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Through the magic of Wikipedia we learn that PETN is an ingredient in Semtex. And now my powers are at their limit. But maybe you know something about PETN. How easy is it to get this shit? Wikipedia sez:
It is primarily used in booster and bursting charges of small caliber ammunition, in upper charges of detonators in some land mines and shells, and as the explosive core of detonation cord.[2] Apart from this, PETN is used as a vasodilator, similar to nitroglycerin. A medicine for heart disease, Lentonitrat, is nearly pure PETN.[3]
That makes it sound like PETN is fairly easy to doctor up if you have access to, say, small caliber ammunition, which is ubiquitous. But I really have no idea. Anyone out there know anything about PETN? I’ve emailed an individual who I suspect would know, but this seems like a good time to crowdsource.
I’m not totally sure that the answer would have so much impact on the hypothesis that the guy acted with help from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but maybe it might tell us something about AQAP’s capabilities if the connection turns out to be real.
(OK so about the video. It’s the only video I can find that features the 90s UK hardcore band Voorhees playing “Nail Bomb,” a song about a homemade bomb. It’s the first song here. Saw Voorhees in either 1997 or 1998 at CBs and they shredded.)
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So, I’m wondering about pharmaseutical grade PETN? It might be an easier way to get in in quanitity b/c if you’re not going through arms dealers….?
Not only that. But if smuggled onto a plane as medication…..?
i am wondering though, what would be the schrapnel? It seems to me that the mistake both Richard Reid and this guy made was trying to detonate while the stuff was attached to their bodies.
The bodies being mostly soft tissue would a) absorb some of the impact
b) just spray alote of blood and guts around.
Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t you supposed to put the putty explosoves next to something hard/brittle like metal or concrete?
Then it either cuts through the hard surface (like the external plated of the USS Cole) or it at least creates a schrapnel field from the destruction of the the hard surface.
Blowing up something soft and gelatinous, like a human being, just makes a gooey mess.
In a pressurized space like an airplane I don’t think the shrapnel is really all that necessary as the concussive effects of the explosion would probably do more damaged than in an outdoor environment like the Cole. Lets also not forget that the goal when detonating something on an aircraft isn’t really about shrapnel or blast radius its about trying to punch a whole in the plane.
I found this interview with Voorhees :
http://youbreedlikerats.blogspot.com/2008/06/voorhees-interview-uploads-from-tilt-8.html
I’d forgotten how stupid that crowd is.
You make my point though. If the goal is to punch a hole in the skin of the plane, should the idiot have put the explosives up aginst the wall of the plane?
Instead he is in a middle seat and has the explosives between his legs, the method most likely to absorb as much of the blast as posssible and prevent the hole in the plane.
Instead he is in a middle seat and has the explosives between his legs, the method most likely to absorb as much of the blast as possible …
Darwins’ Theory of Evolution works in some pretty strange ways.