Terrorists plan to smuggle aircraft bombs inside their bodies

[Lace Neil Singer]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ties-warn.html

Will it never end? I think I said when I heard about airport scanners that terrorists would be working on a loophole to bypass the scanners, but I never thought that anyone would go to these lengths.

[Rapscallion]

Been tried before, from what I understand. A suicide bomber was a known wanted person and arranged to give himself up if he could surrender to a certain high-ranking official. He was granted this and upon meeting he pulled a string attached to an explosive (grenade?) up his jacksy.

The human body is pretty good at absorbing explosions and only the terrorist was injured from what I understand, fatally in his case. Was messy, but that's all.

Rapscallion

[Imprl59]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ties-warn.html

Will it never end? I think I said when I heard about airport scanners that terrorists would be working on a loophole to bypass the scanners, but I never thought that anyone would go to these lengths.

Never thought they would go to these lengths? They are suicide bombers[. They are willing to go to the ultimate lengths. It doesn't get any more serious than dead, what they have to do to end up dead is just minor details.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Most people wouldn't have major surgery as a means to an end, so this isn't just your run of the mill suicide bomber.

[Imprl59]

They wouldn't? Approx 170,000 people had bariatric surgery in 2005. Approx 1.5 million women have had breast augmentation surgery. 1.5 million people had surgical cosmetic suregery in 209. So you're going to tell me that I can find a few million people who will have major surgery just to look better but the guy who wants to blow up himself and a plane full of people is going to say "No, that's too much trouble". If you find someone who is willing to die for their cause a little surgery isnt going to slow them down.

[Greenday]

Yes, they do this. This isn't too new.

I can't really say much else on this topic.

[Nyoibo]

Hey, it's been around enough that they used it in The Dark Knight.

[Greenday]

Hey, it's been around enough that they used it in The Dark Knight.

Not everyone believes stuff in fictional movies to be possible.

[insertNameHere]

Not everyone believes stuff in fictional movies to be possible.

haha, most of these Ideas come from somewhere, or even if they were made up become an reality with time. Look at the old bond films some of the tech he had was "fictional" now, it is a reality.

It scares me to think the length people will go through to get a plan off the ground, look at any fortune 500 company, it was mostly ONE guy with a dream and some determination to get stuff going. I have no reason to think the same determination can spawn a bunch of effective psychos who come up with successful terrorist plots.

[mikoyan29]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ties-warn.html

Will it never end? I think I said when I heard about airport scanners that terrorists would be working on a loophole to bypass the scanners, but I never thought that anyone would go to these lengths.

Drug dealers have been going to these lengths for years. I don't know how many times I've read about drug mules that have swallowed bags of cocaine. WE are talking about determined fantatics here.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Swallowing bags of drugs or inserting them in body orifices is a bit different to having bomb breast implants. It takes a different level of fanaticim. There are people who might be dedicated to the cause who wouldn't want to go thru surgery for it.

[Andara Bledin]

As mentioned earlier, if you're willing to die for your cause, what's a little elective surgery?

^-.-^

[crazylegs]

For there to be sufficient explosives to have any effect other than what appears to be a chest burster you would have to impant a lot of explosives - you then have the issue of how to activate it. There are more problems to this so I don't believe this to be a viable threat IMO.

Problem #1

Quantity required.

The human body is rather efficient - it doesn't have random space that isn't filled with anything if it can get away with it. Other than the gut there isn't really a place where you can stash explosives without undergoing massive reconstuction surgery.

Problem #2

Explosives required

Do you know how hard military grade explosives are to get hold of? Damn near impossible. That's why terrorists use hydrogen peroxide & nitrogen based bombs. Unfortunately both of these are a) highly toxic and b) succeptible to being activated by a sudden jolt which doesn't make for good news for delivering the weapon correctly.

Problem #3

Initiating the device

Hydrogen peroxide based explosives require a currant to be passed across is to initiate the device. That means you have two choices to do this - with a GSM sim card (as per Madrid train bombs) or by a person flicking the switch (as per July 7 London). I don't know how reliable a signal you would get inside a human body so it would have to be hard wired in. You either feed the wire out of a naturally occuring orifice and risk exposure or you feed them out through the skin and risk infection - neither is satisfactory.


I could go on but those are some fairly large stumbling blocks - plus the UK has just downgraded its threat assesment so if this were imminent I can't see that happening!

[Andara Bledin]

#1) This is actually one of the most difficult, but with a scary doctor on your team, it wouldn't take long to be making some scary implants. Thankfully, the expertise required to do it well helps restrict how wide-spread it can be, but that doesn't change the fact that you only really need one success story to kill hundreds of targets.

#2) That depends on your terrorist. Considering that these people are willing to die for their cause, I don't think they'll be too incredibly upset over not actually taking out their objective. Even failed bombers leave a high degree of terror in their wake.

#3) This is actually the easiest to surmount. You just have a physical switch that was entirely inside the body that would require a bit of manipulation to trigger. I can think of quite a number of places this would work just fine.

^-.-^

[Greenday]

Explosives required

Do you know how hard military grade explosives are to get hold of? Damn near impossible. That's why terrorists use hydrogen peroxide & nitrogen based bombs. Unfortunately both of these are a) highly toxic and b) succeptible to being activated by a sudden jolt which doesn't make for good news for delivering the weapon correctly.

Peroxide-based explosives? Yes. Little harder to get a hold of but you are right they they are extremely sensitive. Just a little energy and BOOM. Tough to handle safely.
Fertilizer-based explosives? No. They aren't highly toxic, they aren't too sensitive, and the materials for these really aren't as hard to get as you might like to believe.