And even if you assume their highly-dubious and short-on-details plan for synthesizing HMTP in an airplane bathroom is possible, um, then you can determine whether or not a liquid can be allowed to come on board with a simple ‘sniff test’. Anybody with concentrated peroxide disguised in some other container gets arrested, pretty simple.

Can we keep bombs off aircraft? No. Liquid explosives in carry-on containers was at the top of the list of low-hanging fruit things to try and prevent, if you seriously want to prevent them. But you can’t entirely prevent them.

The list is rather long. A wide variety of things can be made to explode with enough energy to do fatal damage to an airliner. They can be disguised or carried on in a wide variety of manners. There are plenty of explosives with no nitrogen (the usual detection mechanism) and with density outside the usual range looked for with most X-ray equipment. There are places they can be put that nobody looks, and myriad ways to bypass security checkpoints that are extremely poorly guarded today.

I travel on airline flights. I do so because even though I know more ways to bring them down than I can conveniently count, I very much don’t want to, and the odds that someone else is going to try seem to be far far lower than the odds that someone will kill me in a fatal auto accident getting to or from the plane. The odds that if they do try something they’ll try something dumb rather than clever are high. A large portion of suicide bombers (airline and otherwise) are detectable by mere observation, which TSA is trying to learn from the Israelis. There’s other stuff which helps reduce their odds of success.

So the risk is low.

But not zero, and there’s no credible way to prevent the long tail of the risk function from being there. It’s going to eventually happen again, when by random luck eventually a competent enough bomber with competent enough operational skill gets something on board. It may be a decade or more down the line. But it will happen again.

Screen that, Boosh-kissing no Allah-liker guys!!

If you read the story carefully, you note that the HTP wasn’t mixed with Tang for the explosive, but with “other chemicals which the Daily Mail is not naming”. Go down to the bottom, sixth para from the bottom.

The dye and tang were to disguise the mixture.

The various discussions about making something in-flight with HTP are a red herring. There are chemicals available which when mixed with sufficient concentration peroxide form a cap-sensitive or more sensitive high energy brissant liquid high explosive. Pre-mixing and carrying it on in that form was the risk.

This is not new – people aware of the mixtures have been trying to get airline security experts and the screeners to look for these things for years before 9/11.

It’s clear you know what you are talking about.
In your opinion, is there any way on earth to keep explosives off aircraft?

Fortunately, the only way to really get it if you aren’t a corporation or a government is to take low concentration peroxide and distill it. This is extraordinarily dangerous and more likely to kill the distillers than anything else.

But even 10% pure peroxide gives off enough oxygen from decomposition that it can spontaneously detonate at temperatures above 70 degrees. The vapors can form contact explosives when reacting with hydrocarbons such as grease. Spilled on clothing, it will evaporate water until the concentration reaches sufficient strength to burst into flames. Even medicinal concentrations can be dangerous. Swallow it and it will release enough gas to cause internal bleeding.

Tang is funny. Peroxide is dangerous stuff.

I’m bitterly disappointed that you didn’t title this post Tang Linked To Terrorism.

But srsly, Tang? That stuff is toxic by itself.

Air travel is getting surreal. My mate’s flight home yesterday was delayed by 3 hours because there was a really bad “fishy” smell on the plane. The pilot took a good whiff and rejected the plane, so they had to get another one.

I just imagine a suitcase with a big fish skeleton in it going unnoticed across the X-ray screen :)

(Ob. *Breaking Bad* content.)

The BBC is reporting 6/8 had recorded suicide/martyrdom videos —

In the UK it’s a crime to plan attacks like this even if you get caught before you go through with it – so the accused do have a case to answer and it’s right they’re on trial.

“On December 11, 1994, Yousef built another bomb, which had one tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of an aircraft. He left it inside the life jacket under his seat, 26K, and got off the plane when it arrived in Cebu. …. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft. The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Minami Daito Island, near Okinawa, Japan. A Japanese businessman named Haruki Ikegami was killed after the bomb detonated.”

Form this Wikipedia entry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot

A couple months ago flying through Frankfort. I took the 0.2 liter bottle of water, unopened, because I wanted to drink it later. In the airport, they took it away from me as a hazard. Go figure.

I’m calling on all travelers to call the authorities regarding the bins of potential bombs that TSA personnel are stockpiling in airports, right next to where they force hundreds of people to congregate.

The Times:
General Overview
Airline bomb plotters made martyrdom videos, court hears
Airline terror suspects ‘converted empty flat into bomb factory’

The Guardian
Details of the plot
Details of the bombs

The Independent
Overview

…

I mean, it’s really not that hard. Why not try bookmarking timesonline.co.uk or guardian.co.uk? Your own life will be significantly better for it, and by helping to reduce The Mail‘s source of oxygen, you’ll be helping to improve the quality of life for everyone else as well.