While not taking our enemy seriously is a good way to lose the Long War, taking everything our own government says at face value is unwise as well. The Register, that hardy band of skeptics in England, points out that the noise about binary explosives may be bunkum.
We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable assumption, and she told us that merely dumping the precursors together would create “a violent reaction,” but not a detonation.
To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 neatly illustrates), it’s necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.
Read the whole thing to learn how silly the idea of mixing TATP in the lavatory really is.
Now it’s a big leap from debunking TATP to claiming that binary liquid explosives are “out of the question”. But as someone who seriously doubts that air travel under the boot of the TSA is any safer than September 10th, I suspect the Register guys are right.
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