Why liquids were banned on airline flights

Nice bait, but can you set the hook?

The British are coming! The British are coming!

Obviously, we need to nuke all the muslims in the world . . .

Since when is "Liquid" a race?

Been a while since your last bout of Montezuma's Revenge, eh?

Liquids were banned on flights to certain countries simply because it was a good way to disguise a binary liquid bomb in theory. The problem with all of this in practice is that the binary liquid bomb they are afraid of isn't really a legitimate threat with that vector.

It's been hard to find out exactly what they were afraid of because many media outlets are practicing "voluntary censorship" of the household substances that can supposedly be mixed on a plane to take it down. But some mention hydrogen peroxide while omitting the others so it's clear they are afraid of a triacetone triperoxide bomb. That is a typical article where the journalists get it all wrong and get caught up in the fantastic imagination of this plot.

Thing is, that's daft. It just sounds cool but the challenges of pulling it off are bigger than just going for a conventional explosive and the destructive power is limited. It gets the security nerds all riled up because they imagine that terrorists can get past them with substances that are individually not detected as a threat and then mix it to cause damage. It freaks them out because the only clever thing, even in theory, about it all is how it gets past security and that it would be next to impossible for it to work in the way that the terrorists expect is lost on them.

So they are terrified that this hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid mix can get past them individually in common household items since each are common in products widely available. Hydrogen peroxide is used in hair dye, acetone in things like paint thinner, and sulfuric acid is used in drain cleaners like Draino and their fear is that each can get past undetected (and can be brought by separate passengers) and then mixed in flight to cause devastation.

The problem is that even under the best of conditions, they would be highly unlikely to cause damage beyond perhaps burning something or killing a person or two. And even to achieve this they have to do things that are fairly suspicious with temperature control, and precise measurements. They would also have to perform a lot of dangerous chemistry to get it to this point and the whole thing needs perfect conditions to do much damage at all and is the chemical instability itself and the airplane conditions make this a cinematic scenario to be worried about so specifically.

So maybe they should just look out for the guy in the plane with a substantial amount of liquid packed in an ice bucket checking its temperature while stirring in another liquid drop by drop. Because that guy might be able to kill one or two people if his binary bomb achieves perfection. Then again the team of people that brought it in icould probably strangle someone with a shoestring for the same effort and with about the same chances of success.

Being more focused on liquids and other attack vectors is a good thing, the liquid ban is a bit silly.

Your 'friends' are doing that already...slowly but surely.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3527410,00.html

You mean after we take out Mecca and Medina after the next atrocity on the scale of 9/11??

We won't have to (kill all the slammites in the world); just the one or two percent hardcore who want to go on being devil worshipers after that **** happens.

Same thing happened with the hardcore Hitler-Youth/SS types in Germany after WW-II.

It's not about race, it's about a huge government jobs program. Getting to take away people's refreshments is just a bonus.

Have you seen the test results that the TSA runs on its own screeners? Bomb components slip through on a regular basis, but bottled water is detected with near 100% efficiency.