Gothamist: Operation Kaboom or "Operation NYC: Crap Your Pants"

james Tee kirk

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:24:38 -0500

You mean that episode of star trek where the capt made himself a little artillery mortar? saltpeter, charcoal and something else.

will

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:14:07 -0500

also - is ammonium nitrate really that unstable when mixed with oil? or does it need a shock from something like blasting caps to explode properly? gunpowder is trivially easy to make at home, but it is so unstable that i'd imagine it'd kill more of the bad guys than the good. http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/html/images_weathermen.html

otherobject

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:29:34 -0500

I agree with Will, this is scaremongering at its worst. Most materials in conventional bombs are easily available because they are part of our daily life. The article mentioned ammonium nitrate as a fertilizer but neglected to mention that it is in all fertilizers. You can mix that with simple motor oil or gasoline and create an unstable bomb. What about Molotov cocktails or placing a gasoline soaked rag stuffed into a gas cap of a car? What about all the gunpowder out there or the relative ease with which an individual can obtain dynamite? These all are much scarier senarios that aren't traceable as well but easily available to anyone with the desire. It seems that we are trying to babysit our fellow citizens when in fact we should be looking at the organizations that engage in this deplorable scare tactic.

will

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:13:02 -0500

'i found the designs on the intarwebs and built a bomb.' did they test it? how do they know the design would work in first place, much less their implementation? this kind of scaremongering probably does a lot more harm than good.

emily litella

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:39:20 -0500

That's a very key paragraph.

missing info

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:17:22 -0500

You did not quote a key paragraph: "A Schaghticoke clerk got worried after the sale and called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which traced the sale to the NYPD." ie if they were actually bad guys they would have been caught soon after the sale.