Al Qaeda terrorist cells have no shortage of ideas to destroy the U.S. We felt safe as a country for 8 years, but that sense of security was threatened on Christmas Day by a baby faced bomber who sat on a Northwest Airlines commercial jet with 80 grams of PETN sewn into his underwear.
PETN, an ingredient of of the highly explosive chemical Semtex, is undetectable by airport scanners and metal detectors. The powdery substance can be detected by bomb sniffing dogs and a simple body pat down.
Just 50 grams of PETN is all that is required to bring down a 727. 50 grams is the exact amount that convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid was found to be carrying on board American Airlines flight 63 in 2001. He is currently serving a life sentence without parole.
PETN has a lower tolerance to shock and vibration than TNT dynamite. Meaning, any little jolt can set the brittle explosive off. The underwear bomb was designed by a top Al Qaeda bomb maker in Yemen where 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab received the bomb ingredients and instructions.
Luckily, the inexperience of the bomber who failed to fully inject the trigger fluid into the PETN powder properly, saved the lives of the passengers. Only a part of the package containing the PETN exploded setting Umar’s legs, the floor under him and part of a wall of the fuselage ablaze.
In an online posting on a Muslim message board from 2005, Umar, who described himself as feeling “depressed and lonely,” wrote:
“I have no one to speak too [sic]. No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems.” Read more…
