Via Slashdot,
Thomas C Greene writes in The Register on whether the recent terrorist plot to blow up planes using binary liquid explosives was actually feasible.
Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.
...
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.
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We've given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.
5 comments:
I saw the following comment the other day on BBC News "Have Your Say":
"On a recent flight all my liquids were confiscated at the airport and now I am only three foot tall and very crispy. (D. Hydrated, London)"
Yes, mixing up explosives on a plane might be difficult, messy and the smell might alert the rest of the passengers and crew but the September 11 nutters hijacked a plane with A STANLEY KNIFE!
Think about it. A couple of hundred passengers versus A GUY WITH A STANLEY KNIFE.
I still have no idea how in the hell that happened.
Hi Robert,
You can hijack a plane with a knife only if you can convince the crew and passengers that cooperation will only cost inconvenience. I doubt that will work any more.
"Hello Mr Pilot, hello Mr Co-Pilot, purser, various stewards, flight attendants and other sundry crew. I'm going to hijack your aeroplane! I'm armed with a stanley knife. If you just sit there and let me proceed and do whatever the hell I want, like, for instance, take the rudder control, it'll be much, much more pleasant for you than attempting to wrestle me to the floor, confiscating my puny weapon and continuing the flight as normal. Be a good chap and don't interrupt as I change course and head for this building over here."
I still don't buy it.
But I wasn't on the flight, so I don't know.
Well, you'll need more than one person, which they did. And you don't convince people by talking. From what I understand, they killed a few people to do that. A fake bomb as well, I believe. The cabin doors weren't reinforced back then either.
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