Explosion at the Boston Marathon.

newyorkguy said:
Okay so long story short you're saying about 225 grams or half a pound ought to do it for each one. al-Qaeda apparently recommends six pounds but half a pound works for me. Thanks.
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That works for me too. Who ya gonna trust, an ordinanceary kind of guy or a bunch or terrorists?

ETA, You know, we probably shouldn't be discussing bomb building on an open forum.
 
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newyorkguy said:
Okay so long story short you're saying about 225 grams or half a pound ought to do it for each one. al-Qaeda apparently recommends six pounds but half a pound works for me. Thanks.
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It's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean that counts. The AQ description that I saw assumes complete incompetence, a total lack of knowledge and limited resources. What I described (I deleted it after reading Dan O's comment) is a more efficient way to do it were I to have that bent (I don't). All I was saying is that the amount given can be used to give the observed results without too much difficulty.

Keep in mind that I also figured out how to sink a 616\627\640 class ballistic missile submarine on patrol using nothing but 5 feet of bailing wire and a willingness to risk death by hypothermia. I find flaws in systems that I know and exploit them in a hypothetical manner when I'm bored out of my mind. I submitted that scenario to my dept. head for security training and he just shook his head and said that we don't do impossible to win scenarios in drills.
 
Sam.I.Am said:
It's not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean that counts. The AQ description that I saw assumes complete incompetence, a total lack of knowledge and limited resources. What I described (I deleted it after reading Dan O's comment) is a more efficient way to do it were I to have that bent (I don't). All I was saying is that the amount given can be used to give the observed results without too much difficulty.

Keep in mind that I also figured out how to sink a 616\627\640 class ballistic missile submarine on patrol using nothing but 5 feet of bailing wire and a willingness to risk death by hypothermia. I find flaws in systems that I know and exploit them in a hypothetical manner when I'm bored out of my mind. I submitted that scenario to my dept. head for security training and he just shook his head and said that we don't do impossible to win scenarios in drills.
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This is getting very complicated. I posted some quotes that the amount of black powder obtained at the fireworks shop would not have been adequate to supply all the ordinance the Boston bombers apparently manufactured. Those comments were questioned.

All I asked was, do we know how much they would've needed? There wasn't any need for instructions on how to make a bomb. Just 0.5 pounds per cooker should do it.
 
I self deleted my specific comments to your questions but you asked for some sort of verification to those claims and questioned the amount required. I gave you some basic information related to that.
 
Sam.I.Am said:
I self deleted my specific comments to your questions but you asked for some sort of verification to those claims and questioned the amount required. I gave you some basic information related to that.
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Sam I apologize if you thought I was asking for some sort of verification of claims. In fact, I didn't understand that you made any specific claims. I didn't ask for anything other than an amount.

newyorkguy said:
.<snip>
About 150 grams a piece sounds like. Maybe a little more for the pressure-cooker bomb, a little less for the pipe bombs. Is that enough?

So how much black powder do you estimate each of the two pressure-cooker bombs would've required? You're saying three pounds was enough so you must have a pretty clear idea, Sam?
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newyorkguy said:
Sam I apologize if you thought I was asking for some sort of verification of claims. In fact, I didn't understand that you made any specific claims. I didn't ask for anything other than an amount.
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No worries. I went too far in my explanation which is why I self deleted it early on.
 
Dan O. said:
Are you stalking me? If you were reading this thread you would have seen that Sam posted a video in the post immediately prior to mine of which I quoted a paragraph from including a back link to his post with the embedded video.

Being stupid is not necessarily a crime. Open fires may not be a crime in most states. Is posting such videos on YouTube a violation of their policies? I don't know because I am not a YouTube member. I don't believe Sam violated any JREF policies by linking to that video here and JREF wouldn't have any more info for tracking the videos source than I do. The may however be other posters on JREF that know mor about the jurisdictions and would have better advice on ho to stop this jerk.
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He did nothing wrong, or illegal, or dangerous. At least as far as I saw. /ot derail.
 
We also don't know if they mixed the BP with something else, like sugar. Or match heads, or sparklers. All of which can be made into an explosive.
 
Looks like the stolen Mercedes SUV was tracked via the car's own GPS system, rather than the driver's left-behind cell phone:

Donna Boland, a spokeswoman for Mercedes, told AOL Autos a call came from the police just after 12 a.m. Friday. They put Danny on the phone, and he confirmed he was the owner by providing his PIN number.

Mercedes then relayed the location of the car to police, updating the location as it moved around the Boston suburbs. They tracked the car to Laurel Street in Watertown, where a gunfight ensued between police and the Tsarnaev brothers.

Link
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quadraginta said:
If you put six pounds of gunpowder into a six liter container, how much room is left for other stuff?
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Well six pounds is ~2700g, black powder tends to be about 5% more dense than water so it'd be about 2600ml. A six litre container would thus have about 3.4 litres of space for shrapnel et cetera. Depending on the nature of the material and its density that could easily be 10-15kg.
 
catsmate1 said:
Well six pounds is ~2700g, black powder tends to be about 5% more dense than water so it'd be about 2600ml. A six litre container would thus have about 3.4 litres of space for shrapnel et cetera. Depending on the nature of the material and its density that could easily be 10-15kg.
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I didn't expect that black powder would be that dense. Not in the loose condition which it would be after being excised from fireworks. I somehow visualized it as a bit on the fluffy side.
 
triforcharity said:
We also don't know if they mixed the BP with something else, like sugar. Or match heads, or sparklers. All of which can be made into an explosive.
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All very good points. There are many common household products that can be used to make an explosive device if you know what to do with them and can enhance the primary to make them even more powerful overall.
 
triforcharity said:
We also don't know if they mixed the BP with something else, like sugar. Or match heads, or sparklers. All of which can be made into an explosive.
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I expect eventually -- not now but probably at the trial (presuming Dzhokhar Tsarnaev doesn't plead out) -- the FBI will provide a detailed analysis of the bomb. Being that they were in backpacks a lot of the material was probably captured, even if only in trace amounts. From news photos I've seen I think a lot of the backpacks were still intact after the explosions.

A tiny timer fragment from the PanAm 103 bombing, recovered on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, led investigators to its manufacturer in Switzerland, who in turn led them to Libya....Likewise, when a former Chilean official, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated by a car bomb in Washington, D.C., in 1976, FBI agents recovered a ¼-inch brass piece from a transceiver in the wreckage....
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Link

The forensic investigators are pretty skillful. Eventually I think they will know a lot about the bombs.
 
I know of John Miller of CBS News because for many years he was a local newsman in New York City. He made his career by talking to John Gotti. Gotti used to go for walks around Little Italy in Manhattan with his consigliere. So Miller got the idea to get a cameraman and wait for Gotti and then ask, "Mr. Gotti, can I speak with you?" Gotti loved publicity and it got to be a regular thing. Miller eventually went on to work in law enforcement.

Anyway, yesterday Miller had a couple interesting comments as to the suggestion by some in Congress that the Tsarnaev brothers had some sort of training:


Miller said, "It suggests what members of Congress know about bomb making. If you look at the ... instruction page that gave them the layout for how to make the pressure cooker bomb, [the Congressmen] are saying the remote control aspect is something that the Tsarnaev brothers would have had to go somewhere else, well, scroll down that page in the magazine and the very next picture after the pressure cooker is how to do the remote control. This can be done, and it can be done by dummies."
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Link
 
phiwum said:
While the first online site I found sells black powder for $23.50 per pound at the most expensive. Tamerlan (Djhokhar?) chose a needlessly expensive way to buy black powder.

Of course, they couldn't have easily bought black powder online (MA laws prevent that), but I presume that it would still have been much cheaper to buy it in a New Hampshire gun store than get it from fireworks.

Regardless, they seem to have gotten it from fireworks for whatever reason.
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You can get about 3 normal size charges for a 12 Pound Napoleon Cannon out of a pound of black powder. OF course this is for Civil War reenacting, where all you want is a reasonable size bang and some smoke. It would take more if you actually want to shoot a 12 pound cannon ball any distance.

This is why we reenactors request donations from the audience at Civil War events, unless we are in a charged admission situation . Civil War reenacting can be an expensive Hobby. And it's the same for Revoultionary war reenactors, or any other group that uses a lot of Black Powder.

The Aussie is who surprised on people owning cannon in the US will be interested that I am a half owner of a 12 Pound Napoleon. The actuall cannon tube is not that expensive...a few hundred bucks.It is the damn carraige that costs you.
 
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malicus said:
Vaguely remember something about flour??

ETA: dust explosions, that's what I remember.
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Correct. FAE is basically what it is. Fuel-Air explosion. Almost any organic if dispersed in an aerosol, can be quite explosive. Grains, sugars, etc.
 
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