Everyone needs to read this article

While I hold no brief for those misguided people who want to blow us all up, the media have been pretty facile, on the whole, about the possibility of combining various liquids to form a bomb, which they would then detonate. This Register article gives some of the facts about the substance most likely to have been envisioned as the bomb material and how difficult it is to actually make and use it.

One might remember that several years ago a plot to do this type of thing in the Philippines was thwarted. However, after that there was no ban on liquids being brought on board. The reason is that it’s so difficult to make this stuff and carry it around that it’s not particularly likely that anyone will be able to do it.

If you see someone walking down the aisle of your airplane headed for the toilets with a thermometer, a beaker, and a cooler filled with ice packs, be concerned.

4 Responses to “Everyone needs to read this article”

  1. keith_london says:

    I had a quick scan of the aritcle, and was disappointed to find only the briefest reference, and no proper considration of a real, foiled plot to use TATP (dismissed as impossible to produce in a make shift lab on the plane!) – the case of Richard Reid, the would-be suicide shoebomber:

    “Mr Reid is said to have told investigators that he used a recipe from the internet to make a rare explosive known as TATP, or triacetone triperoxide. He said he bought the ingredients from either a Czech or Slovak man in Amsterdam, one of the many places he travelled through. He also said that he acted alone. The TATP would have been used to set alight more powerful explosives called PETN, which experts say would have been powerful enough to blow a hole in the side of the plane and cause it to crash.”

    [Source: BBC 25 January, 2002, 23:16 GMT Shoe bomb suspect ‘did not act alone’ ]

    I would suggest, entertaining as that article may be, it is misleading to downplay TATP. I suggest the author should take note (from this article, :

    “TATP has been used by suicide bombers in Israel, and was chosen as a detonator in 2001 by the thwarted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. … analysis by the FBI laboratory in Washington determined that there were two functional improvised explosive devices hidden in Reid’s shoes made of the explosive material triacetone triperoxide, known as “TATP,” and other components. Richard Reid’s shoe had 8 or 10 ounces of triacetone triperoxide and PETN.” [Source: globalsecurity.org – TATP

    Having spent most of his energy dismissing liquid bombs as half-baked Hollywood plots, the author of the Regsiter article ends with what must be a chilling note: , “Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.”

  2. chrishansenhome says:

    I think the point for me is that synthesizing TATP from liquids is so fiddly that banning liquids from airplanes probably isn’t necessary. Methods such as screening for TATP in things like shoes (sniffing, for example) would probably be more effective in detecting the stuff.

  3. keith_london says:

    banning liquids from airplanes probably isn’t necessary” – I agree! Like the Ryanair chief said, “We’re not in danger of dying at the hands of toiletries”

  4. chrishansenhome says:

    Well, I also think the Ryanair chief is a clown, but he made a valuable point.