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With all the buzz about airport security and what's you're now allowed to take with you on the plane, I have wondered if we are any safer. I don't feel any safer at airports, do you? I think all these increased measures will stop only stupid people from bringing bad things on the plane. If someone was truly determined to get a bomb (via chemicals that'd be mixed together after going through security) on a plane, you could do it. I believe even I could do it.
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I think that since the point of terrorism is to cause terror, and we are now apparently so terrified that we think we're justified in forbidding eyedrops on airplanes, we are losing the "war on terror."
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I don't feel any different. Never like airports before and still don't. I still fly every now and then, and I don't feel unsafe.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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pH: I thought that the point of terrorism is usually to cause the people in power to be so terrified (or their support so terrified that they have to react on that terror) that they will capitulate to the demands of the terrorists, rather than just terror for terror's sake--a means, rather than an ends. If the point is in fact to cause terror, I'd agree with you, but I'm not so sure that it is.
Posts: 283 | Registered: Jul 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Gwen: pH: I thought that the point of terrorism is usually to cause the people in power to be so terrified (or their support so terrified that they have to react on that terror) that they will capitulate to the demands of the terrorists, rather than just terror for terror's sake--a means, rather than an ends. If the point is in fact to cause terror, I'd agree with you, but I'm not so sure that it is.
Ya know, I really don't have much of an idea about what the terrorists' demands are right now, beyond "Kill everyone that isn't us."
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I fly a lot. I didn't feel unsafe to start and I don't feel anymore unsafe now than I did before. I think the security 'upgrades' are there to deter any 1/2 witted people - someone who's got a thought-out plan is probably already being 'overly' cautious... I tend to try to make myself not worry about things that are out of my control. That's not to say I don't think about them, I just try not to let myself get worked up about 'em.
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quote:If someone was truly determined to get a bomb (via chemicals that'd be mixed together after going through security) on a plane, you could do it.
I sincerely doubt that anyone could make a bomb with chemicals that they mixed together after going through security. I've looked at the synthetic protocols for the chemicals that have been discussed, and it would be simply impossible to do this on a plane. It requires refrigeration, acidification, filtratration and drying steps. Using 70% hydrogen peroxide (which even I can't get for University laboratories), it takes at least 4 hours to perform the reaction. By that time, the plane would have made an emergency landing because of the acetone fumes. Using the commercially available 3% peroxide, it takes 12 to 24 hours to get sufficient yield for even a minor fire cracker type of explosion.
If you look at the details for any of the liquid explosives that are around, you begin to realize that this just a scare tactic and not a real threat.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:If someone was truly determined to get a bomb (via chemicals that'd be mixed together after going through security) on a plane, you could do it.
I sincerely doubt that anyone could make a bomb with chemicals that they mixed together after going through security. I've looked at the synthetic protocols for the chemicals that have been discussed, and it would be simply impossible to do this on a plane. It requires refrigeration, acidification, filtratration and drying steps. Using 70% hydrogen peroxide (which even I can't get for University laboratories), it takes at least 4 hours to perform the reaction. By that time, the plane would have made an emergency landing because of the acetone fumes. Using the commercially available 3% peroxide, it takes 12 to 24 hours to get sufficient yield for even a minor fire cracker type of explosion.
If you look at the details for any of the liquid explosives that are around, you begin to realize that this just a scare tactic and not a real threat.
What if you got a container for an element from the Alkaline group and brought along some bottled water?
Plastic containment that dissolves when it comes in contact with water, once the water hits the Alkaline, BOOM.
Or is there something wrong with this plan?
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I suspect the ban on "hair gel" was actually a ban on that tooth-bleaching gel... that stuff's almost 20% H2O2, if I remember arightly.
But preparing acetone peroxide on board a plane seems awfully labor intensive. If Richard Reid couldn't even set his shoe on fire, I imagine a few eyebrows would be raised at the little chemical experiment going on in your aisle.
Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:What if you got a container for an element from the Alkaline group and brought along some bottled water?
Plastic containment that dissolves when it comes in contact with water, once the water hits the Alkaline, BOOM.
Or is there something wrong with this plan?
1. link There are reasons that they have never been used as explosives. Lithium and Sodium don't produce a violent enough explosion that you could bring down the plane with it. Potasium might, but you would have to have quite a large amount of it. Rb and Cs don't actually create much of an explosion at all. There is a big misconception about alkali metal explosions.
2. The idea that even a small hole in the wall of the plane will cause a crash is total nonsense. Remember the Hawaii flight where half the fuselage ripped on the plane and it still landed. While a fire on board is a serious problem, it isn't going to bring the plane down. Your need a large explosion and you aren't going to get one with Alkali metals.
3. Alkali metals are not commonly available.
4. Alkali metals can hardly be considered liquid explosives. You would not need to carry bottled water to get this to work. They serve you water on the plane. They have water in the bathrooms on the plane. They can't actually transport people on planes that don't have water because the lower air pressures would cause serious dehydration. As a result this shouldn't be a "liquid explosive". Alkalai metals are solids.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Palliard: I suspect the ban on "hair gel" was actually a ban on that tooth-bleaching gel... that stuff's almost 20% H2O2, if I remember arightly.
While the ban might have intended to prevent bleaching gels or other more reactive gels, the ban was indeed on all gels of any kind. I flew back to the states from Germany saturday. Among the things they wouldn't allow on board were underarm deoderant, tooth paste, Nutella and magic markers. They confiscated about a dozen highlighter pens from the passengers who were directly behind me in line.
They were very curious about the tiny vials of fluorescent dyes I was carrying in my pack. I hadn't even thought about them or I would have put them in my checked luggage. Fortunately the dyes were powders and there was only a few milligrams of each so they let me keep them. They are gastly expensive and it would have been quite a shame to loose them.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:But preparing acetone peroxide on board a plane seems awfully labor intensive. If Richard Reid couldn't even set his shoe on fire, I imagine a few eyebrows would be raised at the little chemical experiment going on in your aisle.
Some years ago (long before 2001), a woman sitting near me on a flight opened a bottle of finger nail polish remover and started to clean her nails. It took about 60 seconds before the smell of acetone spread through most of the plane and the flight attends confiscated it from her for the rest of the flight. I find it impossible to imagine that someone could make acetone peroxide on a plane (a multiple hour procedure) without being detected and stopped long before any dangerous explosives were produced.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Contact solution (in containers holding 4 oz. or less) is now permitted. So are eye drops and other similar items (all with the same size limitation).
However, my deck of Chrononauts cards set off the sensors and got my bag searched. (More accurately, the plastic sleeve holding half the cards.)
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:What if you got a container for an element from the Alkaline group and brought along some bottled water?
Plastic containment that dissolves when it comes in contact with water, once the water hits the Alkaline, BOOM.
Or is there something wrong with this plan?
1. link There are reasons that they have never been used as explosives. Lithium and Sodium don't produce a violent enough explosion that you could bring down the plane with it. Potasium might, but you would have to have quite a large amount of it. Rb and Cs don't actually create much of an explosion at all. There is a big misconception about alkali metal explosions.
2. The idea that even a small hole in the wall of the plane will cause a crash is total nonsense. Remember the Hawaii flight where half the fuselage ripped on the plane and it still landed. While a fire on board is a serious problem, it isn't going to bring the plane down. Your need a large explosion and you aren't going to get one with Alkali metals.
3. Alkali metals are not commonly available.
4. Alkali metals can hardly be considered liquid explosives. You would not need to carry bottled water to get this to work. They serve you water on the plane. They have water in the bathrooms on the plane. They can't actually transport people on planes that don't have water because the lower air pressures would cause serious dehydration. As a result this shouldn't be a "liquid explosive". Alkalai metals are solids.
OOOOOO RABBIT! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55kgyApYrY Thought you might enjoy watching Rubidium and beyond being placed with water. Seems viable as a means to take out a plane, though I agree it should be classified as a solid not a liquid explosive.
Imagine the terrorist with several grams of some of that stuff and a bottle of water. You toss the water disolvent pill into a water bottle and then run to the front of the plane where the door to the cockpit is.
I dunno, you tell me.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Sorry for double posting but I love Brainiac. I hated the crane game as a child and even more so as an adult. So heres the science behind the blasted things, and how to win! Enjoy
quote:Originally posted by Gwen: pH: I thought that the point of terrorism is usually to cause the people in power to be so terrified (or their support so terrified that they have to react on that terror) that they will capitulate to the demands of the terrorists, rather than just terror for terror's sake--a means, rather than an ends. If the point is in fact to cause terror, I'd agree with you, but I'm not so sure that it is.
Ya know, I really don't have much of an idea about what the terrorists' demands are right now, beyond "Kill everyone that isn't us."
I think it's too simplistic to say they want to kill everyone who isn't them. They're specifically targeting those who are in the way of them achieving hegemony over a certain people. They don't want the entire world eradicated except their chosen few, they want a chosen few eradicated so they can rule over the entire world with their system of government.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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There's a really great article in this month's Atlantic that basicly says that Osama wants us to over react. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Lol. He wants us to hate our government because of all the useless security procedures so much that we'd overthrow them and look to terrorist organizations for help running the country.
Posts: 879 | Registered: Apr 2005
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With Osama's luck, we'd give the reins of power to the ASPCA and ELF. I don't think Osama wants environmental nutjobs and animal rights activists in charge any more than he wants Bush.
On the other hand, we'd hear the rhetoric change.
Instead of Osama being an evildoer, we'd get "Osama is a dog kicker!"
Instead of Iran being part of the Axis of Evil, we'd hear about how Iran is part of the "Axis of Pollution."
Osama wants us to bomb something, or support someone else bombing something. He wants us to piss some Arabs off. Reza Aslan said recently in an interview that while no one is really sure who won the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, we all know who lose: The US. Our attempt to defang Hezbollah, which itself was an attempt to defang Iran by proxy, failed miserably. Instead Hezbollah is on top, and is arguably the biggest kid on the block other than Israel now. And America can be smeared as the guy who wouldn't help solve the problem, but was perfectly willing to let everying else die for their own selfish purposes, while their bombs were dropped by their planes, it just happened to be their buddy at the wheel, not them.
I think there was a great chance for us to pick up some points, all the while ensuring some sort of safety for Isreal, at the very least they wouldn't have been in any worse a position than they are now. We blew whatever chance we had.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Why all the talk about rubidium and cessium or sodium reactions? What's stopping a terrorist from smuggling a nice hefty chunk of plastique in through security in a toothpase tube, or wrapped in a candy bar wrapper? How big a peice would be needed to take down an airplane?
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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12 - 16 ounces of Semtex, a form of plastic explosive can take down an airplane.
Terrorists used plastique to punch a hole in the USS Cole, and to bring down Pan Am Flight 103.
The problem I don't think, would necessarily be getting the Semtex on board...the problem would be the detonator. I'm not sure how it works. Can you just light these things with a match and watch it explode? Or do you NEED a more sophisticated detonator?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Can we take hydrogen peroxide on planes? Because my contact solution is peroxide. And yes, I really am going to remain pissed off. YOU CANNOT PLACATE ME, AIR TRAVEL SYSTEM. Not after you made me cry at the baggage check.
Which reminds me, I have to file a complaint with Southwest about that baggage check lady's behavior.
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YOU CANNOT PLACATE ME, AIR TRAVEL SYSTEM. Not after you made me cry at the baggage check.
