Jihad Joe and the Baby Bottles of Doom

From Random Hipatia

Sometimes it is best to listen to all news reports on terror plots not only with deep skepticism, but also while getting in touch with one’s own inner anarchist. This indeed has helped me better recall and understand why this particular plot, and in fact any of the so called binary liquid bombs, while in theory sound terrifying, have never effectively been used to bring down a airliner, and very possibly never will. This is also why while television news anchors love to show explosive experts holding bottles of explosive material, they will never show the actual process that actually would be required to mix these compounds, all presumably occurring during a flight. Of course once I had heard of what explosive was being used, the credibility of this plot began to rapidly diminish. If one saw fully this process, a better educated and hence more skeptical public might well see why this latest plot claim of the fear war may well evaporate in the light of day.

While it is true that relatively small quantities TATP (triacetone triperoxide) can be detonated easily, some may say rather too easily, and while perhaps even a favorite of Jihad Joe, and that it may indeed be produced from chemicals that can be extracted from “common household” liquids, the story is not entirely complete there. Of course in my youth, sometime between experimenting with homemade thermite, and later homemade rocket propellant, I briefly investigated this area. TATP may even have been covered in one or both of my childhood classics, the Improvised Munitions Handbook, and/or the Anarchist’s cookbook.

Making Acetone Peroxide is itself relatively simple chemically, whether mixing hydrochloric acid with peroxide and acetone; hence, liquids that can be separately carried by Jihad Joe and Jihad Jane in baby bottles. You can get yourself down to two components (hence binary liquids) starting from Methyl Ethyl Ketone, commonly used in paints. The skills needed to extract and prepare these materials in usable concentrations from common items is not very great. But all of this one can find out in Wikipedia today.

What Wikipedia may not convey well is the reason why this won’t actually work. First, it is not a simple matter of taking your bottles, mixing them together quickly, giving them a good shake, and then having your military grade IED “RTD” (Ready to detonate). What Joe Jihad may accomplish doing this is the loss of a limb, but certainly this is not the path to Martyrdom as portrayed each night on the news.

If you very slowly mix the components together, you have a good chance of doing so safely, that is without premature detonation which will be useless. Slowly, in this case, means over a period of several hours to produce sufficient TATP to have a chance to bring down an airplane. That is of course, if you can solve the second problem, that being it is an exothermic reaction, which is particularly annoying since you must also maintain the mixture below room temperature as you do it. Then you must wait for it to dry. Patiently. Perhaps another hour. Do not try this at home.

With these considerations, rather than wily nilly banning liquids on board planes until the latest claim passes out of the news cycle, it would be more effective to banning ice coolers without special passes, and perhaps putting timers on the crapper. Given these limitations, it is rather apparent that such a plot would be very easy to spot by anyone as it is being executed, even if the material is premixed in the post-security checkpoint bathrooms, which to me seems the more viable place to mix these materials rather than on-board. The only way I can imagine it having any chance of being successful at all is only if both the general public (and flight crews) are kept deliberately in the dark about even the most basic facts surrounding binary liquid explosives.