Why You Can't Take Shampoo On the Airplane

I've seen brief references to the difficulty of creating the kind of explosion the Brit plotters were supposedly planning, that led instantly to our first Red Alert and the banning of shampoo and other liquids and gels from commercial airplanes. And certainly common sense suggests that if it was that easy, it would have been done long ago. But after all this time, I finally stumbled across a credible description of just how difficult it would be--in fact, impossible in any practical sense.

Here's how the plot was reputedly supposed to work: According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives -- either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) -- were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.

But a former British intelligence officer and military munitions expert with the spy novel name of Lt. Colonel Nigel Wylde is quoted as describing what the process would really entail: The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. "The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde. ...All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths." And of course most domestic flights in the US would be long over.

Even if the explosive was somehow pre-mixed, Wylde said, it still requires a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. "It is very dangerous and risky to the individual," Wylde said. "As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft."

In other words, if this story is correct, the whole thing is exactly the farce it appears to be: even more ridiculous than the shoe bomb. Nevertheless, there we all are, shoeless and beltless, watching our toiletries be tossed, boarding airplanes without so much as a drink of water, and not much hope of being offered one. The whole point seems to be to treat us like sheep so we'll act like sheep. Especially on election day.

And it's clearly working. First of all on journalists who didn't bother to question all this in the first place.