On the implausibility of the explosives plot.

[meldroc]

First, the article:

On the implausibility of the explosives plot.

Very interesting. Unlike what you see in the MSM, this article actually explains some of the technical issues of implementing a "binary liquid explosive device" in the constraints of an airliner bathroom.

In short, lots of issues, such as chemicals eating through your Gatorade bottle (better switch to glass, and better use a lid for that glass bottle that the chemicals won't eat through), nasty fumes, the chemical concoction blowing up in your face if you don't cool it with dry ice, it blowing up if you shock it, it blowing up before you made enough to actually take the plane out, the fumes choking you, and passengers noticing the smells of the various chemicals, this plot is completely implausible.

Of course, that doesn't stop TSA from making you dump your Diet Pepsi... :eyes: What TSA is putting you and me through at airports isn't security. It's theater. Theater made at the price of your freedom.

[Virginia Dare]

1. It's theater...

I agree with our assessment. Welcome to DU!!!

:hi:

[Der Blaue Engel]

2. Theater

Absolutely. Even if the plot is plausible, this is all about theater. It bears no relation to security whatsoever and I think it's a bad sign that it's so easy to manipulate us. What will we put up with next?

Welcome to DU! :)

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. I have a feeling that those MI-13 or whatever they call themselves

wish they had never got themselves into this god damned mess now, having to eat this big a crow will be very painful.

[TomInTib]

4. That article should be required reading for the Talking Heads

Then let them try to read that crap with a straight face.

[bryant69]

5. That guys not credible.

I mean he basically admits to not being an expert - so why is he credible? Because he's telling you what you want to hear.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[meldroc]

6. That may be true...

but he's no less credible than the talking heads on the MSM. He seems to have done his homework, and his explanation of the chemistry of making acetone peroxide makes a lot of sense to someone like me who's taken high school and college chemistry and knows exactly how nasty these substances can be.

Doing this in a chemistry lab? Doable, but extremely dangerous. Doing this in an airplane bathroom? The end result will be an asphyxiated terrorist, a small explosion that will break the bathroom mirror & cover said terrorist with boiling hot corrosive chemicals, but leave the rest of the plane intact, and an emergency landing.

He's right on the money with the point that what the TSA's doing is security theater, while providing little real security.

[bryant69]

7. Yes - because that's what you want to believe

I suppose we have a right to believe what we want to.

[truth2power]

17. Just saying he's not credible because "that's what you want to believe"

isn't an answer.

SPECIFICALLY, what's wrong with his description?

[Richard Steele]

19. Only in the sense that we "want to believe" the TRUTH.

Do you have any sort of FACTS which disagree with
what has been stated about this?
Please offer them if you do.

[TomInTib]

9. I, for one, would like to see a demonstration of just what those

idiots were planning to do.

Or, at least, what they are accused of maybe thinking about doing.

Probably Diet Coke and that candy shit I've been seeing clips of.

[meldroc]

10. Most MSM outlets won't tell you the exact plan...

In particular, they won't tell exactly how to cook something like TATP or nitroglycerin just because making the stuff is so dangerous, and their lawyers think just broadcasting the ingredients on the air will expose them to liability.

If anyone here with a chemistry background knows a recipe for TATP, nitroglycerin, or any other explosive with enough power to seriously damage an airliner or cause a crash, that can be made using ingredients that can be carried in your luggage (bonus if they're liquids that can be safely carried in a normal looking beverage or toiletry bottle) and cooked in an airplane bathroom in sufficient quantities, I'm all ears.

[eridani]

20. His sources are credible, though

The only goof he makes is that saying piranha dissolves everything. By the citation he uses, it can be stored in Pyrex glass containers (once made). It certainly can't be stored in any kind of plastic container.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. How about PTFE?

A quick web search seems to show PTFE containers are used for "piranha" solution. There also seems to be one called PFA (perfluoroalkoxy fluorocarbon), but I haven't heard of that before - I don't know how common it is. As far as I know, no containers you take on board a plane normally may be made of PTFE, but you might be able to make one look sufficiently like one to get through an X ray machine or a cursory glance.

[meldroc]

23. Glass containers would be easier, but not trival...

Glass can contain piranha solution, and is more plausible than PTFE. You could conceivable use a perfume bottle, or wine bottle, or mason jar. The hard part would be the cap or lid - you can't use plastic, rubber, cork or even metal lids because piranha solution would eat right through them. In labs, you're strictly forbidden from keeping piranha solution in a sealed container at all, because the piranha solution constantly reacts, giving off gas, which will eventually cause the container to explode, spraying chemical nastiness and broken glass all over the place.

So you'll need to leave the piranha solution unmixed (have fun mixing it in the airplane bathroom...) or you'll need a bottle that's as stated in the article, engineered by James Bond's Q.

[eridani]

24. Only after the stuff is synthesized and cooled down

Piranha won't degrade PTFE or PFA chemically, but the acid-peroxide mixing process is incredibly exothermic, and will MELT the bejeezus out of either. Meaning that there is no way in hell they could have mixed sulfuric acid, H2O2 and acetone brought in separate containers onto a plane, and expect to survive the experience.

[AZBlue]

8. But he's only guessing at what the ingredients are.

The exact liquid ingredients haven't been released. Of course, you can pick and choose peroxides that would make on-board mixture impossible, as he has done. This is all from a chemistry student - I prefer to get my news and information from more reliable sources, so I looked it up and found this from Scientific American.com: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000A108C-BE4B-14DB-BE4B83414B7F0000. It also lists some of the chemicals that would be hard to mix on a plane and explains why. But it then goes on to say:

"But it would take only small quantities of various liquid explosives or fuels to generate the force necessary to punch a hole in an aircraft or more seriously disable it. "If it's packaged just right, a few ounces is all you need," Tour says. "The heel of a shoe would do it," notes Neal Langerman, former chair of chemical safety for the American Chemical Society. "These are highly energetic compounds." Furthermore, some chemicals can be mixed to create a toxic gas capable of killing people in an enclosed space such as an airplane."

I'll say it one more time to everyone: I know it's a scary idea, but just because it makes you uncomfortable and you'd rather laugh it off as a Bush conspiracy, that doesn't make it one.

[The Deacon]

11. Except

That the MSM & Terror Experts have clearly indicated that TATP (triacetone triperoxide) is exactly what they're talking about - whether this was what the suspects were planning to use or not. I know enough basic chemistry & enough basic computer search techniques to have done a little research - and the problem this gentleman highlighted was the one which was glaringly obvious to me: carrying around sulfuric acid (which is necessary to catalyze the reaction) is a non-trivial problem (as anyone who has spilled battery acid can attest - and that is low molar sulfuric acid.) Mixing these items in an airplane bathroom is not a simple thing - if the reaction rises above 10 degrees Celsius the most likely result is early crystal formation (despite the constant talk about "liquid explosives" the finished product is actually a white crystalline product) and a "low yield" explosion.
And how can I be so sure of these statements? Because beginning in September of 2000 through November of 2003 I was the local Red Cross representative on anti-terrorism councils, first in Central Kansas & later in South Central Wisconsin - I know precisely what common household chemicals we were all afraid of & what explosives they could make. And TATP is a major concern for terrorism - just not cooked up in an airplane bathroom. My take on these guys is that they were a bunch of wannabes - the biggest threat was that somebody who knew what they were doing might have stumbled across their little boys' club & directed them in more destructive directions.

[AZBlue]

12. They are guessing.

If you have a link that shows that the govt here or in Britain stated that, then I'm wrong - and please send me the link, cause that would be disturbing (not that I'm wrong, that this is what they are saying). But, as far I know, they haven't announced the ingredients yet - so the "experts" and the media are just guessing. And, no shock there, that they are presuming facts for more exciting coverage, facts that aren't facts at all.

[meldroc]

13. It does prove that the TSA's providing only theater though.

Since they're making passengers dump out their beverages and shampoo into a big trash bag, that makes you wonder what would happen if a jug of piranha solution was poured into that soup. If you have enough, or the bag's nearly empty, you could end up with hot piranha soup sprayed all over a bunch of passengers...

[AZBlue]

14. Proves what how?? Huh?

[meldroc]

15. A chemical attack would be easier.

Carry some sulfuric acid (H2SO4) in a glass perfume bottle (make sure it doesn't eat through the lid...) and some potassium cyanide (KCN), which is your typical white powder, easily concealed in all sorts of places. While battery acid is easy enough to find, getting a hold of potassium cyanide would be harder.

Combine the two and they release hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN) and you just turned the airplane's cabin into a gas chamber...

Hard to say if the pilots can ventilate the cabin fast enough to keep people from dying.

[Nevernose]

16. Bleach and Ammonia, from books published in 1972

I checked this book out from the public library when I was in high school. You know which one I'm talking about; you can walk into any Barnes and Noble and get it, or at least you could before 9/11 (I don't know about now, since I'm not in high school anymore). From the descriptions the officials and the "experts" gave, my first thought was bleach and ammonia, if ignited. The gas produced is nauseating at the least, perhaps, maybe deadly when concentrated in an enclosed space, and the gas produced if ignited could also cause a flash fire, igniting oxygen tanks or whatnot.

It isn't exactly secret knowledge. That's why bleach and ammomnia products all have WARNING LABELS that say do not mix.

My first guess about bleach/ammonia came from the thought that if they had good information, real information, SCARY information, they'd have gladly shared it with us. If it was information that any housewife might have, they's be a lot more secretive about it, because they didn't want to look like idiots who'd just busted a lot of kids posting in an Arabic-language chat room somewhere.

If it turns out to be a genuine threat, something that reasonably could have caused the destruction of an airliner and hundreds on board, then mea culpa -- I will write handwritten letters of apology to every official involved. Either way, thank god no one was injured.

[autorank]

18. The Power of Nightmares...Here's how important it was...IAD

I flew out of IAD Friday, a.m. It was the day after the announcement. I dutifully arrived at the airport 2 hours early. Guess what. The ticket counters were not open...that's right. The people who wanted me there were not. And then there was the capacitized security operation...the line went 3/4ths of the distance of the Dulles main lobby...why? because they started well after passangers arrived.



Large isn't it?

I like this post a great deal. Let's see the corporate media take on this. They probably would lose attention somewhere in the middle and just go to lunch...which is appropriate since they're "out to lunch."

So on the biggest day in a long time at the airports the airlines and the security folks decided to show up 30 minutes after the passangers. Not a huge deal and things were very smooth on the way back a few days later...but then they airport folks probalby read this article and decided to chill;)

Thanks for the post. K&R

[tavalon]

21. Yep, it's the Dog and Pony show

And it's been that way from the beginning. I'm choosing not to fly right now because I don't think I could stop myself from pointing and laughing.