08/18/06 "The
Register" -- -- Binary liquid explosives
are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be
tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who've
employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed,
immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace,
like the seven angels of God's wrath pouring out their
bowls full of pestilence and pain.
The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn
just which two chemicals can be handled safely when
separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when
combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to
believe in these substances, chiefly because action
movies wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't.
Now we have news of the recent, supposedly
real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial
airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to
a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid
death in the lavatories. So, The Register has
got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and
the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us,
been watching too many action movies?
We're told that the suspects were planning to use
TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that
supposedly can be made from common household chemicals
unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little
hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily
concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil
have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your
plane.
Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly,
through the mainstream media and its legions of
so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts
know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying
for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them
do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that
you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid
explosives dies hard.
Better killing through chemistry
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.
First, you've got to get adequately concentrated
hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large
quantity of the three per cent solution sold in
pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off
the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission
failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab
before a single infidel has been harmed.
But let's assume that you can obtain it in the
required concentration, or cook it from a dilute
solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The
remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are
far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got
them on hand.
Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide,
acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully,
and put them into drinks bottles for convenient
smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the
peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it
remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen
gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively
marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large
beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're
going to need them.
It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The
bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to
supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you
have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice,
and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get
you through the cookery without starting a fire in the
lavvie.
Easy does it
Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly
bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need
to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once
your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the
peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath
(Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by
drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction
temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it
gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In
fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature
explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably
no one else.
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.
The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively
easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to
crash the plane, and you must make it with care to
assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit "mass
murder on an unimaginable scale," as Deputy Police
Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it's true
that a slapdash concoction will explode, it's unlikely
to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an
infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or
two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly
depressurizes, but that's about all you're likely to
manage under the most favorable conditions possible.
We believe this because a peer-reviewed
2004 study (http://www.technion.ac.il/~keinanj/pub/122.pdf)
in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS)
entitled "Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide is an
Entropic Explosion" tells us that the explosive force of
TATP comes from the sudden decomposition of a solid into
gasses. There's no rapid oxidizing of fuel, as there is
with many other explosives: rather, the substance
changes state suddenly through an entropic process, and
quickly releases a respectable amount of energy when it
does. (Thus the lack of ingredients typically associated
with explosives makes TATP, a white crystalline powder
resembling sugar, difficult to detect with conventional
bomb sniffing gear.)
Mrs. Satan
By now you'll be asking why these jihadist wannabes
didn't conspire simply to bring TATP onto planes,
colored with a bit of vegetable dye, and disguised as,
say, a powdered fruit-flavored drink. The reason is that
they would be afraid of failing: TATP is notoriously
sensitive and unstable. Mainstream journalists like to
tell us that terrorists like to call it "the mother of
Satan." (Whether this reputation is deserved, or is a
consequence of homebrewing by unqualified hacks, remains
open to debate.)
It's been claimed that the 7/7 bombers used it, but
this has not been positively confirmed. Some sources
claim that they used C-4, and others that they used RDX.
Nevertheless, the belief that they used TATP has stuck
with the media, although going about in a crowded city
at rush hour with an unstable homebrew explosive in a
backpack is not the brightest of all possible moves.
It's surprising that none of the attackers enjoyed an
unscheduled launch into Paradise.
So, assuming that the homebrew variety of TATP is
highly sensitive and unstable - or at least that our
inept jihadists would believe that - to avoid getting
blown up in the taxi on the way to the airport, one
might, if one were educated in terror tactics primarily
by hollywood movies, prefer simply to dump the
precursors into an airplane toilet bowl and let the
mother of Satan work her magic. Indeed, the mixture will
heat rapidly as TATP begins to form, and it will soon
explode. But this won't happen with much force, because
little TATP will have formed by the time the explosion
occurs.
We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry
Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical
experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable
assumption, and she tolds us that merely dumping the
precursors together would create "a violent reaction,"
but not a detonation.
To release the energy needed to bring down a plane
(far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha
Airlines
Flight 243 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Flight_243)
neatly illustrates), it's necessary to synthesize a good
amount of TATP with care.
Jack Bauer sense
So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the
sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with
sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is
out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of
time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to
premature detonation, although it is the only plausible
approach.
Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists
smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on
board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've
passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of
situation comedy.
It should be small comfort that the security
establishments of the UK and the USA - and the
"terrorism experts" who inform them and wheedle billions
of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face
recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar
hi-tech phrenology gear - have bought the Hollywood
binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon
it.
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.
But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives
now moves governments and drives public policy. We have
reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in
aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would
be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious
about security). Nearly everything must now go into the
hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be
detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are
generally not banned.
Action heroes
The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of
pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched
it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our
officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's
reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and
Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they
learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude
Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable
homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to
emphasize).
It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of
government officials who understand as little about
terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their
informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7
London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe
bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas
attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits
who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent
binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid
bombs.
For some real terror, picture twenty guys
who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic,
clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be
accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.
You won't hear about those fellows until it's too
late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the
fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on
the people we should really be afraid of. They make
policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood
plots.
Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer. ®
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