"Liquid Explosives"

[ravan]

OK, I've read some of the articles and such about liquid explosives from the BBC. They all allude to some vague, nebulous ingredients that might be able to be combined to make a liquid explosive, or combining a liquid and a solid.

They read like bullshit, as in, as credible as "red mercury" being a nuclear material.

Yes, there are liquids that can be combined to make explosives. In order to get explosives out of these, they have to be highly concentrated. Some are considered "volatile". This means they stink.

Take acetone, a well known ingredient in nail polish remover. The concentration is low, the smell is high. If someone decided to "do their nails" on an airplane flight, they'd get lynched - that shit is vicious in an enclosed environment.

Or various acidic drain cleaners: hard to handle and package without burning yourself, or sufficiently low strength to not do anything more than fizzle. These stink too.

Hydrogen peroxide: the stuff you can buy in the drugstore is low concentration. It would have to be concentrated (not a simple process), then repacked in the original bottle. It smells when you open it, too. Hair bleach developer has a slightly higher concentration, but again has the smell problem.

Gasoline/Fuel oil: first, it smells; second, its already prohibited in aircraft cabins.

So, basically, it would take a lot of effort, coordination, and ingenuity by the terrorists, plus gross apathy on the part of their fellow passengers. Ain't gonna happen. Not when passengers that look like they *might* be doing something funky get tackled promptly by fellow travellers.

Comments

[ravan.livejournal.com]

You can't combine the ingredients without opening the container. Two ingredients uncombined in sealed containers are harmless.

The chemical reactions needed to produce explosives are not instant.

OBVIOUSLY someone with a bit more education in chemical sciences than either of us thinks it was credible enough to put three nations on alert and utterly inconveniance thousands of travelers.

Actually, I doubt that anyone with any realistic knowledge in this area was involved in the alert.

The alert serves a political purpose, not for the alleged terrorists, but governments who want to "boil the frog" by slowly aclimatizing us to more and more invasive surveillance and restrictions.

Maybe it's credible, but I doubt it. These people's track record sucks - "red mercury" anyone?

[mdlbear]

This is incorrect in many cases -- remember that the Oklahoma City bombing was done using fuel oil and ammonium nitrate. The liquid and slurry explosives are just a mechanical mixture of a fuel and an oxidizer; no chemical reaction is needed -- except for the final one, of course.

And there are chemicals like caesium and rubidium that explode on contact with plain water. There's a video on the web somewhere; probably YouTube.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

Metallic sodium burns with almost explosive intensity. But it's also not a common chemical.

IIRC, there are only a few liquids that when combined are instantly explosive. Most go through a reaction (often exothermic, which is what makes playing with boombooms fundangerous) that isn't quick and gives off nasty fumes.

[mdlbear]

Ceasium is significantly more reactive than sodium, which is the mildest member of the family. Sodium burns, potassium burns vigorously, rubidium explodes, and caesium explodes violently. The video in question shows the result of dropping a couple of grams of caesium into a cast-iron bathtub of water. The tub is shattered.

The liquid/slurry explosives are quite inert, even after they're mixed. No reaction at all. (Most emphatically not like making nitroglicerine.) It's a lot like mixing hydrogen and oxygen. They're very stable until they're hit by a shock wave, e.g. from a spark or a sharp impact. At which point they detonate, the way any other high explosive does -- the energy of the reaction forces the shock wave to travel supersonically. That's the definition of a high explosive.