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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.
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.
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Lack of right and means of travel was quite effective in the old Soviet Union in keeping the populace controlled. Not safe, controlled. I've been predicting since the 1970's that we will be in trouble when we start seeing more and more restrictive regulations on travel, more than anything else. It's nothing big. It's just a few steps, and a few more... "That's how freedom will end, not with a bang, but a rustle of file folders..." as someone said on the net around 1990. Go head, call me a conspiracy theorist. People have been doing it since I was in high school. But things I predicted then have been following a progression that matches certain patterns from past political situations. I don't know, maybe I just know too much about the Bolshevik Revolution, the Maoist government, and the French Revolution, and the Tokugawa bafuku, and... It's been proven, time and time again, through history, throughout the world, it's one of the most effective ways of controlling a restive population.