Liquid Explosives

What with all the talk of liquid explosives being used in connection with the British terror plot, I wanted to ask if anyone has knowledge of such things.

I vaguely recall something about the Germans developing plastic explosive in WWII using liquids that were available from any corner chemist/drug store, and then of course there are fuel/air bombs and Napalm which obviously have liquid components, but what about the rumors that the British terrorists were using a commonly available sports drink as one of their prime ingredients.

Anyone have any insights?

science.howstuffworks.com...

Here is some info into how liquid explosives work. I hope it helps.

What these guys use and have been using are acetone peroxides of various sorts.

AP's have no nitrates, and thus get past most security checkpoints.

The reagents it takes to make them are also easy to obtain and are not on watch lists, as many of the reagents necessary to create nitrate based explosives are.

AP's are very unstable, though, and have a reputation for blowing pieces off their fabricators, so don't go playing with recipes you see on the net.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

What these guys use and have been using are acetone peroxides of various sorts.

Where have they been using them Tom?

Remember the shoe bomber? That was an acetone peroxide, at least in part.

(edit)

Outside of aircraft, some of the IEDs you read about are AP's of some sort. For a while, it was a common trick to soak clothing in TATP and toggle it off at checkpoints. You had to get pretty close for that to work. Now they don't let you get that close.

(more edit)

It's a common Palestinian explosive, as well. I don't know what sites you trust to be relevant, just google "palestinian acetone peroxide" and find one you like. There are quite a few.

It's one of those explosives that doesn't take a lot of expertise to make, and the reagents are easily obtained. In addition, like I said, common nitrate detectors won't work on it and I don't think there is a gaseous emissions detector for it like there is for nitrate residue. There is a "pen" that will test for contamination. Doesn't help you much in general though.

The ease of synthesis, cheap components and difficulty detecting it are all pluses, if you needed to make field expedient explosives it's hard to turn down. The bad side of course is that it's quite unstable and the brisance is too low to be of use in cutting steel. So if you wanted to use it for infrastructure damage, like cutting bridges, it wouldn't really be up to snuff.

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

Useless trivia about AP's, they don't actually explode in a classic sense. It's actually somewhat endothermic: the area is colder after the explosion than before it.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
Remember the shoe bomber? That was an acetone peroxide.

If I remember correctly he used some kind of plastic explosives, most likely Semtex and used some kind of peroxide as a detonator.

[edit on 11-8-2006 by deltaboy]

Yep, it was TATP as a detonator, not the best of choices, given that he was caught trying to light his shoe.

(edit)

These days, though, pretty much every airport security looks for nitrate residue, so traditional plastics are right out. That's why this somewhat questionably timed attack had them using all AP's. Ok, that part's legit.

pointless story: There was a nice little canvas bag I used to have, that once had some explosives in it many years previous. I used it to haul stuff around in as a carry on bag because it was nearly indestructible, and it just fit in the overheads.

For a couple of years it wasn't an issue. Then in the US they started pulling me over and dumping everything out of the bag and searching me and the bag everytime I flew. This was a decade before the shoe man.

The nitrate residue detectors they were using were catching traces over five years old. What's funny is, while they were obvious about running swabs over me and the bag in the post-check, it wasn't so obvious where the detector was that clued them in. Go figure. At any rate, if there is a point here, it's that the nitrate thing is probably well covered at the check-in gates these days, and at the time they were probably only sniffing the bags, not the passengers.

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

It was stated on the news last night that it was M----------- N--------- based liquid explosive not TATP and that it was very hard to detect.

NOT a sports drink, the assumption was that the liquid explosive COULD have been secreted in the sports drink bottle - that's the only link.

Given this was used pre-9/11 and one passenger on a Philippines Airlinesplane died in the resulting test explosion in 1994 I think we need to ask why this security measure was brought in 12 years after the danger was so tragically highlighted.

Once the liquid was assembled with two small, 9-volt batteries and a detonating material that the men planned to conceal in their shoes, the bombs were to be hidden under aircraft seats. When the planes landed at the next stop, the men were to disembark. The planes would "never reach their [next] destinations" because the bombs were to detonate when the watch alarms went off, according to assistant U.S. attorney Michael J. Garcia. Thousands of passengers would have died, Garcia said.

One advantage of the scheme from the terrorists' perspective was that none of them would have had to get a U.S. visa. They would only have to fly on U.S. airliners making an intermediate stop at a foreign city before leaving for the United States.

For practice, the men allegedly detonated one of their bombs underneath a seat in a Manila movie theater on Dec. 1, 1994. Ten days later, Yousef allegedly planted another in the life jacket pouch beneath a seat occupied by a Japanese businessman on a Philippines Airlines flight out of Manila en route to Tokyo. Yousef got off the plane at the resort town of Cebu; the bomb detonated on the second leg of the flight, killing the businessman and injuring 10 others but causing only minor structural damage to the aircraft.

www.washingtonpost.com...

Everyone here is still saying it was a peroxide. There are several AP's, and a number of peroxide explosives that don't involve acetone as well, such as HMTD.

But if they're saying a nitrogenous explosive there, it may be lapwing. They can detect most if not all nitrate based explosives. Perhaps they're trying to lure the next round into using a nitrate.

Another pointless story:

We dissolved a little rifle powder we had laying around (nitrocellulose based) in some ether and ran a streak of it on a briefcase I was carrying, they stopped that too. If they can pick that up, you won't be getting much of any nitrate past main security. Peroxides are the new thing.

Well, there are some others that might suit them better but they haven't thought of it yet.

Yeah I agree the M--------- N-------- could be disinformation for wannabe UK terroists' consumption but it's unlilkely to fool a trained jihadist. Maybe it was a plant to trigger conversations to be picked up by ECHELON.

Gotta go there's 6 men at the door with a battering ram

Not to veer off-topic, but there in jolly old England, they're monitoring every email already.

You guys thought the NSA/NARUS thing here was bad, but you guys were wired up about 5 years before we were. Welcome to the 21st century!

We've been being bugged for many many years before now (I have personal experience of this from c. 1992).

It's not the bugging we mind - it's the fact that the NSA are involved even when the UK bugs its own citizens.

It's that team spirit thing, baby!

Don't worry, your guys work on us, too. See, we've got these neat loopholes in the law here. Theoretically, the NSA can't monitor blogs. Until you get a post in a thread from someone out of country. That opens the thread up for action. So, if they're officially interested in something, a chap from one of your agencies gets a note to drop in and make an inflammatory post, which makes it all legal.

Or sometimes they'll engage in "can I get you to tell me something you shouldn't" games on request.

They can also use the UK SIGINT stations to spy on Americans, Canada is a big help here, and as long as it's one of you guys that does the intercept, no problems. Then you can give us the data, and we can accept it; although theoretically we can't do it to our own, it's okey dokey if you freely provide such data to us.

NSA and to some extent the military provide the same services to your guys.

One big happy family, living in harmony. This is the part where we hold hands and sing "we are the world".

//end of threadjack, I swear

[edit on 11-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam


So, if they're officially interested in something, a chap from one of your agencies gets a note to drop in and make an inflammatory post, which makes it all legal.

Or sometimes they'll engage in "can I get you to tell me something you shouldn't" games on request.

Don't knock it mate - it's a job, pays quite well & beats monitoring the hidden cameras in foreign embassies in London (oh bugger!)

// THIS is officially the end of the thread hijack

Some impressive explosives knowledge here - and those anecdotes were great.

I can't figure out what the M------- N------- is, I assume you're trying to avoid popping up on a key word search. I wouldn't worry too much, I would hope the security guys check the context of an e-mail before they come kicking in your door !!

As for the US versus the UK as far as e-mail snooping is concerned, I'm sure the US is just as bad, they just tend to be more sneaky about it over here. Breaking the law is almost a government hobby since 9/11.

A few things remain certain, firstly - the UK has a real problem with its Pakistani population, second - air travel will never be truly safe from these medieval animals we call Muslim Terrorists, and finally - it seems that a well informed 12 year old can still make a usable explosive device from ingredients that can be purchased from the average drug store/supermarket.

"Murdoch uncovered Prince Charles-Gordon Brown plot to oust Blair. Phony terror plan cooked up to derail political coup plans."

"After Blair met with Bush in Washington, he flew to California where on July 30 he attended Murdoch's News Corporation private corporate executive conference at the posh Inn at Spanish Bay golf resort in Pebble Beach. Blair met with Murdoch, Israeli former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Newt Gingrich, and various Fox, Star, and Sky News executives. The final touches were agreed to by Blair and Murdoch on how the fake terror plot would play out in Murdoch's media empire."

FROM:

www.waynemadsenreport.com...