Insidious German Terror Plot Foiled By: Mark W Adams

Nice police work in Germany, stopping what looks like a terrorist plan to hit American interests there.

The diabolical nature of the elements of the plan are what concern me most.

German federal prosecutor Monika Harms said the three suspects - two of whom were German converts to Islam - had trained at terror camps in Pakistan and procured some 700 kilograms of hydrogen peroxide for making explosives.

Umm ... yeah. Can you imagine? 1500 pounds of hair bleach!!

That's enough hair product to touch up the dark roots of an entire city! A veritable invasion of Paris Hilton's!! A bleached blond bimbo bomb!!!
Okay, just shut the hell up about how you can concentrate the same stuff I pour on scrapes and cuts and make it into a deadly explosive. I get that. I'm trying to make a joke here and I'd appreciate if you'd just play along. Thank you.

In that spirit, just how absurd, how completely dumb you'd have to be to even try to make such a device when there are perfectly good alternatives available, like cow shit, or my favorite -- the dreaded Mentos Bomb!

Let's take a look at what's involved in making this new terrorist weapon of choice courtesy of BradBlog's analysis of the London Liquid Bomber Plot that still keeps us from bringing Gatorade on board airplanes.

Why hydrogen peroxide? It's a key ingredient (the "P") in TATP, which is short for "Tri-Acetone Tri-Peroxide", also known as "Acetone Peroxide". It's the explosive the accused would-be bombers were allegedly trying to mix and detonate aboard airlplanes.

According to Global Security dot Org:

A new terrorist explosive, triacetone triperoxide (TATP), has recently appeared as a weapon in the Middle East. TATP has been used by suicide bombers in Israel, and was chosen as a detonator in 2001 by the thwarted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. It can be as or more powerful than military analogs. TATP is one of the most sensitive explosives known, being extremely sensitive to impact, temperature change and friction.
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TATP can be easily prepared in a basement lab using commercially available starting materials obtained from, e.g., hardware stores, pharmacies, and stores selling cosmetics. TATP is a fairly easy explosive to make, as far as explosives manufacturing goes. All it takes is acetone, hydrogen peroxide (3% medicinal peroxide is not concentrated enough), and a strong acid like hydrochloric or sulfuric acid. I don't recommended mixing up a batch for Independence Day celebrations because it's easy to blow yourself up when you make it.

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Thomas Greene in The Register asks: Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?

First, you've got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.

But let's assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got them on hand.

Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.

It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.
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Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

This is pretty involved, and pretty nasty. I'll stick to bottle rockets and sparklers for my fireworks festivities. Bottom line, this stuff needs to be made well in advance, then transported to the intended target -- and transported very carefully. Think Nitroglycerine on steriods -- do not shake!

Consider this anecdote from the same BradBlog piece.

In the occupied Palestinian territories, you can tell who the 'engineers' are: they are the ones covered in burn marks who might be missing fingers, or even a whole hand.

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as the Palestinian bomb-makers will attest - 40 Palestinians are thought to have been killed making or handling the explosive - it is highly unstable and sensitive to heat and friction. Not for nothing is it known as "Mother of Satan".

Wow. "Mother of Satan." I thought that was Kevin Federline's Mother In-Law? Certainly Brittany Spears has an ungodly supply of peroxide hidden in her guest bathroom cabinet. Hmmm.