OneAndOneIs2

So we've all seen the news that a wannabe terrorist managed to get a bomb onto a plane. And there's a lot of fuss being made about how he shouldn't have been able to manage it, and we have to tighten security and do all kinds of body scans and various other things to make sure bombs don't get onto planes.

. . .

So it makes me wonder: Do the Powers That Be genuinely think that all this security nonsense really can make it impossible for a determined terrorist to blow up a plane, or are they doing all of it as a big placebo effect to make people think that a flight is sure to be safe?

Because here's the thing: Any half-decent scientist could take down a plane without taking anything onto a plane that wasn't allowed to be there.

I know people make this kind of claim all the time, that through some unspecified means, knowledgeable and determined people could blow up the plane they were on somehow. So I'll take it one step further, and actually prove it.

So: The problem is how to get an explosive on a plane without smuggling on anything that you aren't allowed to take.

The solution is to buy a business class ticket. Hey, it's your last ever flight, it might as well be comfortable...

Business class seats have a power supply to allow you to use your laptop during the long and boring hours on the plane. Typically, this will be something like the EmPower system, which delivers up to 75 watts of Direct Current.

One watt = 1 joule/second, so 75 watts = 4500 joules/minute

A flight from London to California, as I know from long experience, takes around eleven hours. To make the maths easy, let's say that you have ten hours to make your explosive.

4500 joules/minute = 270,000 joules/hour = 2,700,000 joules/flight

If you're a normal person, at this point your eyes are starting to glaze, because a joule is very abstract.

If you diet a lot, it might be helpful to explain that this is nearly 650 thousand calories.

If that still doesn't mean much, let's put it into explosive terms: It's about equal to 650 grams of TNT. That's a bit more than four hand grenades.

Yep. The energy of four hand grenades, on-tap from the laptop charger.

Of course, you've got to collect and store that power over the course of the flight... using nothing that can't be taken onto the plane.

Well, that's easy. Water can be taken onto the plane, and in fact will be supplied to you for free on demand by the flight attendants. And water can be broken down by direct current into hydrogen and oxygen - ever do electrolysis at school as a kid..? A very explosive combination. Hydrogen alone is pretty impressive (Remember the Hindenberg?) but when it's pre-mixed with the ideal ratio of Oxygen...

You can see in the vid how Hydrogen gives a flame but Hydrogen+Oxygen gives an explosion.

So the laptop charger will turn water into an explosive gas. Yay! And you're also allowed to take a big bag onto the flight - 23 x 36 x 56cm (Call it one foot by one foot by two foot) which a small amount of preparation beforehand could easily make into an airtight collector of your gases. And since transatlantic flights give you other things, like blankets, you can be fairly confident that you can make sure nobody will see that you've got your power cable running down to the carry-on bag at your feet...

All it needs once you're ready to go is a single spark to ignite the mix. And that's easy enough to make if you've got a supply of electricity.

So there you go. A bit of preparation and some high-school science, and anyone who wants to can get a significant explosive onto a plane. So long as they're ok with being on it when it goes down, of course...

Never mind that all the airport security is a huge placebo because people keep smuggling stuff past it. It's also fundamentally worthless because all manner of harmless things can be made lethal with a little bit of knowledge. Transatlantic flights also tend to serve meals that include a couple of bread rolls and some salt to go on the food. I know somebody who used to blow up locks by soaking bread in salt water, stuffing it into the keyhole, and passing a current through it.

Yep. Bread can go bang too.

I'm not sure what the security is like when it comes to electronics, but I can't imagine it would be that hard to sneak a large array of capacitors onto a plane disguised as a harmless gadget. Charge up those capacitors for a while, release the charge in one big spark, you could probably get an EMP big enough to take out some of the flight electronics.

All this airport security kinda reminds me of DRM on DVDs and games. A huge inconvenience to all the honest people and no real barrier to the bad guys.

There *is* a need for better security on flights, make no mistake. But ever-more-invasive body scans and stricter rules about what can and can't go on are not it. Perhaps, just for once, we could try applying intelligence to the problem..?