Wed, 16 Aug 2006
Bomb Hoax
It looks like the scare over the London bombers is another hoax, or at least overblown.
Arrests were made at night, catching the culprits at home. Houses have been raided, and are being searched. So far as we know at this point, no bombs have been found. No chemicals. No equipment. No labs. No testing ground. Now, in order to get on an airplane, even the most devout suicide terrorist needs a ticket, and these generally must be purchased with money. Apparently, not one ticket had been purchased by the detainees. Further, to get on an international flight from Britain to the United States, in these days of the modern nation-state, you need something else. It's a document called a passport. Apparently, some of the detainees don't have them.
The liquids that the supposed bombers were going to mix to make a bomb are acetone and hydrogen peroxide. Here are the instructions on making the explosive. You tell me how likely terrorists are to follow this procedure unobserved in the cabin of a plane.
To a 500-mL beaker add 50 mL of acetone, then stir in 30 mL of 30% hydrogen peroxide. Place the beaker in a salt-ice bath and cool it to 5 C. After cooling, slowly add 3 mL of 75% sulfuric acid drop by drop with an eye dropper. Stir the mixture continuously while adding the acid, keep the temperature between 5 C to 10 C, stop adding acid if the temperature gets to high. It is very important that you moderate the reaction, high temperatures will lower your yield and cause the formation of the less useful dicyclo isomer. After adding all the acid, continue stirring for 5 minutes. Keep the mixture in the bath for 1 to 3 hours, or even up to 24 hours.
It looks like airline passengers everywhere are going to be inconvenienced indefinitely as a result of an overblown "threat" that was splashed across the media to give a short term boost to President Bush's political fortunes.
