Enough to blow up every plane 53 times over

As of November, 2002, Boeing had produced 10,903 commercial jets from the 707 through the 777.  Airbus had produced 3,043 from the A300 through the A340.  That's a total of 13,946 planes.

If 740,000 pounds of explosives are missing and it takes about a pound to blow up a plane (as happened with Pan Am 103), that means the amount of missing explosives is enough to blow up every Boeing and Airbus jet ever manufacturered 53 times over!

Now try saying that this isn't a big deal.

(edit: I did my math wrong. it's 53 times over, not 55.)

•  At one pound a terrorist attack it is....

  ...enough for one terrorist attack a day for 2082 years.

  by aarrgus on Mon Oct 25, 2004 at 09:02:36 AM PDT

  •  I'm recommending this diary

    It provides a great way of expressing just how terrible a blunder this was.

    I hope K/E picks it up...

    by Geheimbundler on Mon Oct 25, 2004 at 10:10:41 AM PDT

•  Indeed

  I ran the numbers this morning. My understanding is that the Lockerbie bomb consisted of between 300 and 400 grams of Semtex, which translates to something between .65 and .9 pounds.

  HMX and RDX are both compounds used in making plastic explosives like semtex.

  http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/10010371.htm?1c

  The thing is that depending upon the flavor of semtex being manufactured, the amount of HMX or RDX can vary between 50 and 90 percent of the actual semtex weight.

  (No, I am not a weapons expert, but I did google this and feel reasonably comfortable with my sources).

  So in reality, 380 tons of this stuff should be more than sufficient to create over one million Lockerbie bombings.

  As you say, this is enough to down every airliner tens of times over.

  Now, arguably, one might wonder what Saddam was doing with all this stuff. I'd argue that any modern military is gonna have a lot of plastic explosives laying around. Untold tons of this stuff is stockpiled underground in Kingsport, Tennessee, by the US Army. Just to name one of our nation's plastic explosives stockpiles.

  by JimTXDem on Mon Oct 25, 2004 at 09:11:40 AM PDT

•  Or bigger.

  In terms of conventional weaponry, this is enough to build 125 daisy-cutters or 65 MOABs, the largest conventional weapons in the US arsenal.  

  Or 5% the size of the blast at Hiroshima.

  They could level an entire city with this.

  by AP on Mon Oct 25, 2004 at 09:23:33 AM PDT