On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Simon Lane wrote:

Neil Sluman wrote:
[...]
There's a certain logic to the bombs being badly made. I can't imagine
it's easy to test bombs.

I'm hearing (PM, R4) that these devices were of a similar construction
to the 7/7 ones. They all worked that time, none this time; maybe they
had someone else provide detonators this time?

The detonators worked, though.

A theory i heard is that they were real bombs, made using the same batch
of explosive as the 7/7 ones, but that in the intervening two weeks, this
had basically gone off, and was no longer active. I'm slightly dubious
about this; i believe the explosive in question is acetone peroxide, and
i'm not aware of a 'going off' pathway for that which operates that
quickly - there are mentions of it degrading in long-term storage, but two
weeks is not what i think of as long term. IANAchemist, though.

My own personal theory is that there's a strict alternation between proper
terrorists and what we might call 'joke terrorists' or perhaps
'irritationists' - the September 11th terrorists, clearly very seriously
proper terrorists, were followed by the shoe bomber, a man who PUT BOMBS
IN HIS SHOES for ****'s sake. Our own 7/7 tube bombers, again proper
terrorists, although by no means as successful as the September 11th mob,
are followed by the clowns we had today. We should expect another proper
bombing before too long, but after that, we can relax until the next round
of no-hopers do their thing.

tom

--
Batman always wins

On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 01:07:00 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Simon Lane wrote:

Neil Sluman wrote:
[...]
There's a certain logic to the bombs being badly made. I can't imagine
it's easy to test bombs.

I'm hearing (PM, R4) that these devices were of a similar construction
to the 7/7 ones. They all worked that time, none this time; maybe they
had someone else provide detonators this time?

The detonators worked, though.

A theory i heard is that they were real bombs, made using the same batch
of explosive as the 7/7 ones, but that in the intervening two weeks, this
had basically gone off, and was no longer active. I'm slightly dubious
about this; i believe the explosive in question is acetone peroxide, and
i'm not aware of a 'going off' pathway for that which operates that
quickly - there are mentions of it degrading in long-term storage, but two
weeks is not what i think of as long term. IANAchemist, though.

If it was a fresh batch made up by amateurs then there could be plenty
of scope for the use of wrong ingredients (especially if domestic
preparations rather than "proper" chemicals were used, thus allowing
for e.g. the wrong type of drain cleaner not containing sulphuric
acid) resulting on this occasion in a benign mixture being produced.
snip