicopters, overtime for police...one guy with a rifle. Un-fucking-real.
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:5, Informative)
Hate to burst you bubble but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_
How about this for logic. If it has been done then it is is possible.
Yes Virgina somebody manged to smuggle nitroglycerin on to an airliner and use it as a bomb.
Nitro is nasty stuff but you all have been watching too many old movies. They used to ship the stuff in wagons over dirt roads. It did blow up every now and then but it isn't impossible to transport.
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sooo.. Roll back to the 90'ies. Research facilty for Norwegian Oil company Hydro in Oslo. They're handling lots of nitro-glycerin and various high-explosives.. and they have all these safety measures, because for some reason, people don't like being blown up,
So.. one day, one senior researcher, fairly hung over, is handling a glass-tube (shut) with the nitro-glycerin.. and drops it. So, the guy sees his life pass by in slow-motion, curses a little for not having had sex with his wife this morning and closes his eyes waiting to die.. Except nothing happens. So, he runs out and calls for evacutation. Eventually, they clean the mess up and everybody gets back to work. Turns out, the container didn't break, and the nitro-glycerin was still lying happily on the floor.
Now, the leading researcher and head of the facility was a really hands-on-guy. He knew all the theory and stuff, but he was really hands-on. So.. they had all these tests on how much pressure it takes to make nitro-glycerin blow up, but how do you test how much turbulence it takes to make a closed container filled with the stuff blow up? You could probably put it in a shaking-machine, but that'd hardly be realistic conditions now would it?
Now, the rest of this story is verified. This guy fetches some containers of nitro, drags it out in the woods behind the factory along with a fishing rod. He finds a big ledge, when at the bottom, he ties a container to the line, and being carefull not moving the nitro at all he walks up the top of ledge, and using his fishing rod hoists the stuff up and starts swinging it around wildly.. without hitting the rock ledge of course.. He stood there for 10 minutes just waving the stuff around.
Sadly, or maybe luckily for him, he was not able to make it explode as long as it was within a closed container. The scientific, now empirically tested, conclusion was clear, the risk of explosion within a closed container was grozzly exxagarated.
(This guy also ran an experiement with was I think was paint-thinner(not sure, it was poisonous atleast) and a sealed off cabin. Himself, another researcher acting as a secretary and a psychologist locked themselves in the cabin to find out the effect the stuff had on human beings, all the while writing logs of what they were experiencing. Reviewing the log-books the day after, they found they had started drawing stick-men instead of writing logs after three hours)
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:4, Interesting)
* Glyceryl trinitrate tablets generally contain no more than 500mcg of nitroglycerin. Even if there did exist a simple way to "strain out" the nitroglycerin from the tablets, it would take approximately 400 THOUSAND TABLETS to yield enough of the stuff to equal a very small 500g "stick" of 40% dynamite (dynamite is rated in ratio of nitroglycerin to binder, by weight). Given that they're doled out usually no more than 50 or so at a time, that's about hell of a lot heart patients he had to hit up at that asylum. Writers who create crap plot details like that need to be dragged out an shot. Don't even get me started on Lost or Alias.
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:4, Funny)
We'd better get it off our planes before someone gets hurt, then! And the dihydrogen monoxide! I don't trust that shit at all...
Re:Flight 505 to MacGyver City... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the detectors are sensitive to incredibly small quantities (hundreds or thousands of molecules/parts per trillion when airborne). As in: you'll need a truly great seal on the bottle, two clean rooms and a remarkable cleaning protocol to make sure that the remaining residues are below the detection threshold.
Not that it can't be done, but the cost is unbelievable (and the number of people that need to cooperate increases the risk of detection). Someone from the first room being within several feet of the bottle for a few minutes after cleaning would leave a detectable explosive residue on the bottle's surface.
Regards,
Ross
That door is staying closed until you land (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, if you don't believe him you can try it for yourself. Remember to pack a hydraulic jack in your carry-on.
Re:That door is staying closed until you land (Score:4, Funny)
Rich
Re:That door is staying closed until you land (Score:5, Informative)
Because the plane is designed to withstand it.
Also, the difference between 1 atmosphere of pressure (i.e. ground level) and some fraction of an atmosphere (at cruising altitude) is an order of magnitude or so smaller than the difference between ground level and the bottom of the ocean.
Those planes have sliding doors instead of ones that open inward.
Re:That door is staying closed until you land (Score:5, Informative)
The door also does not just "open out". It starts by moving inward a couple of inches, which it can only do when the pressurization has been turned off and the pressure allowed to equalize. Then the upper and lower ends of the door bend inward a few inches, which reduces the total height of the door. Then it rotates slightly outward on a complex double pivot, which moves the forward edge a little aft and the aft edge a little forward. Now it's able to fit through the door frame, and it swings out on the same double pivot.
As for shooting a hole in the fuselage, that would have very little effect. An airplane is not a sealed pressure vessel; if it were, you'd be feeling really rotten halfway to Europe. The pressurization supplies a constant flow of air, and a unit called the outflow valve lets it out of the airplane at an electronically controlled rate to keep the correct pressure inside. If you shot four or five holes in the airplane with a .45, the outflow valve would just close down maybe halfway.
Now it would be possible to get a much bigger hole by shooting out a window, and that would cause a rapid -- not "explosive", but rapid -- decompression. The people near the window would undoubtedly lose their magazines -- but they wouldn't notice that, because the pilot would be doing some rather attention-getting maneuvers to get the airplane down to a safe breathing level.
public education of science is obviously in BIG trouble
See, this is why engineers get annoyed when computer engineers call themselves engineers...;-)
rj
Re:False Flag. (Score:4, Funny)