New Device Sniffs Out Black Powder Explosives 133
sciencehabit writes "The Boston marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly purchased several pounds of black powder explosive before the bombing. Used in fireworks and bullets, the explosive substance is both deadly and widely available. It's also very hard to detect. Now, researchers have modified one bomb-sniffing device to accurately spot very small amounts of black powder, an advance that could make us safer from future attacks. What has prevented detection of black powder by IMS in the past, however, is that sulfur and oxygen -- which composes 20% of air—hit the detector at almost the same time. A strong oxygen signal can thus mask a small amount of sulfur, like what a bombmaker's dirty fingers might leave on a luggage strap. A group led by chemist Haiyang Li at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China modified an IMS to eliminate the oxygen signal. 'We have tested the sensitivity of TR-IMS, and its limit of detection of black powder can reach as low as 0.05 nanograms,' Li says."
or... (Score:2)
...detects the presence of musketeers!
Re:or... (Score:5, Informative)
And tiny firecrackers, and the smoke there-of.
Legal uses of black powder would easily swamp and overwhelm this detector. So in order to prevent false positives,
expect a major crackdown on black powder. Vaseline too.
Further, its never been hard to train dogs to sniff out black powder, so having a machine that does this is probably not much cheaper.
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Or an orange grove -- they use oil-sulfur sprays on those, the whole thing has a faint whiff of SO2. Grew up in the middle of one, and years later someone opened up a bag of gardening sulfur near me, and "HOME!" hit me in the nose.
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But, elemental sulphur doesn't smell of sulphur dioxide. Sulphur dioxide smells of sulphur dioxide, so I deduce that you were burning these "oil-sulphur" sprays. Or ... there's some pretty powerful chemical ju-ju going on with that oil to oxidise elemental sulphur to the dioxide (in which case, I'd be very worried about being within fumes range let alone droplets range of this witch's brew). Or just possibly, your "sulphur" part o
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I said not one darn thing about H2S, did I? This was a faint whiff of SO2, not the full on stuff. I was a kid before chemistry sets got safe, I know what SO2 smells like in quantity. Whatever the smell was, it was the same, and I'm pretty sure it was extremely dilute SO2
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As for my rant about H2S : well if you had to deal with as many false alarms as I do, it'd piss you off too. And a large part of the reason for the piss-off, apart from the amount of paperwork that an H2S alarm generates, is that if your operation goes from "possible" to "confirmed" on the sour gas front, then everyone on board th
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Oil-sulfur plant spray IS just oil and sulfur. It's a fungicide. It also gets mixed with lime in another fungicidal formulation. And here: http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/pyrethrins-ziram/sulfur-ext.html [cornell.edu] . Especially: "There is slight oxidation of sulfur to the volatile oxide." Apparently the oil-sulfur mix of my youth is no longer recommended, but they would also spray the grove with parathion back then, and that's no longer recommended either.
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Hmmm, but dry sulphur is pretty much stable against oxidation. It's stable against atmospheric oxidation on the shorter end of the geological timescale. At least as stable as bone, compared to flesh.
So, conjecturally, the sulphur is (slightly) soluble in oil. In water ... "The solubility of elemental rhombic sulfur in water is 1.9(±0.6) Ã-- 10^â'8 mole S8Âkg^â'1." [tandfonline.com]
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Or for any place that has a restaurant serving onions or garlic.
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None? CH4 != S
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WE ARE NOW SECURED (Score:1, Flamebait)
From time-travelling Anarchists, tossing bombs from the 1860's!
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Oh, wait, I forgot, we are still in the mode of "stop the specific mode of this each particular attach".
Blow up building with fertilizer bomb-> must track all sales of fertilizer
Shoe bomber -> must scan all shoes
Underwear bomber -> must scan through underwear
Bomb with black powder -> must start scanning everywhere for black powder
[originally, I forgot the 'd's, and it read "Bomb with black power -> must start scanning everywhere for black power"] doh
Bribe TSA agents to let drugs through ->
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...and people returning from fireworks displays or setting off firecrackers, returning from hunting trips, anyone from Kentucky...
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Remember, remember, the 5th of November. Hang on a second, that's not right, it's Cinco de Mayo!!!
NO. (Score:2)
They purchased Fireworks that contained black powder.
But that won't stop the morons in Congress from trying to make black powder something that requires a background check.
And folks like these two chuck-heads will continue to buy fireworks and be completely unaffected by the background checks.
Black Powder? (Score:5, Informative)
Just a side note because it's making me nerdrage :) TFA asserts "Used in fireworks and bullets, the explosive substance is both deadly and widely available." Assuming that they are actually talking about "black powder" I think this was an included invention by the writer.
Manufactured ammunition (with a very few niche and very expensive exceptions) hasn't used "black powder" for its loads for over 100 years. Modern ammo uses "smokeless" powders with a variety of chemical compositions based around nitroglycerin and 1or 2 other nitro based chemicals. These should be easily detectable with existing sniffers that are looking for nitrates. So if a day on the range was going to get me hauled in at the TSA line, well were already past that.
Pyrodex and other Black Powder substitutes are more commonly used by muzzleloader hunters and Pyrodex is "smokeless powder" based and formulated for the lower power of black powder explosions. I should also be easily detectable.
Garden variety "buy it a supermarket go-bang fireworks" use perchlorate based fuel as far as I know. I don't know how detectable it is or how chemically similar it is to black powder off the top of my head. But I'd guess it's not and would prefer it to be detectable.
On the other hand I CAN buy black powder by the 16oz can with cash. I think it would be good thing if the chemsniffers could detect it.
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Bullets have never been made of black powder. The bullet is the metal tip (or ball whne they actually used black powder)
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Already the case where I live in Australia. There is a severe aversion to anything that could be remotely dangerous here. You can't even buy "shopgoods fireworks" (under 40 grams) without public liability insurance, having done several courses and acquiring multiple different licenses.
First up you have your fireworks contractor license, $330 a year. Want the ability to import fireworks (even those tiny under 40 gram ones) $300 a year. Want to be able to store fireworks? $35 per year under 100kg, $300 for ov
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They purchased Fireworks that contained black powder.
But that won't stop the morons in Congress from trying to make black powder something that requires a background check.
And folks like these two chuck-heads will continue to buy fireworks and be completely unaffected by the background checks.
Coming soon! Background checks to buy fireworks.
That would be a sadly ironic turn of events. People like to toss out the "terrorists have won" line, but here Security Theater will literally keep us from celebrating our freedom.
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Black powder isn't even all that hard to manufacture. I suppose Congress could outlaw anybody with an outhouse on "national security reasons", as that might be considered "dangerous" as a source of potential Nitrates. Similarly anybody who decides to stockpile wood as that can be turned into charcoal could be considered dangerous as well.
I've made my own black powder in the past simply to see if it could be made at all, and I used to buy Salt Peter in bulk quantities from my neighborhood pharmacist (somet
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Black Powder comes in 50 gallon drums now?! (Score:2)
Get Jerry on the line!
Tell him to dump my entire warehouse--300 hogsheads--of the powder in the river and go out and buy replacement drums right away!
(rubs hands together)
I'm going to make...(extreme closeup)...a killing!
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Buying large quantities of black powder is already regulated.
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"do something ineffectual" = "do nothing"
You just feel better about it.
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No, your comment is a moron move.
How about we require a background check before you can buy a fucking SUV to escape in?
Or, before you can post stupid shit on Slashdot.
Did Anything Happen in West, Texas? (Score:3, Insightful)
All I keep hearing about is knee jerk reactions to a sad but relatively trivial event in Boston.
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What could a self-regulating American --- Texan, even! --- business possibly do worse than turrists? Surely, their own self-interests would prevent them from doing anything truly stupid and dangerous; that's why we don't need government regulators breathing down our necks. Are you some sort of commie, trying to spread lies that the Free Market won't keep us perfectly safe from harm?
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All I keep hearing about is knee jerk reactions to a sad but relatively trivial event in Boston.
That has become the standard government reaction to anything that happens... ban it. A fan, a five pound bag of flour and a match can blow a house up. As soon as some idiot does it you will need a Federal License to buy a pound of flour.
Other forms of detection (Score:3)
Lets not forget the BATF detector which supplies its own sample and has a 100% detection rate.
False Positives (Score:3, Funny)
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If it keeps ONE CHILD SAFE, we have to throw out all your civil liberties.
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Get ready for the massive amounts of false positives. You went to the firing range last Tuesday? Terrorist Scum!
It detects sulphur. Anyone who has used matches recently will be tagged as well.
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It detects sulphur. Anyone who has used matches recently will be tagged as well.
Judging by what I ate today, if I farted on that sensor it would probably explode.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5549939_foods-containing-sulfur.html [ehow.com]
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The best part? You can make black powder without sulphur. It just needs a little more heat to start the reaction.
http://musketeer.ch/blackpowder/recipe.html [musketeer.ch]
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Why are you using black powder? It's messy and corrosive in your 150 year old gun. Use pyrodex or a modern gun that never used black powder instead and they'll only pull you aside if their chem sniffer can detect nitrates. Oh Wait...
Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullets are made out of black powder? All the ones I've used have been made out of lead or copper. How do those black powder bullets hold together?
Reporters, please learn the difference between:
Ammunition and bullets
Magazines and clips
Automatic vs Semi-Automatic
etc, when talking about firearms.
More niggling (Score:5, Informative)
An ammunition cartridge is composed primarily of:
Bullet: The projectile that is ejected from the muzzle of the firearm at high speed.
Propellant: The chemical explosive that is burned to propel the bullet.
Primer: The component that chemically generates heat when struck with sufficient force, igniting the propellant.
Casing: Just what it sounds like, the part that holds everything together.
Now, to keep this from being entirely off-topic...
Modern ammunition cartridges do not contain black powder [wikipedia.org]. They contain smokeless powder [wikipedia.org]. Much like "clips" and "magazines", or "diesel" and "gasoline", these are two different things that are not interchangeable.
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Since we're being pedantic, you could actually interchange black and smokeless powder in some modern cartridges for some firearms - e.g. .38 Special out of a revolver.
Re:More niggling (Score:5, Interesting)
A slight quibble:
blackpowder can be loaded into any casing and will work just fine (for certain values of fine - be VERY careful about loading). Note that the .45-70 cartridge was originally blackpowder, is now smokeless powder, but is the same size cartridge it always was, so can be loaded quite safely with 70 grains of black powder instead of whatever amount of smokeless it comes out of the box with.
Note that the above quibble really only matters to the few of us who own replicas of the 1873 Springfield .45-70 cavalry carbine (7th Cavalry used them at Little Big Horn, for reference) and feel the incredible urge to foul the barrels of our carbines for a more "realistic feel"....
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using Smokeless powder
As long as we're being pedantic, "Smokeless powder" should be "smokeless powder" since it's a generic term, and "tannerite" should be "Tannerite" since it's a trade name. Obviously Tannerite is an explosive, since it can be made to explode, but it's a tertiary explosive like ANFO. Lastly, ammunition is a very generic term that can include artillery shells, amongst other things, so (assuming you're the OP AC) it would make a lot more sense to talk about "cartridges and bullets" rather than "ammunition and bu
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hey skippy -- lots of stuff for you to take in here, but try to understand.
the article isn't about firearms and guns at all.
it's about people making bombs -- TOTALLY different thing
did you know it's not legal to make a bomb? really!
Which is curious. Why is it illegal to make a bomb if we have a 2nd Amendment right to "keep and bear Arms?" I think that bombs count at armaments, and while I've seen a lot of interpretations made of the 2nd Amendment - many of which I don't buy into - if you're going to go with the one that keeping personal armaments is permitted for personal defense of liberty against a tyrannical government, why should said armaments be limited to things you can point and shoot? There's nothing in the Constitution that
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"Arms" != "armaments".
Though, oddly enough, a muzzleloading cannon is legal (as long as you don't try to sell it), even though a bomb isn't.
Note also that pretty much any firecracker is a "bomb", if we get down to nitpicking...
One small problem... (Score:3)
Why should black powder residue constitute probable cause of anything, if possession and use of black powder is actually legal?
In theory, I could go shooting my historical weapons that use black powder, which is also perfectly legal, or go to a war-between-the-states reenactment, and then walk through downtown Boston. Nevermind, that would be outside the ordinary, prescripted "safe area" of human activity that "most normal people" do, and therefore suspicious and therefore probable cause. Got it.
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Re:One small problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why cleaning your blackpowder firearms THOROUGHLY immediately after use is mandatory.
My Civil War era revolvers get disassembled and tossed into boiling water soon as I get home. For a start....
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Mind you those replacements use a nitro base. So you're still screwed IF this is going to happen. But it is better for your gun.
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eh, you can't use modern smokeless in a black powder weapon. the replacements for black powder contain black powder plus other ingredients.
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the modern replacements to be used in black powder weapons also contain black powder and are corrosive and caustic too. Pyrodex for example has black powder plus graphite and some other interesting things; it is less sensitive and safe than black powder but still dangerous and having many the bad characteristics. you still have to wash your gun afterwards (yes, hot soapy near-boiling water).
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Black powder is perfectly legal. Why should black powder residue constitute probable cause of anything, if possession and use of black powder is actually legal?
Depends on the quantity, probably. The last time I checked, black powder was rated as the highest-risk explosive in our legislature because of its sensitivity to sparks and static electricity. The residue could at least result in them asking you where you got it from, in what quantity, and if you're qualified and licensed to handle it.
Re: One small problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's sulphur, salpeter and charcoal.
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What's the point in detecting something that is perfectly legal?
Much like police dogs that "alert" based of the whims of their handlers, [erowid.org] this technology will likely be useful for creating "probable cause" against anyone who's been in direct or indirect contact with some sulfur-containing materials.
So if you cut up onions before flying... (Score:2)
...Wash your hands very, very thoroughly.
And whatever you do DON"T FART while going through security.
Less than worthless (Score:5, Informative)
Black powder can be found almost everywhere, even in societies that do not have a gun-fetish. Every little firecracker has it in it. These detectors would cause so many false positives as to be not only absolutely worthless, they would have negative value as they waste massive amounts of resources.
But I get it, the US administration, and under its tutoring the US population, have lost all rationality when it comes to "terrorism" a long time ago. The next bombing (and it will happen) will just cause as much useless actionism and more steps towards a police-state as this one did. And if it takes too long for the next bombing to happen, the FBI will arrange a fake one, as they have done several times before.
Re:Less than worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
What does a "gun-fetish" have to do with it?
Black powder isn't used in any commercial cartridges that I know of, and the overwhelming majority of gun owners don't own or use black powder for anything but their Fourth of July fireworks.
It's mostly used by reenactors of various sorts, with muzzle-loading muskets/rifles/pistols/revolvers, and bought by the pound (I've got the best part of a pound in my ammo safe).
Though, frankly, making it is not so difficult as all that.....
hard to make (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, making "good" black powder isn't easy. Any idiot can mix sulfur, sodium nitrate and charcoal and make a sort of rapidly burning mixture. But it wouldn't be real black powder. You need to mix them and grind them together (a nontrivial process if you don't want to have it ignite), then you mix it with the right amount of water, make a paste, let it dry into a solid cake, then break the cake up in a way that makes nice sharp edged particles, as opposed to just grinding it into spherical dust particl
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yeah, whatever.
ask the GORN CAPTAIN if the powder kirk made was any good!
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I have no cognitive bias here. I got a pretty good understanding how the 3rd Reich, Stalinism and the DDR worked in school. There is quite a bit more than "nothing" and it is in an advanced stage.
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FBI Arranged Fake Bombings? When? (Score:1)
When? Where? Cite?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yep, just stand by the elevator in the parking garage at the airport and unravel a few firecrackers and then walk over to the security line and fire up the video camera for some laughs.
Now there's a joke (Score:3)
(Sure, that was back in the 80s when chemistry in a science class meant you actually mixed and tested various chemicals instead of just watching a video on the structure of polymers as it pertains to the plastics industry, but still.)
Also, gunpowder is not that powerful, and there are plenty of others with more bang that are nearly as easy to make.
Bet those sensors go absolutely berserk during July.
Of course, if someone wanted to cause trouble, just toss a handful of power into the wind blowing on a crowd anywhere they have those sensors.
Any security system that can be so easily swamped with false positives (the false positive is not that the gunpowder was detected, but rather that they were a threat, had anything to do with it, or had any knowledge regarding it at all.
And that's assuming it's only going off on gunpowder, because if it goes off on sulfur, even an egg salad sandwich or certain types of antibiotics could cause a lockdown. How many of those will occur before someone realizes that trying to detect a common element is not security.
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How many of those will occur before someone realizes that trying to detect a common element is not security.
Rationality hasn't slowed much less stopped the long lines, groupings, delays that people go through at airports, train stations, concerts, sporting events, etc. Expect the same kind of lines and checks at "public" events in the future. People collecting in any form is bad for the powers that be. They might start talking, or heaven forbid, exchanging ideas. For us "oldsters" who remember society in the sixties, compared to where we are now in terms of repression, it's just one more small step to get the
TSA (Score:1)
So what the hell do the puffer scanners at the airport scan for??? Nukes?
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Nitrogen compounds - the basis for almost all modern explosives.
before too many things need to be unsaid... (Score:3)
Just hang on a minute.
"Smokeless powder" (nitrocellulose) pretty much replaced gunpowder (sulfer, charcoal, and potassium nitrate) in firearms over an hundred years ago, except for historical reproductions. And even those replicas of old firearms largely use alternative propellants that are engineered to have the same bang per volume of gunpowder (as the propellant is measured by volume during reloading). The "gunpowder" in fireworks is not the same propellant used in modern firearms. Equating the two could lead to some confusion. This distinction will be entirely lost on the congressional floor, but as nerds, we should be aware of it.
Too much Hollywood (Score:4)
What this appears to be talking about is how at the airport they now swab your carry-on luggage and put it in a machine. I don't think these boston folks would have been though any "swabing" checkpoint so the existance of a device that did this probably would not have made anyone "safer" in this case (or any similar non-airport/govt-building checkpoint situation).
For those curious, the idea behind an IMS (ion mobility spectrometer), is that you ionize your sample (well sort of, you have water or other liquid vapor with ions dissolved in it, not just pure ions in air or in a vaccum) and waft them into a drift tube and use fact that these ionized vapors have slightly different masses so they have different mobility under an electric field. The "spectra" of the mobility under this electric field helps to identify the original chemicals in the swab.
The specific problem they are trying to solve with black powder is that the ions formed by Sulphur (atomic mass 32) and Oxygen (atomic mass 16) are very difficult to disambiguate for a clean detection signal (since O2n- and S1n- have about the same mass).
The common method of disamgibuating is to add solvents or chemical reagents before ionization. AFAIK, in the case of Oxygen interference, a common way to change the ionic signature is to add dichlorolmethane CH2CL2 and the resulting reaction usually exchanges O2- ions for CL- ions (which is enough different than sulphur ion to make it easy to detect), but unfortuantly, dichloromethane also has a side effect of inhibiting the formation of various Sulphur ion allotropes (i.e., different number of sulphur atoms in the ion). So these folks apparently came up with a technique where you ionize first (avoiding the problem with CH2CL2 and sulphur ion formation) and then pass all the ions through a CH2CL2 "titration region" in the drift tube (effectively replacing many of O2- ions that mask the sulphur ion signature with Cl- ions).
Of course the devil is in the details which I haven't read about yet...
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the idea behind an IMS (ion mobility spectrometer), is that you ionize
Thank you. That's a hell of lot more interesting and informative than the bazillionth gun pedant pointing out the difference between a clip and a magazine.
Does it happen to find golf balls too? (Score:2)
I hear there's quite a market for them.
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But black powder was popular in Guy Fawke's days. Nobody has caused significant damage with minor quantities of black powder for the past 50 years. Nevertheless politicos will go into headless chicken mode an money bins will be built.
So... (Score:2)
Pointless - there were already bomb-sniffing dogs (Score:4, Interesting)
Musket-Carrying Terrorists ... (Score:1)
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Maybe. But the detectors already work against the stuff in "bullets" (because black powder isn't actually used in ammo) and fertilizer. So you're already screwed.
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Blackpowder is legal....
So are knives, but you can't carry one onto a plane unless you get it from one of the numerous restaurants that are past the security checkpoints. Make sure you order a tough steak so you can get a big steak knife, of just have your accomplice in the kitchen give you a carving knife. Heck, maybe you can get 'em at the gift shop.
Security theater marches on! Apparently the Boston bombers actually used black powder, which just goes to show that (fortunately) they weren't better bomb makers. Smokeless powder
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Wonder what this means for the hobby of model rocketry?
Nothing bad - they have a wonderful model rocketry range at Gitmo.
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We had a model rocket birthday party for my son (turned 5). We pre-built a number of bulk-pack rockets, had the guests decorate them, took them out for a launch.
We made sure to warn parents that if they were flying soon, they would want us to handle the engines and post-launch rockets, for fear of the glorified mall-cops that are "protecting" us at the airport.
Little did we know that black powder was hard to detect. Guess that's changed now.
One reason that the hobby is waning: regulations that make it nearl