Acetone Peroxide

[tongodeon]

I'm starting to understand why airport security are asking passengers to discard certain cosmetics and household items. Acetone Peroxide is easy to make and does not require any chemistry skills. It's made from nail polish remover, hydrogen peroxide disinfectant, and uses "any kind of acid" - including citric acid - as a catalyst. It's suspected

Comments

[erikred]

"and although Mentadent contains peroxide I'm dubious that a whole tube - or several tubes - could be used to synthesize enough Acetone Peroxide to blow up a plane."

True, and since they're already screening for explosive residue on carry-ons, it's unlikely that you could get away with packing a toothpaste tube with some Alias-esque water gel explosive anyway. Or perhaps I'm just giving people ideas.

[tongodeon]

They don't tell you exactly what they're scanning for, but I'm guessing that peroxide isn't one of those things. I wouldn't think they'd be looking for acetone either. Certainly not lemons. The idea is that the items look totally innocuous until you put them together.

[hwrnmnbsol]

The problem is, the next step from here is a fairly trivial one for the bad guys to take

[madbodger]

The whole "triggering mechanism" is ridiculous anyway. Most of these syntheses are quite unstable
with inpure reagents and at room temperature. In other words, they're effectively hypergolic. Just
mix up the stuff and boom. No trigger necessary.

[eejitalmuppet]

Indeed. The reason for the "triggers" is that most well-known recipes are designed to minimise the chances of the explosive going "boom" accidentally, so that the person doing the synthesis doesn't die in the act. If they are planning it as a suicide bombing, and bypassing the usual security checks by making up the explosives on the plane, there is no reason to make the more stable forms.

Besides, if they do get a relatively stable explosive, and need a source of electricity to trigger things, there is always the assortment of electrical devices devices wired into the seat . . .

[tongodeon]

Another purpose of the trigger is to make sure the explosive doesn't explode before it's fully synthesized. It would suck (for them) if 10% of their explosive scattered 90% of its precursors around the lavatory before they had the chance to mix.