Guest Blogged by Winter Patriot
An enormous investigation continues in Great Britain, where eight people were charged with conspiracy to murder on Monday and lesser charges were laid against three others. All eleven of the suspects who were charged Monday appeared in court on Tuesday.
From Monday’s account in the Mirror: 11 Charged Over Airline Bomb Plot, police described the alleged evidence as follows (with my emphasis):
“This includes important, indeed highly significant, video and audio recordings.
“Since August 10 we have found bomb-making equipment. There are chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, electrical components, documents and other items.
“We have also found a number of video recordings. These are sometimes referred to as martyrdom videos.”
As for the charges…
“Those individuals have been charged with conspiracy to murder and the new offence of preparing acts of terrorism contrary to Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006.
“In addition, three have been charged with other offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.
“One has been charged with possession of articles useful to a person preparing an act of terrorism and two with failing to disclose information of material assistance in preventing an act of terrorism.”
Tuesday’s news reports concerned the arraignment. From the New York Times British Plot Suspects Are Arraigned in Court:
Eleven of the 23 people arrested in the case were charged on Monday; the first four of them to appear before a judge today were all ordered held in custody. Prosecutors expect to arraign the rest of the 11 before the end of the day.
…
So far, Mr. Clarke said, the police have found bomb-making chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide and electrical components, recalling earlier British and American accounts that there was a plan to mix liquids into an explosive cocktail once they had been carried aboard airliners heading for American cities.
Mr. Clarke went on to say: “We have also found a number of video recordings “” these are sometimes referred to as martyrdom videos. This has all given us a clearer picture of the alleged plot.”
The NYT offers some additional details:
The eight people charged with conspiracy to murder were also charged with planning “to smuggle the component parts of improvised explosive devices onto aircraft and assemble them and detonate them on board.”
Why hydrogen peroxide? It’s a key ingredient (the “P”) in TATP, which is short for “Tri-Acetone Tri-Peroxide”, also known as “Acetone Peroxide”. It’s the explosive the accused would-be bombers were allegedly trying to mix and detonate aboard airlplanes.
According to Global Security dot Org:
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TATP can be easily prepared in a basement lab using commercially available starting materials obtained from, e.g., hardware stores, pharmacies, and stores selling cosmetics. TATP is a fairly easy explosive to make, as far as explosives manufacturing goes. All it takes is acetone, hydrogen peroxide (3% medicinal peroxide is not concentrated enough), and a strong acid like hydrochloric or sulfuric acid. I don’t recommended mixing up a batch for Independence Day celebrations because it’s easy to blow yourself up when you make it.
The graphic at the top of this post shows the chemical structure of TATP. It’s probably a familiar diagram to some of our British friends, because last summer — in July of 2005 — TATP was allegedly used in the London subway bombings.
Philippe Naughton, writing last summer for Times Online, told us TATP is suicide bombers’ weapon of choice:
The engineers are the bomb-makers for the young suicide bombers sent to kill Israelis by the Islamic militant organisations such as Hamas. And their explosive of choice, triacetone triperoxide or TATP – named today as an explosive used in last week’s London bombings – is the reason for their disfigurement.
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as the Palestinian bomb-makers will attest – 40 Palestinians are thought to have been killed making or handling the explosive – it is highly unstable and sensitive to heat and friction. Not for nothing is it known as “Mother of Satan”.
As one British explosives expert said today of the news that TATP was involved in the four London blasts: “Frankly, I wouldn’t like to be wandering around with 10lb of TATP on my back.“
Thomas Greene in The Register asks: Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?
But let’s assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you’ve got them on hand.
Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It’s all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don’t forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked “perishable foods”), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You’re going to need them.
It’s best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate – especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation – to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.
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Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you’ll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you’ll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.
After a few hours – assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven’t overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities – you’ll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.
Edgar J. Steele has more on the feasibility angle:
“According to the official government story, TATP (triacetone triperoxide) was the explosive these conspirators were planning to manufacture aboard the airliners.
This story is not plausible for a number of reasons, but let’s take a quick look at just enough of the science so as not to provide anybody with a guide to making an actual bomb: TATP is made from hydrogen peroxide solution, acetone and sulfuric acid. The reaction can be carried out with just about any concentration, but is best done with concentrated solutions of both peroxide and acetone.
The peroxide and acetone can be pre-mixed, but the acid must be added, a drop at a time, to the solution, all the while continuously stirring it and keeping it continuously chilled. This step of the process will take several hours, during which the fumes given off will be substantial and quite overpowering, thus a lab-quality air evacuation system is required. (ES: right here, the whole idea of a TATP bomb becomes ludicrous. Difficult in a lab, but impossible in an airplane due to the environment – the toilet – and the time requirement.)
“One then must let the resulting solution stand for an extended period at temperatures above the freezing point, but definitely below 10 Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). Above 10 Celsius, the TATP does not form; instead, diperoxide forms, which is so unstable it cannot be worked with. The time required for the reaction to go to completion is at least 24 hours and often several days.
Once the TATP forms, it crystallizes as snowflakes from the solution and must be harvested by filtration and the liquid discarded. The TATP then is dried and carefully stored until needed. It must be stored below 10 Celsius or it converts spontaneously to the unstable diperoxide.
There is neither the time, the workspace nor the other materials required to make TATP on an airliner. The time required, the temperatures required, the workspace required and the need to dry the chemical prior to use preclude this story being reasonable. This chemical process is much more sensitive than making, for example, nitroglycerin.”
The technically proficient reading this will recognize that a necessary step has been omitted and some others have been altered in critical ways. None of these purposeful camouflages alter the ingredients or the time, care and equipment required. Nor will I describe how TATP can be fabricated beforehand and then detonated aboard an airliner in flight. After all, though we want to demonstrate the impossibility of what has been claimed, we don’t want anybody actually trying this at home…
What can we conclude from this report, if it’s true?
Steele has some ideas:
Steele apparently thinks it means there was no plot and Bush and Blair are lying. I’m not about to vouch for their truth-telling skills, but I beg to point out that there are several possibilities at this point. And they seem to fall into three main categories:
[1] There was no plot: Bush and Blair are lying. [2] There was indeed a plot but we don’t know much — or anything — about it because Bush and Blair and many other people are lying. [3] There was indeed a plot and it was exactly as described in the charges, but the alleged plotters were too clueless about TATP to realize that their plan couldn’t possibly work … not for one plane, not for one in a dozen, certainly not for a dozen planes simultaneously.If I were investigating this, I would want to look much more closely before I said very much more.
But of course there’s no need for me to investigate this, because … because … because … did you hear about the mutiny??
Daily Mail [Sunday, August 20]
Mutiny as passengers refuse to fly until Asians are removed:
British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny – refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.
The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.
It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands – effectively conducting their own ‘passenger profiles’.
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The trouble in Malaga flared last Wednesday as two British citizens in their 20s waited in the departure lounge to board the pre-dawn flight and were heard talking what passengers took to be Arabic. Worries spread after a female passenger said she had heard something that alarmed her.
Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches.
Initially, six passengers refused to board the flight. On board the aircraft, word reached one family. To the astonishment of cabin crew, they stood up and walked off, followed quickly by others.
[BBC: Sunday, August 20]
Passengers explain pair’s removal:
Heath Schofield, a passenger on the flight from Malaga, described it as being a “bit like Chinese whispers”.
Monarch Airlines said passengers had demanded the men were removed because they were acting suspiciously.
Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood said it was disgraceful the pair seemed to have been judged on their skin colour.
The men – reported to be of Asian or Middle Eastern appearance – were taken from Wednesday’s flight ZB 613 and questioned but were allowed to fly back to the UK later in the week.
[Mirror: Monday, August 21]
Wearing a Coat Doesn’t Make You a Terrorist:
The packed flight from Malaga to Manchester was delayed more than three hours after worried trippers stormed off and refused to fly until the British-born Muslims were removed.
The pair – later cleared by police – aroused suspicions by speaking Arabic and wearing heavy overcoats in the Mediterranean heat.
But yesterday angry Muslim elders slammed airline chiefs for over-reacting. Muslim Association of Britain spokesman Ismail Farhat said: “Wearing a coat in summer doesn’t make someone a terrorist. It’s absolutely disgraceful.
[Telegraph: Monday, August 21]
Jet scare over Asian men ‘helps terrorists’:
The two passengers were asked to leave Monarch flight ZB613 from Malaga to Manchester, apparently because other passengers became alarmed that the men were wearing heavy clothing and kept checking their watches. Cabin crew informed the Spanish authorities of the passengers’ fears and the men were taken off the flight.
One of the passengers told a Sunday newspaper: “Some of the older children, who had seen the terror alert on television, were starting to mutter things like ‘Those two look like they are bombers’. Some of the passengers were in tears.”
After security checks the men boarded a later flight.
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Patrick Mercer, the Conservative homeland security spokesman, described the incident as a victory for terrorists.
“These people on the flight have been terrorised into behaving irrationally. For those unfortunate two men to be victimised because of the colour of their skin is just nonsense.”
[National Ledger: Sunday, August 20]
Passengers on a Plane:
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[H]ow are passengers supposed to protect themselves and their loved ones from the radical Islamic terrorist menace? Apparently, the head-in-the-sand syndrome has even spread to this most currently vulnerable airline industry. It appears that if “we the flying public” are going to be safe, no one but ourselves is going to save us. The hell with political correctness! We need more mutinies of this nature. It’s our money paying for these trips and, ultimately, our lives that are in jeopardy. If the airlines and our “PC” brethren don’t like it, I say “Then follow your own rules!”
I now doubt that anything will bring the so-called “moderate Muslims” out from their hiding places, in order to speak against their suicidal and homicidal brethren. But, at least a few, or many, more of these mutinies might just get the airlines to step up and listen. Contrary to politically-correct opinion, profiling is a good thing””at least if you want to have your best chance of remaining alive.
It’s clear that this story is much more interesting than the detailed analysis concerning the conditions under which TATP can be mixed, and its prominence in the British press is entirely understandable — especially since the “mutiny” was largely ignored when it happened on Wednesday, with most of the press coverage coming along several days later. But even the Mutiny of the Airline Passengers became old news very quickly, nudged aside not so much by the charges laid Monday but by something else that happened between England and Pakistan: something much more important. So important, even the New York Times couldn’t fail to notice:
Cricket Imbroglio Offers Diversion in Britain:
On Sunday, an umpire presiding at a high-profile game between England and Pakistan, ruled that, in his belief, Pakistani players had been tampering with the ball and he told Pakistani players of his suspicion, awarding England five bonus runs, or points.
By way of protest, the Pakistanis refused to leave their dressing room after a scheduled break for tea. The Australian umpire, Darrell Hair, a person known for contentious rulings against some Asian teams, then removed the “bails” “” those little wooden bits that fit horizontally across the top of the larger wooden stakes called stumps “” denoting that Pakistan had forfeited the game.
The Pakistan team, nonetheless, walked back onto the field of play. But by this time the umpires had walked off, having ruled that Pakistan’s no-show constituted a terminal offense. Game to England “” the first time in 129 years of so-called Test matches between national teams that a game had been forfeited in this way.
After days of worry here about the role of Pakistan and Britons of Pakistani descent in Britain’s latest terrorism alert, the cricketing imbroglio offered something of a diversion. It covered the front pages of newspapers in England and Pakistan “” where cricket took root during the colonial era of the Raj “” banishing such competitors for attention as the Lebanon crisis or the airliner bomb plot.
I certainly have to admit that the NYT got that last bit right, even though I could quibble about some of the rest of their piece. But why bother? Let’s get closer to the source:
England 173 & 298-4 v Pakistan 504
Pakistan forfeit match
Pakistan have forfeited the fourth Test against England after play on day four was sensationally abandoned after a ball-tampering row.
The umpires ruled Pakistan were guilty of doctoring the match ball and awarded England five penalty runs and let them choose a replacement ball.
The day’s play finished early when Pakistan stayed in their dressing room after tea in protest.
Although they did briefly return, they later had to forfeit the match.
Fascinating, isn’t it? I can’t get enough of it, myself. I’ve been thanking my lucky stars that I was able to find a live-blogged report of the fourth day of the match, Day four: How the controversy unfolded, which says:
Cook’s luck runs out at last as Gul’s inswinging yorker traps him plumb in front. He looks absolutely gutted. That’s a big blow for England – that partnership was looking tasty. In comes Collingwood.
1420: Pietersen flays Kaneria through cover for four as the leggie finally tires of his leg-stump line. There’s a heavy burden on his shoulders now – and you can bet that he fancies it.
1426: Collingwood plunges forward to Kaneria and gets a big inside edge onto his pad – but the ball flies wide of Faisal Iqbal at short square leg. Iqbal turns up the volume on the chat.
1430: Gul’s getting a bit of reverse swing here. Collingwood pushes him for two into the off-side.
Did you catch that? A bit of “reverse swing”? What’s happening here?
“Inzy” is Pakistan’s captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq.
Lordy – Inzamam’s furious. To him this is tantamount to being called a cheat. A five-run penalty has been given against Pakistan, and this one’s going to run and run.
1439: It’s all booting off. Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer has marched straight into the match referee’s office, and he didn’t look happy. Good luck Mike Procter…
Mike Procter is a former great player for Gloucestershire and South Africa, currently a test referee, and in charge of this match.
1445: Up in the match referee’s office, Mike Procter is frantically leafing through what looks like a rule-book. Woolmer has now marched off, and is back on the Pakistan dressing-room balcony, scratching another ball while talking animatedly with bowling coach Waqar Younis.
1452: Pietersen plays a lovely late cut off Kaneria to move to 80, and the drinks come on. Behind the scenes, the tampering row is only just beginning…
1502: Asif has replaced Gul. Read into that what you will. Collingwood, possibly wearing Cook’s lucky box, jabs down late on an inswinger and watches in horror as the ball bounces down behind him and misses the stumps by a bail’s thickness.
and so on…
So many questions remain unanswered:
Pakistan put tour match in doubt:
But coach Bob Woolmer has moved to quell fears the one-day series against England could be in danger.
Woolmer stopped short of guaranteeing the series would go ahead if Inzamam is banned for all or part of it.
“We are all trying to get our heads around what has happened but we are keen to play cricket,” he said.
A sad sign of the times: you can’t tell the cricket coaches from the politicians…
“We need to get rid of this polarisation and we want to bring the two parties [Pakistan and England] together again.”
Speaking of politicians …
Are you still wondering about that TATP? So am I.
I’m still wondering about a few other things too, and you know what that means: We have not yet heard the last word about the people who allegedly plotted To Mix The Impossible Bomb.
Isn’t hydrogen peroxide the stuff you put in your ears to clean them out?
The hydrogen peroxide you use at home has a lot of water in it. To make something go boom, you need pure hydrogen peroxide, which is more difficult to obtain.
The terrorists and the governments are working together to control the People. Is anyone seriously in doubt of this?
Not only are Bradbloggers experts in physics related to building demolition, but now they are experts in chemistry too!
Whats next? Space flight? Time travel?
You people are seriously crazy. So crazy you are beyond debating with.
P.S. Why did Clinton cause all the terror attacks in the 90’s?
I didn’t need to know about the chemistry to know this whole “plot” was nothing but hype. But now that I do know about the chemistry – I can’t see how any rational person wouldn’t see right through this. That’s why the propaganda machine will never let this get out to the mainstream. As long as most people aren’t told the truth in the media, nothing is going to change. The few of us who actively seek out the truth through the blogosphere need to get a lot louder in the debate. These lies cannot be allowed to be presented as facts without vocal opposition and dissent. If we let them keep playing the fear card over and over, there’ll be nothing stopping the continual rollback of our consitutional rights “for our own safety”.
WOWOW: Keep listening to Limboob, you idiot.
WOWOW #4: I was a chemistry wiz in high school and turned down a scholarship offer from the chemistry department of a major university; while I don’t consider myself an expert in chemistry I am certainly not out of my depth with this article. You couldn’t be expected to know this because bloggers don’t usually present academic qualifications, so we’ll let you slide … this time!
Meanwhile if you can find any holes in what I have written I would love to hear about them. I’d hate to be wrong a lot more than I’d hate to be corrected.
WOWOW – Hmm reminds me of the one about the guy who had an “M” tattooed on each butt cheek. – When he does cartwheels it says WOW MOM WOW MOM!
I’m curious as to what would happen if you dumped all the acid in the pre-mixed peroxide and acetone at once. Would that cause an explosion and if so, would it be enough to cause enough damage to bring down a plane? Could someone (WP) with some expertise in chemistry help me out with that hypothetical. While I certainly wouldn’t put it past the Bushies to try and pull a fast one, I just assumed the ‘terrorists’ weren’t trying to *complete* the making of TATP (due to the temperature requirements), just blow themselves and the plane up as the concoction is so unstable.
Good question, Robert M.
If
most of it would come splashing right back at you. You’d certainly be screaming, and you’d likely be blind, but that would be a blessing because you surely wouldn’t want to see what was left of your face.
In other words, the plane would still be fine but you’d be toast.
You ignored my question.
WHY DID BILL CLINTON CAUSE THE TERROR ATTACKS IN THE 90’S?
OK, WOWOW; Let’s have a proper question, then:
Did Bill Clinton cause all the terror attacks in the 90s?
If you can prove that the answer to this question is “yes”, then we can move on to “why”.
Your turn.
There is little reason why a Molotov cocktail couldn’t be fashioned in a loo and tossed down the aisle.
This has been true since FOREVER.
It might not bring down the plane, but such a hateful act could burn a bunch of Bermuda trunks-wearing Brits into briquets before anything could be done.
This threat makes it reasonable to bar large amounts of solvents on planes. For instance, the carrying of sloshing gas cans onto planes must be STOPPED IMMEDIATELY!
That piece of advice, from the Christo-fascist Church of Jehovah, in upstate Idaho, cost American taxpayers $3 million. Luckily DHS was able to get the CCJ to take the no-bid contract — they ARE the experts in carrying sloshing gas cans.
Meanwhile, THIS IS A TERRORIST:
“April 10, 2003 : The FBI raids the Noonday, Texas, home of William Krar and storage facilities he rented in the area, discovering an arsenal that includes more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition, 65 pipe bombs and remote-control briefcase bombs, and almost two pounds of deadly sodium cyanide. Also found are components to convert the cyanide into a bomb capable of killing thousands, along with white supremacist and antigovernment material. Investigators soon learn Krar was stopped earlier in 2003 by police in Tennessee, who found in his car several weapons and coded documents that seemed to detail a plot. Krar refuses to cooperate, and details of that alleged plan are never learned. Eventually, he pleads guilty to possession of a chemical weapon and is sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.”
THIS IS A TERRORIST:
“Oct. 10, 2003 : Police arrest Norman Somerville after finding a huge weapons cache on his property in northern Michigan that includes six machine guns, a powerful anti-aircraft gun, thousands of rounds of ammunition, hundreds of pounds of gunpowder, and an underground bunker. They also find two vehicles Somerville calls his “war wagons,” and on which prosecutors later say he planned to mount machine guns as part of a plan to stage an auto accident and then massacre arriving police. Officials describe Somerville as an antigovernment extremist enraged over the death of Scott Woodring, a Michigan Militia member killed by police a week after Woodring shot and killed a state trooper during a standoff. Somerville eventually pleads guilty to weapons charges and is sentenced to six years in prison.”
Anyone carrying a sloshing gas can onto an airliner IS A TERRORIST.
Krar and Norman Somerville, who are as white as Wonder Bread, are engaged in fighitng the Mud People who intend to seize control of our Nation. Therefore, all corporate media is ordered to IGNORE ANY NEWS REPORTS ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE, except baby beauty pageant victims.
I got nothing but d’s in chemistry. When I heard the peroxide report, all I could think of was a bomb designed to make everyone blonde.
LOL, gtash! 😛 Sounds as if that might have been as close to what these people were plotting as what we’re getting in the press, too.
WOWOW,
Questions such as yours are inherently falacious. You are assuming that Clinton caused attacks and we do not agree.
Can you discuss issues without citing neocon talking points? Have you ever had an original thought?
In the early 1960s, Bell Aerosystems built for the US Army a rocket pack which it called the “Bell Rocket Belt” or “man-rocket”, using hydrogen peroxide as fuel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Rocket_Belt
How about this for a a theory?
They were going to crash the planes into buildings in the regular way and then all fly away to Iran together using rocket belts made from airplane seat belts and Hydrogen Peroxide.
Yes, ICGreen, I think you are definitely on to something there! … or should I leave off the to and say I think you are definitely on something?
After an extensive discussion with my science advisor, I’ve changed the graphic at the top of this thread.
I was concerned about the three places on the old diagram — at 12, 4 and 8 o’clock — where there are four lines meeting at a single point.
I didn’t like those three points; I thought it must be a mistake; there must be another Carbon atom at each point, and the four lines — bonds — connect to the Carbon atom (the “C” in the diagrams) rather than to each other. “YES”, my science advisor said, “THE DIAGRAM IS MISSING THREE CARBONS”, and I went off looking for a better diagram.
The new graphic is rotated slightly compared to the old one, but as you can see, it has the three “extra” Carbon atoms which were mysteriously missing from the diagram I first posted.
I received a few other confirmations (about things I had written without consulting with him first) and I learned a few new things too, but I believe I’ll hang onto the new bits at least until my next post on this subject.
Just FYI and in case anyone is interested: the most important confirmations I received tonight were:
[1] I read the email which was received by Edgar J. Steele and which I quoted in the body of the piece above, in which the anonymous writer explains why it is not possible to mix a TATP bomb in the washroom of an airplane, and I asked my science advisor: “Do you believe this email is credible?” “ABSOLUTELY!” he said. I continued: “It says here that the guy who wrote this email has a PhD in Chemistry. Does that sound right to you?” And my advisor said: “THAT SOUNDS JUST ABOUT RIGHT TO ME.”
[2] The answer I gave earlier in this comment was correct. This topic turned into an interesting discussion, by the way, because my science advisor initially thought something much different than what I had written. So I pressed my point, just a little bit, and he realized right away that I had a better handle on that angle than he did. This happens very rarely between the two of us and whenever it does I feel a lot smarter than I really am … for about 10 seconds! 😉
It seems to me after reading this article that although any would be terrorist effort to make an explosive would fail they could certainly succeed in creating a substance that would cause the plane to be diverted. If they could do that in mid flight it would be one hell of a week in the media. Without a doubt they could certainly claim Mission Accomplished as far as disrupting western civilization and getting plenty of media attention. Especially if they could do this on more than one plane in a day.
Jeff: that’s a good point. But if all they wanted to do was cause a disturbance and maybe get the plane diverted, they wouldn’t need the hydrogen peroxide, nor the acetone. All they’d need would be a small bottle of sulfuric acid.
If they poured it on the floor or smashed it against a wall there would be an instant “disturbance”. And quite likely a serious medical threat to everyone on board. But apparently that is not what this was about.
This speculating behavior which afflicts most of you clouds the true plan. It was right there in front of you all along–clever jackals order “special” meal via travel agent beforehand. Say, kosher meal for example–good and gassy-pastrami? hot dogs? you get the picture. Kosher throws the profilers off; and the luggage checkers will never know you and your merry band of music makers ate 5 pounds of beans preflight. Sneak on matches, now lift cheeks in unison over the mid Atlantic-strike matches–kaplooie. Be bold, bring blow torches for dramatic effect.
Rich: You’re a genius! What are you doing over here with us humble bloggers?
Ok. So let me get this straight. Terror in the 90’s was caused by terrorists. Terror starting in January of 2001 was caused by Bush.
Amazing you people can get on that logic train. Like I said, you are too crazy to even talk to.
I was at 163, not out, when I had a bit of a sticky wicket just before tea. Fortunately, I was able to scoot into a pissoir and whip up a little dab of Brylcream…
Wowow: I’ve never said terror starting in January of 2001 was caused by Bush, nor have I ever said anything at all about terror being caused or not being caused by Bill Clinton. Search the net if you like; see what you can find. Prove me wrong if you can — but otherwise shut up with this constant diversion and focus for a moment if you can:
In the present article I argue that the bomb the alleged plotters were allegedly plotting to make on an airplane could not possibly have been made there. I quoted Edgar J. Steele who thinks Bush and Blair are lying about what they know about the alleged plot. But I made a point of mentioning that I do not agree with him.
Maybe I was a bit too subtle, but read this again:
In other words, I do not necessarily agree with Steele on this point. Can I put it in a simpler form for you, Wowow? Here:
I don’t think Bush caused this “terror”.
Now that we’re clear on this: Do you have any questions about TATP? Or any questions pertaining in any way to the present post?
Perhaps I can offer a bit of insight. When I was very young I was curious and I got into chemistry, like almost all other curious kids of that age and I made TATP and 12 other explosives.
The synthesis described in the article is essentially correct. The acid is only needed in a very small amount because it is a catalyst so there is no danger of ‘acid splashing’ as someone remarked.
The plot is not impossible but it is farfetched and it could be done, but admittedly it is unlikely and cumbersome. If I were to blow up a plane by liquid explosives I’d use another peroxide explosive which is a liquid by itself.
If you use commercial grade hydrogen peroxide, which is a 30% solution, and pure aceton and add some drops of acid you’ll immediately see lots of white crystals forming. To get the best yields you need to keep the temperature in check and wait hours. But that isn’t necessary because the reaction is very fast and you use a liter of aceton/peroxide mix you can get workable quantities of the compound in minutes.
You don’t need to cool the mixture for this purpose, and there is no danger of explosion at all if the explosive is wet. To be explosive, it must be dry and pretty compressed.
So getting the compound is relatively easy, but you have to retrieve it from the liquid, and dry it. You do this by spreading the crystals out on a blanket of sorts. There is very little space in toilets, and not much heat, so I really don’t know how they were going to dry it.
And even if they somehow managed to dry it and get enough of it (say, 100 ~ 200 grams) there is still no clear way how this is going to destroy an airplane.
Acetone Peroxide is an entropic explosive, its not very powerful (‘brisant’) compared to millitary explosives such as TNT or RDX. Unless they were using a shaped charge of sorts, the worst that would happen is they’d probably blow a limb off or a minor hole in the fuselage.
Unless you use a brisant millitary explosive such as PETN/TNT/dynamite or loads of TATP (kgs) I don’t see how you could blow up a plane.
“Unless they were using a shaped charge of sorts, the worst that would happen is they’d probably blow a limb off or a minor hole in the fuselage.”
Back to my gas story per comment #22–the real story. ETAP, DTAP whatever tap. You budding chemistry wannabes are filled with hot air, helium if you have “light shoes.”
Allow me to illustrate as only a physics savant (me) can. Above we find the poopooing of the “DTAP theory”, in which we are relieved to find out that the “worst” that would happen our writer suggests, is that they’d blow a limb off–this would be high drama for sure and would make for a long and messy ride back to the airport.
But peruse the next thought of our chemist–perhaps only a “minor” hole in the fuselage might result. Minor holes at 40,000 feet blow off more than the occasional limb. We physics types have a term of art we use to describe the leftovers from such a calamity– “dust”.
Lorty, lorty! Now they’re posing as savants. What in the hell FOR? Just to try to patch up their lost dignity for voting for these pricks?