Car Contained 10 Gallons Gasoline, 3 Propane Cylinders, Consumer-Grade Fireworks

[The Magistrate]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100502/ap_on_re_us/us_times_square_car_smoke

NEW YORK – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says a suspicious vehicle in Times Square "did indeed contain an explosive device."
Police found the device in the smoking Nissan Pathfinder on Saturday evening. They then cleared the streets of tourists and dismantled it.

The mayor spoke at a news conference early Sunday along with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

Kelly says the car contained three propane tanks, consumer-grade fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire and other components. He says a black metal box resembling a gun locker was also recovered.

Authorities say a Connecticut license plate on the vehicle did not match up. Police are looking for additional surveillance video.

[mindwalker_i]

1. Yeah, the explosive device is called an "engine"

Engines have been known to cause explosions since their inception, but law enforcement authorities have consistently turned a blind eye to the threat. Known to produce many explosions each second of operation, these devices have not only been allowed to coexist within many urban environments, their use has steadily expanded over time.

The manufacture and use of these "engines" has also required the use of many chemicals known to damage the environments in which they are used. In many malfunctions of these devices, known as "crashes," thesde chemicals are released into the local environment and have been known to cause substantial damage. There are not only direct effect of the chemicals used in the engines, but other, indirect, effects have been noted. Use of "engines" has been correlated to an increasing areas of ground that has become solid to the touch. These areas start out as small blotches in the local ecosystem and slowly grow enough to displace the local ecology completely. This new ground is surprisingly resistent to plants, trees, and other fauna that tries to persist in it's environment. Other, non-native species of flora and fauna seem to have an advantage in the new environments, however: notably hydrangeas, tulips, and gas pumps. Experts are at a loss to explain these developments in spite of decades of study and numerous sites.

[The Magistrate]

2. So You Know, Sir, Of Dihydrous Oxide, And Its Terrible Lethality?

Properly arranged, what is stated to be present could produce a decent pool of flame. More details are needed, certainly.

[RoyGBiv]

3. Banning Dihydrous Oxide should be our first priority ...

We must think of the children.

And the iron-y bits.

[mindwalker_i]

8. I first heard that as dihydrogen monoxide...

And yeah, that's the style I was trying to imitate :D

[adamuu]

9. Hydrogen Hydroxide is the weapons-grade version. n/t

[Old Vet]

5. Ten Gallons of Gas, Strapped to two Propane tanks.........

With a few small barrels of gun powder, Would have a hell of a kill zone from the shrapnel of the propane tanks. We got lucky, They need to find this asshole.

[The Magistrate]

6. What It Sounds Like, Sir, From the Accounts And Inventories So Far

Is that he had taken the centers out of a number of fire-crackers, model rocket motors, that sort of thing, and hoped to use this as an initiating charge.

It does not seem to me there would be a lot of metal flying, the propane tanks, cooked off by heat, would probably break into a couple of large chunks and not much else. What there would be a good deal of is fire, with burning gasoline spread to a fair distance.

[adamuu]

11. The latest mythbusters showed it acutally pretty tough to make a propane tank explode

You need to disable the safety relief valve, otherwise it just spews flame. Even then, it's not as big a boom as you might think.

[depakid]

4. Looks like this knucklehead needed one of those books for dummies

My guess is they've got him on surveillance video somewhere.

[Syrinx]

7. I think so too

There's got to be a lot of video from all the cameras around Times Square.

[underseasurveyor]

10. HAHAHA

LOL