Reply #175: So, what was the fallout with the Reid incident?

[eridani]

Did it instantly become illegal to carry matches and lighters on planes? Nope. Were all scheduled international flights stopped so that passengers could be stripped of these items? Nope. Why not? Liquid explosives have been a known risk since their first use in 1995, so why all the alarums and excursions now? The reason for the difference between then and now is probably that the tobacco companies were all paid up with the Bush crime family and the Aqua Velva men aren't.

The British infiltrator did not mention any binary explosives whatsoever as being under consideration by the perps. All that was mentioned was various peroxides and amine derivatives. Reid did not use ANFO, which could not possibly have been lit off with a match anyway. He didn't use FIXOR either, because that is specifically designed to be safe to transport on planes.

http://www.skepticfiles.org/new/201doc.htm

ANFO is not without its problems. To begin with, it is not that sensitive to detonation. Number eight caps are not reliable when used with ANFO. Booster charges must be used to avoid dud blast holes. Common boosters include sticks of various dynamites, small pours of water gel explosives, dupont's detaprime cast boosters, and Atlas's power primer cast explosive. The need to use boosters raises the cost. Secondly, ANFO is very water susceptable. It dissolves in it, or absorbes it from the atmosphere, and becomes quite worthless real quick. It must be protected from water with borehole liners, and still must be shot real quick.

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Another problem with ANFO: for reliable detonation, it needs confinement, either from a casing, borehole, etc, or from the mass of the charge. Thus, a pile of the stuff with a booster in it is likely to scatter and burn rather than explode when the booster is shot.

So, in order to make ANFO work, you need another powerful explosive to hand.