According the the helpful advice emparted by Dick Cheney, and heartily supported by Michael Chertov, should we choose to vote incorrectly this coming November, we should probably expect the next Jihad on Airline Travel by Christmas.
After all we've all seen it. First the red liquid disappears from its container, swiftly followed by the blue - then BOOM! Another school and another lead supporting actor, nominated for the "Best empathy enspiring, widow leaving, orphan creating, ownerless dog unleashing, actor in a bomb disposal uniform" Oscar, dies at the hands of Dennis Hopper.
To date most TV security "experts" (usually gainfully employed fulfilling "pork" contracts for Homeland Security) have concluded that the basis of this attack was an explosive called TATP.
But just how feasible is such a plot? Well a British tech website decided to investigate - and here is a rough outline of its conclusions.
1/Can this even be done - create a liquid explosive from harmless products that when mixed together could blow up a plane?
Well the short answer is yes. The long answer is not without a spot of preparation.
You see you need to obtain sufficient quantities of hydrogen peroxide - our primary ingredient. The problem is that hair bleach isn't going to cut it, so you'll need to buy a shit load of over the counter peroxide, then dangerously boil it down to a more concentrated variety.
2/Presuming you haven't burnt yourself to death creating your concentrated peroxide, what other ingredients and components would be necessary?
I'll assume you already have the iPod, so along with your peroxide you'll need some acetone and sulphuric acid (which is surprisingly easier to obtain than concentrated peroxide). Next you'll need to assemble your bomb making equipment. A large glass beaker, a stirring rod, medicinal dropper, a thermometer and sufficient cooling to prevent the mixture prematurely exploding. Ideally this would include ice gel packs and a large styrofoam-lined cooler. Finally packing a gas mask would be a prudent move, or you risk passing out from the fumes.
3/Now that you've made the necessary 3 or 4 trips to the bathroom to surrepticiously assemble your equipment and materials, how long will the process take?
Unfortunately after consulting "a peer-reviewed 2004 study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) entitled Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide is an Entropic Explosion", as well as University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, the author of the article found that simply throwing your ingredients into the toilet bowl of your impromtu chemistry lab would only result in "a violent reaction, but not a detonation".
So a bit of time is needed to put together your mixture, carefully measuring out the correct quantities of each ingredient - but this shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours.
You'll then need to leave your product to dry out, about another 2 hours or so. Whether you vacate the lavatory at this point is entirely up to you, but I should probably point out that by this time the stench created by mixing the ingredients may have permeated throughout the entire passenger cabin. Anyway I have no doubt you can think of a good enough excuse to explain why you need to spend 5-6 hours occupying one of the limited number of bathrooms on board.
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What conclusions can we take from all this?
Well apart from the fact that Airline Security, The Dept. of Homeland Security and the terrorists themselves all seem to be basing their plans of operation on Hollywood fairytales, not much.
Except perhaps that items such as the final product (a white, sugar-like powder) and a perfect device for detonating bombs (cell phones) could easily make it on board, while harmless items such as bottled water and lipstick would not.
Ho Hum..
Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible? by Thomas C Greene.