A primer on liquid explosives

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/08/2006 (7081 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A. The most common is nitroglycerin, a powerful explosive that is the key ingredient in dynamite. As little as a few ounces is sufficient to blow a hole in a window or the fuselage wall of an aircraft. Planes flying at high altitude use pressurized cabins for passenger comfort. A relatively small hole in such a cabin can cause a plane to essentially blow apart at high altitude due to the difference in pressure inside and outside the cabin.

Q. How much liquid explosive would be required to bring down an airliner?

A. Very little. The bottles used to hold contact lens solution, for example, would hold enough nitroglycerin to open a plane’s fuselage.

“You’re talking a few ounces,” said Mike Barrett, a counter-terrorism expert with the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a New York think tank. “All you have to do is blow a hole in it.”

Q. How hard is it for terrorists to acquire?

A. Nitroglycerin is dangerous to make but it isn’t hard to acquire the ingredients and it requires limited expertise and no special equipment to produce.

“It’s what’s called kitchen demolitions,” said Barrett. “The ingredients are not particularly exotic. They’re not hard to come by.”

Q. How is it detonated?

A. A very small spark produced by a low-voltage battery can trigger a nitroglycerin explosion. In 1994, operatives with the al-Qaida global terrorist network blew up a contact lens solution bottle filled with nitroglycerin tucked under the seat of a Japanese airliner bound from the Philippines to Tokyo’s Narita International Airport. The explosion killed a passenger and forced an emergency landing. An inexpensive Casio wristwatch was the timer and light bulb filament attached to a nine-volt battery was the detonator.

Q. Has the use of such explosives been threatened in other situations?

A. In January of 1995, police in the Philippines capital of Manila accidentally discovered an al-Qaida plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the Pacific Ocean using nitroglycerin micro bombs. The attack on the Japanese airliner was seen as a test run. The plot was uncovered only because a fire broke out in the Manila apartment kitchen where the chemicals were being made into nitroglycerin. If successful, the plot would have resulted in up to 4,000 deaths.

Q. How can such attacks be

prevented in the future?

A. It’s difficult. The small volumes of nitroglycerin required and the everyday items that can be used to explode it mean that passenger inspections must be rigorous and rules for what may be brought on board must exclude a broad array of items commonly found in travelers’ bags. “When people can take fairly benign things on an airplane, I don’t think there is a good answer for it,” said Barrett.

— Cox News Service