I just about died when I read this one (terra)

[jmowreader]

Today's paper was all covered up with news of this Huge Plot To Blow Up Airliners, as one might expect.

It got hysterical when they started discussing binary explosives. Said the paper, the terrorists could mix ANFO, the blend of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil that was used to destroy the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, on a plane.

Give me a Fucking Break, okay?

ANFO is a mining explosive. You make it in a trough by saturating explosives-grade ammonium nitrate (the crystals are graded for size) with number-two diesel. And generally, you use a wooden stirrer that looks like a hoe to stir it up. Then you drill a big hole in the thing you want to blow up, put a stick of fuzed dynamite in the bottom of the hole, and pack as much ANFO as you can tamp in there into the hole. Finally, you get back 100 yards and set off the dynamite, which sets off the ANFO. It's not exactly a secret how to make this explosive, but it's not for small-scale use.

(Timothy McVeigh's ANFO was formulated with nitromethane for added kick. This is why it's so damn hard to buy nitromethane anymore.)

So let me see...you really expect me to believe that the terrorists can get all of these things onto the airplane:

a bag of ammonium nitrate prills
a can of diesel
maybe some nitromethane, if you want a nice potent ANFO bomb like Timothy McVeigh had
a stick of dynamite and a detonator for it
a trough
a stirring device
a tamper
something to tamp it into, like a concrete form tube

Then you expect me to believe you could open the bag of ammonium nitrate, open the diesel, dump AN into trough and diesel on AN, stir the product together, build a bomb and set it off without all the rest of the passengers beating you half to death, then throwing you out the back of the plane?

You couldn't bring any of that shit onto the plane BEFORE George Bush invented terrorism, so what makes supposedly rational journalists believe you could do it now?

[AnneD]

1. Say,

how did you find out what was at the bottom of my purse! I don't have a concrete tube, but the Tampax Pearl containers work well. I'd like to see them ban tampons from all flights.:rofl:

Oh the horror. If they think they have trouble dealing with terrorist...try dealing with me with PMS.

[Der Blaue Engel]

18. Banning tampons, sadly, not far-fetched

I was just reading the list someone posted of things allowed in the plastic baggie you can take on a plane in the UK...it said "feminine sanitary products of sufficient amount for duration of flight." Can you fucking believe that? I'm just beside myself. Next time I fly, I have to worry about the argument I'll have to have with some security person about my fucking FLOW????

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. I thought it was supposed to be a pernicious mixture of

shampoo and lip gloss.

[jmowreader]

11. Actually, it's blue eyeshadow and red lipstick

They say a woman becomes "a bombshell" when she applies these two products.

Bombshell is apparently another word for "cheap ho."

As opposed to the wooden ho you're supposed to use while standing in the middle of the aisle stirring up a bomb...

[eridani]

19. EEK! Call the fashion police!

This must not be allowed to stand.

[thepurpose]

3. Wouldn't drilling the big hole in the plane tip someone off?

[jmowreader]

13. Not if carrying 50-pound bags of ammonium nitrate aboard didn't

Okay, let's get this straight. You're supposed to get past the ticketing agent, security, the 600 rent-a-cops walking the concourses, the gate agent, the flight attendant at the cabin door, the flight attendant standing in the forward galley, the flight attendant in the middle of the plane, and the other 300 passengers on the airliner with a 50-pound bag of ammonium nitrate, which may be the foulest-smelling product on the market, slung over your shoulder? This shit stinks through the walls of a triple-layer polyethylene bag. It smells like someone mopped the floor with undiluted Parson's Ammonia.

I mean, come on. You got five guys with fertilizer slung over their shoulders and two with jerry cans of DF2 in their hands, and NO ONE at the security checkpoint is going to notice?

And when you do create your ANFO, assuming your two buddies with the five-gallon cans of diesel and the other four guys carrying fertilizer and the guy with the dynamite and the hoe made the plane, you've got to remember that this isn't a powerful explosive. You need a LOT of densely-packed ANFO to do any damage, which is why it's only suitable for use by miners--miners have all the room in the world to set charges and very dense soil to tamp the charge in. No one else uses it. No one else CAN use it.

I think any terrorist worth his salt who had managed to bring all the things needed to blow up a plane with ANFO aboard that plane would just get a window seat over the wing and set off the dynamite there. It'd be a lot more reliable.

[Hekate]

21. Maybe the "ho" distracts the agents. Ya think? oh, not that kind...nt

[BobRossi]

4. Easy..

Pack ammonium nitrate up ones ass, carry diesel fuel in a "Jolt" can. Hide blasting cap up nose.
Once on the plane, drink "Jolt", connect blasting cap to iPod and KABOOM!

[jmowreader]

20. Not even Limbaugh's ass is that big

[mikelewis]

5. Oh please!!! Of course they could, it's so easy...

Have you ever heard of a false leg? Don't you think these guys could have just hacked off one of their legs and then jammed the bombs into thier prostetic? Or, they could have carried it in giant Gatorade bottles (you know, the 200 gallon jug of Gatorade). Or.. or they could have used really big colostomy bags.

My point is, there's millions of ways that Muslims could have carried the parts for the bombs on the planes, millions. It's because your not a Muslim that you don't know of their innate ability to defy the laws of physics.

[China_cat]

6. Oh come on

We all know that the really dangerous stuff is breast milk...in the original containers.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Glad to kick this to the Greatest page

with the fifth recommendation.

[question everything]

8. I don't think that the idea was to blow the whole aircraft

but you can carry small sizes of that stuff and just blow a whole in the ceiling, for example, or next to electrical wire. Or blow off the pressurized atmosphere.

But I am sure that we will read a lot more about this

[K8-EEE]

9. Hell Why Not Just Put Plasic Bombs In The Checked Bags

They don't even CHECK most of the cargo! If they really want to blow up planes this seems like the how-many-terr'rists to screw in a lightbulb way, LOL...

[Turn CO Blue]

12. All checked bags are screened.

All checked bags are screened by CTX machines. All carryon bags and passengers are X-Rayed or magnetometered. The TSA screens ALL checked bags these days either before or after the bags get dropped "through the wall" and go into the bag makeup area using CTX, X-Ray and several bomb-detection devices. The mail is screened, too. Even the employees arriving to work for the carriers and the restaurants/shops at airports walk through the magnetometer and have their backpacks X-rayed. Delivery trucks are hand-inspected.

And everyone, everyone, EVERY ONE has to pass a ten-year FBI background check to work for an airline.

And, ONLY "known shippers" (such as distribution/freight companies) can ship cargo on air carriers, and they all have to go through an application process for the privilege and the security protocols are just as heavily regulated as the air carriers.

The cargo that you are always hearing about that is not "screened" is the cargo arriving at ports on large ships.

Flying really is the safest way to travel.

[jpak]

14. The TSA explosive detectors would pick up ANFO right away

no way anyone would get through with that stuff.

That's why "they" went for the alleged acetone/peroxide cocktail...

[Turn CO Blue]

15. Absolutely, and the major airports have bomb dogs --

and those noses are not easily fooled!

[evox]

10. Excellent observation n/t

[mom cat]

16. Hey! Can I bring my nitro glycerine pills on the plane?

[jmowreader]

22. Nope. You're gonna have to switch to poppers.

Poppers (amyl nitrite) used to be a heart medication before people found out you can get high off them.

But yeah, this is a real good question: what will the TSA people do when they see someone walk up with a bottle that's labeled "nitroglycerin"? I envision this big geriatric holding cell with a hundred 85-year-old people in it, all there because of their heart medicine.

"But sarge! The bottles say nitroglycerin and that's an explosive that can destroy a plane, so we had to arrest all these terrorists!"

[mom cat]

24. The Grey Panthers will rise again!

[leftchick]

17. Mc Vey was a 'Christianic Fascist'

just so you know. But you won't hear that on your tv.

[Hekate]

23. Just send it through the cargo bay--cargo's STILL not being inspected

Christ on a trailer hitch. I wonder why we all don't feel safer today?

Hekate

[annabanana]

25. yuppers..

Easiest thing in the world. US Mail.

[Little Star]

26. I love your, 'George Bush invented terrorism'.

Good one! In a way it is actually very true. :thumbsup: