(no subject)

[drewkitty]

As someone who knows something about terrorism, I've been a little puzzled about the hoopla about the two "car bombs" discovered in London. Now according to the information I've dug out, the "car bombs" were made of gasoline, propane and boxes of nails.



Gasoline is a volatile fuel. Propane isn't that bad either, but is transported in fairly safe containers and the current valves are good as well. It's noteworthy that when the Columbine shooters tried to rig propane bombs at their school, they didn't go off.

An explosion consists of an intense rate of combustion (meaning a lot of air and a lot of fuel; or if you prefer a lot of oxidizer and a lot of combustible), typically in an enclosed space that maximizes the effect.

I couldn't think of a way to make a car explode with any force using gasoline or propane, especially not with a mix of the two. Not enough air, and not enough oxidizer. Now you can set a car on fire, quite handily, and perhaps set a nearby person or two on fire, but you get a wet Hollywood looking FPWOOMPH! of a fireball and not much actual explosive power. Certainly not enough to move nails out of their cardboard boxes.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/02/terror_idiocy_outbreak/

I refer you to this article by a former UK bomb squad tech, who confirms what I've heard in every description of the devices.

They couldn't have worked as intended.

"There are ways to get a killer blast out of nothing more than fuel and air, but you need a lot more air than there is inside a car for a decent bang and you need to mix the two ingredients thoroughly and in the right proportions."

"We used to be constantly disappointed, on the bomb teams, at the consistently rubbish efforts of the ordinary bomber. Many people seem to think that any kind of fire or loud noise will become deadly if you add nails."

On the one hand, I'm pleased that terrorists have once again demonstrated themselves to be totally incompetent boobs.

On the other hand, I'd really rather that they not keep trying. They might just accidentally get it right, and that would suck.

Not least of which, because of the massive over-reaction that would take place. A car bomb that blows up 1200 people would suck, a lot, and be a human tragedy. It would not endanger Western civilization.

Only we could do that, by over-reacting to the fleabites of rabid fanatics.



And once again, the world news media hysterically over-reacts.

Comments

[andybeals.livejournal.com]

Now they know one more thing not to do.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the idiots in THIS plot are in custody and will not get to try again.

Terrorists have demonstrated time and time again an inability to learn from the mistakes of others. Sometimes they don't even learn from their own.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Not least of which, because of the massive over-reaction that would take place. A car bomb that blows up 1200 people would suck, a lot, and be a human tragedy. It would not endanger Western civilization.

The conversion of our civilization into one in which it became accepted that such attacks occurred, and one in which we bent our policy to appease those who launched them, in hopes of suffering less of them, would very much endanger us.

You're moving the goalposts.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

He's not saying that it should be accepted that a thousand-plus people can die at a go, or that we should try to appease the people causing such acts. Quite the contrary, they should be actively ignored, with no changes made for or against them.

Yes, 1000 people dying is grisly. That's less than the number of people that died from HIV in 2002 in Texas, California, Florida, or New York individually, with several more states close behind that figure.

Until they demonstrate being a larger threat to an individual's health than preexisting conditions and diseases, they should be treated as the fringe extremity they are, and funds allocated to more pressing issues and threats, is what I believe drewkitty is trying to say. And if they are thusly ignored, much like a child throwing a tantrum, it's possible (and I believe likely) that they will lose interest in trying at a certain point.

Re: You're moving the goalposts.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

He's not saying that it should be accepted that a thousand-plus people can die at a go, or that we should try to appease the people causing such acts. Quite the contrary, they should be actively ignored, with no changes made for or against them.

I would argue that we should try to identify the political changes wanted by the terorists, then act to promote the opposite political changes. In other words, a good response to Islamic terrorism would be to ramp up support for Israel, or for women's rights in the Mideast. Then we should publicly state that this is in response to the terrorist actions -- that all they have achieved is to get what they didn't want.

In their face, in other words.

Yes, 1000 people dying is grisly. That's less than the number of people that died from HIV in 2002 in Texas, California, Florida, or New York individually, with several more states close behind that figure.

The differences are that:

(1) these deaths are on top of any that resulted from other causes, and

(2) unlike a disease, terrorism is malevolent -- if left untouched, it will come up with deadlier forms of attack.

And if they are thusly ignored, much like a child throwing a tantrum, it's possible (and I believe likely) that they will lose interest in trying at a certain point.

And while we're "ignoring" them, what about justice? Don't the victims, or their families, have a right to expect that their government will act to strike against the perpetrators?

A democratic regime which fails to do so won't stay democratic very long.

Re: You're moving the goalposts.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

I didn't say ignore the actual acts. Just ignore them from a political perspective. Don't egg them on or encourage by actively going any directly-related direction based on their actions.

But sure as hell track down each individual act as far as the trails allow, prosecute and arrest as needed.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

>> one in which we bent our policy to appease those who launched them

Exactly! I see at last that we agree.

We have massively bent our foreign policy and our domestic policy, including the rights of citizens and our criminal justice system, to appease those who are unreasonably afraid of terrorists.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

You are twisting my words. I was speaking of bending our policies to appease the terrorists.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Your words: "The conversion of our civilization into one in which it became accepted that such attacks occurred, and one in which we bent our policy to appease those who launched them, in hopes of suffering less of them, would very much endanger us."

Let us examine this carefully.

"Conversion of our civilization . . ." Yes, we've done that. Pre 9/11, we had a much safer nation. Confidence in the Presidency, in our governmental institutions and in the strength of the relationships between them, and in the economy was high. We have converted our civilization, post 2001, and a lot of us are very unhappy with the conversion.

". . . into one in which it became accepted that such attacks occurred . . ." This we have also done. I hear constantly that we live in an "Age of Terror," that we are "At War With Terror" and that we must accept that terrorist attacks are likely to occur, as we must not only expend huge sums of money, but cripple important government agencies (such as FEMA!), tolerate significant intrusions on our liberties and the unbridled exercise of executive power, and last but certainly not least, passively tolerate without the right to jury review or to sue in court for justice, the misbegotten abortion of a government agency that calls itself the Transportation Security Administration.

" . . . and one in which we bent our policy to appease those who launched them . . . "

This is the pivotal point. Did we bend our policy? Certainly.

Did we bend our policy to "appease" the terrorists?

Let's get a dictionary. http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/appease

Main Entry: ap·pease
Pronunciation: &-'pEz
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): ap·peased; ap·peas·ing
Etymology: Middle English appesen, from Anglo-French apeser, apaiser, from a- (from Latin ad-) + pais peace -- more at PEACE
1 : to bring to a state of peace or quiet : CALM
2 : to cause to subside : ALLAY
3 : PACIFY, CONCILIATE; especially : to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usually at the sacrifice of principles

We have made considerable concessions to the terrorists. We have woven them into the fabric of our nation. We teach our children to be afraid of them. We broadcast their hateful babble as if it meant something important. We tremble in fear of pinpricks on a mighty giant. Tell anyone who survived the London Blitz to be afraid of the occasional car bomb. Tell anyone who stormed a bunker in the Pacific island in World War II to be afraid of a poison powder envelope.

We have sacrificed some of our most cherished principles. When President Bush said to the world, "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists," he did more damage to freedom of speech in this country than a thousand McCarthys could have done. The rule of law is absolute; yet the Bush administration boasts of breaking various laws, not out of vital necessity, but out of convenience. The Bush administration has grossly abused the relationship between executive, Congress and the courts (starting well BEFORE the American people voted the Democrats into control of Congress).

We should NEVER try to calm, pacify or appease terrorists, because as you point out, it is impossible. We should use all our weapons to eliminate the conditions that breed terrorism. Yet our greatest weapons, our cherished values and our amicable relationships with nations around the world, have been allowed to rust and rot while the implements of torture are sharpened.

". . . in hopes of suffering less of them . . ."

We have spent thousands of our lives and billions of dollars in a misbegotten, ill-conceived war in which America pre-emptively attacked a country. The justification for this war was said to be the safety of the USA from attack, although it is now known that the USA was never in danger.

". . . would very much endanger us."

I believe that the Republic is in peril due to the massive and unwise changes we have embraced in the name of "fighting terrorism." We are not only in more danger from terrorism than we were before, but we are in danger of the rule of law being overthrown by political expediency.

Thus went Rome!

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

I should point out that terror -- unreasoning, flat, react-on-instinct-alone terror -- is this administration's greatest weapon against the American people.

I can't fly without significant (at the least) and sometimes paralyzing (at the worst) terror of my own -- because the changes that have been made remind us of terror, and keep it in our faces. This is a subtle form of terrorism, yet it is still terrorism: "Using fear or threat to promote or institute political change".

In other words, George W Bush in his many speeches referencing 9/11, "patriotism", terror, terrorists, terrorist organizations, and so on, is a terrorist. He's relying on and instigating fear in order to induce a political change: in this case, that change is "allow the Executive Branch unbridled ability to act even in contravention of the law".

He's a terrorist under the very act that he signed into law. You know, the one that lets him put people in secret prisons without habeus corpus?

Sadly...

[zakueins.livejournal.com]

...the problem is the religion itself. The five (six?) bombers were all fairly well-off doctors, with known practices, in London and most of England. These were not "disenfranchised youths" of fame and myth-the only thing they had in common was that they were all Islamic, and were aiming for the 72 virgin white raisins for dying in Jihad.

When a well known Islamic forum in England has to tap-dance around anything that could look like condeming suicide bombing, you know you have a problem.

The sad, sad thing is that they were not only impotent, but incompetent. The day that somebody can actually pull it off, that will be a scary thing. Building new gallows on Tyburn Hill looks tempting again...

[taral.livejournal.com]

Gasoline is a volatile fuel.

Sorry, I'm confused. The rest of the paragraph seems to want a "not" in this one.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

In a way, TOO volatile. Not nearly enough air and enclosure to support a high enough rate of combustion for a propagating explosion. Think of the heat energy as self-consuming before it has the chance to go anywhere.

Now if you rigged up something much like a misted spray of gasoline with a multi-source igniter, and lucked into getting the proportions right, you'd have a fuel-air bomb. Even the military ones have a pretty high dud rate -- a homemade one is probably a bit more difficult than Dance Dance Immolation but not quite as tough as a nuke.

Terrorists aren't going to be making a car into an FAE anytime soon.

[taral.livejournal.com]

Fuel-air bombs are a pain. The ones I've heard of use an initial explosive core to disperse and then a separate incediary for ignition. Trying to do that with a car? Naaaah. :)

[taral.livejournal.com]

Okay, then "isn't that bad either" is what is confusing.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Propane is energetic but stable and has a narrow range of flammability in air. Thus fairly safe, unless you have a BLEVE or a lot of it, or handle it stupidly (because it's a gas and a liquid in the same tank, in most storage situations.)

[taral.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! :)

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

gasoline is volatile when it becomes a gas, but the liquid form will actually put out a match.

(I don't know how it would work if you were to bubble medical-grade oxygen through it, but I do know that for internal combustion motors gasoline explodes most cleanly and efficiently at the point of stoichometry -- which is about 14 times as much air as gasoline. Now, since air's about 70% nitrogen and only about 28% oxygen, you might be able to multiply that volume of air by about 3/10 to figure out the amount of oxygen necessary to cause the 'optimally' explosive mixture. At that point, though, you would still need it to be compressed [ideally to about 80-110 atmospheres] in order to give it the explosive power that is used to power internal combustion engines.)

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

I'm leaving your comment intact despite the relative risks, because it gives a hint of the nature of the problem.

Hint: the surrounding air can itself compress a powerful enough FAE.

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

I had actually expected you to remove it, since Taral would have gotten the reply regardless.

The issue is that there are MUCH more effective means to create an IED:carbomb. Gasoline is still so widely available simply because of its LACK of effectiveness as such.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Actually, gasoline and diesel and fertilizer (and similar precursors) are so essential to running a modern society that you simply can't do without them.

Much skull sweat has been spent on this problem, without much success.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

Your comment has been deleted. Please understand that this is NOT due to inaccuracy.