Like you I am reluctant to do too extensive a search on how to detonate the stuff, but a couple of blog entries by people who at least seem to know a thing or two about high explosives indicate that the kind of detonator required would be very difficult to smuggle onto an airplane, and that the things that have been tried are extremely unlikely to work.

DSM,

I know what you are trying to say, but it just doesn’t work. Terrorists only win when they cause people to be afraid. Failure to recognize real threats would not constitute a terrorist victory.

Are you sure about that? While applying a paper or match to it might not do it, I would think a very small hot chemical fire could detonate this stuff. I would think that you’d only have to detonate a very tiny amount for the rest to go up in chain reaction.

Lots of “I would thinks” above, because, of course, I don’t know and I’m reluctant to google such a thing. I doubt that you know what it takes to detonate it, though.

In terms of unknowingly speaking the truth, that’s up there with Croesus confidently repeating the Oracle’s prophecy “should he cross the river Halys a great empire will fall”. Spooky.

http://www.animatronics.org/strangers/strangers.htm

The thing is, terrorism is the tactic of instilling fear in a population. Whether or not the plane went down, they won, because the brain-dead residents of this country can’t tell real threats from bogeymen.

Nonetheless, I really wish that the morning newsw on my mail service played clips from his campaign speeches right after the clips from the night before. It is nauseating how irrelevant campaign promises are.

Except “Read my Lips” – that one was a killer. o_0

Slate seems to disagree with you.

http://www.slate.com/id/2240155/

And everything I’ve read says he simply bungled the job — that it could have gone off.

Nobody on the plane was in danger. Yes, the security people failed to be aware that the guy had a detonator, but “no harm, no foul.”

The question is not whether we are perfectly safe on airplanes. That will never happen. The question is whether changes in security procedures will produce incremental improvements in safety that warrant the extra pain-in-the-butt. I would claim that the point of diminishing returns was passed years ago.

And speaking of security, Jonah Goldberg has a good quote in his column today.

Shlomo Dror, an Israeli air security expert, had it right in 2002 when he said: “The United States does not have a security system; it has a system for bothering people.”

The whole discussion reminds me of a woman who wanted me to sign a petition to ban handguns after Reagan was shot.

I pointed out that five people were shot that day, and all of them lived through it. Yes, Brady was paralysed, but he was still alive. If Hinkley had been using a sawed-off shotgun with deer slugs, they might all have been dead.

I told her that if I was robbed while working in the store, I hoped that the robber was using the same pea-shooter that Hinkley used.

If somebody tries to blow up a plane I’m on with a modern plastic explosive, I hope they also try to light it on fire with a fuse.

Maybe they can try to release all of the quantum field energy in the plane while they’re at it.

Maybe they can summon air demons to crash the plane.

Somewhat tangentially (again), I’m surprised at the tenacity with which he has kept to the idea of trying terrorist suspects in U.S. Article III courts, rather than through military commissions, however (or courts-martial, if he prefers a more established military court structure). Trying KSM and the so-called underwear bomber in federal court seems to me a bad idea on several levels.

But please don’t tell those jihadists that you can’t set off their favorite explosive by lighting it on fire. It’s too much fun watching them embarrass themselves.

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