7/7 Bombings - Type of explosive used?

Most reports I've seen about the July 7 bombings in London suggest that the type of explosive used was a homemade hydrogen peroxide solution, commonly called TATP or TCAP.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, TATP creates a entropy burst that generates very little heat:

The explosion of TATP is similar to the decomposition of azide, for example, which produces nitrogen gas but little heat,

How does this relate to the many serious burns suffered by victims of the explosions, and also to early reports especially by a French police chief assisting investigations that the type of explosive used was of a military grade? Also, a few days after the attacks I recieved information from someone on the London Underground emergency team that early reports suggested high grade military explosives were used.

Also both GlobalSecurity.org and Wikipedia suggest that TATP is very unstable and Wikipedia states:

Many people have been killed or permanently injured by accidents with acetone peroxide. It is widely used by people who want to make homemade explosives because of its low cost and ease of manufacture. They often have no idea of its extreme sensitivity, or they make it anyway solely because it's cheap and can be made in a refrigerator. There is a common myth that the only "safe" acetone peroxide is the trimer, made at low temperatures: "If one is making tricycloacetone peroxide, the temperature must be less than 10 °C at all times, otherwise the product formed will be dicycloacetone peroxide, which is so unstable and sensitive that it has no uses in the field of explosives

4 rucksacks were filled with 10lb of this highly volatile explosive and placed in a car. Drive 200 miles from Leeds to Luton, grabbed out of the car, placed on backs, taken onto trains to London and then carried all the way to their final destination luckily without exploding anywhere on route. Were the bombers either very very lucky or very very gentle with their cargo? The latter is certainly difficult to be on the hustle and bustle of a London morning rush hour.

I'm sure some of our more experienced posters can say more on this matter.

[edit on 11-5-2006 by uknumpty]

[edit on 11-5-2006 by uknumpty]

Funny you should post this i was thinking in the last few days how the 7/7 conspiracies seem to have died off.

Cool boxes, used to transport the highly volatile peroxide-based explosives, which detectives believe were mixed in a bath in a flat in Leeds, were also found in the boot.

link

It also mentions they found a bath full of the stuff in a house in leeds so i think we can assume it was that kind of explosive that was used. Im geussing they knew this stuff was very unstable hence the use of cool boxes.

On the subject of burns etc im not going to claim to be an expert on explosives but im geussing when you quote the part about producing little heat they mean in terms of other explosives. It doesnt take much to cause severe burns to skin.

Cool boxes might explain non-explosion when transporting the explosive from Leeds to Luton (road journeys can still be bumpy) but what about the subsequent transfer to backpacks and the journey to London by train? How dangerous is the vibration from dumping a rucksack on the ground with 10lbs of TATP in it?

Here's more detail about TATP's explosive characteristics from the American Technion Society

An explosive favored by suicide bombers – triacetone triperoxide(TATP) -- is extremely unstable and prone to explode unexpectedly, a disadvantage that has made it useless for other applications. But it is hard to detect and extremely easy to make from two widely available chemicals: acetone and hydrogen peroxide. Now, an international team of scientists led by Ehud Keinan of the Institute of Catalysis Science and Technology of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has discovered the surprising reason why TATP is so easy to make--it's a different kind of explosive than practically any in use.

"Most explosives are energetic materials," explains Keinan. "They have a lot of energy chemically stored in them. In an explosion, that energy is released suddenly, generating a huge amount of heat. The heat in turn creates the explosive expansion." To get the energy into the explosive in the first place, it has to be supplied from something, generally in the form of heat. TNT, for example, has to cooked at high temperature for its high-energy chemical bonds to form. Since nitrogen compounds are good at storing energy, most conventional explosives contain nitrogen, a property that makes them relatively easy to detect.

But TATP is different. It is formed at room temperature and does not require any input of heat. Nor does it contain nitrogen compounds. It is in fact a carbohydrate-type compound somewhat related to sugar. So the question is--how can it explode if the energy is not pumped into it in the first place?

The research team demonstrated that TATP exploded not by releasing thermal energy, but by suddenly breaking each molecule of TATP in the solid state into four molecules of gas. Although the gas is at room temperature, it has the same density as the solid, and four times as many molecules, so it has 200 times the pressure of the surrounding air. This enormous pressure – one-a-half tons per square inch – then pushes outward, creating an explosive force 80% greater than that of TNT.

"There is no increase in energy when the molecules break apart," says Keinan, "but there is a sudden increase in entropy." Entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder in a system, and the randomly moving gas molecules have far more entropy than the orderly TATP crystal from which they are produced. When entropy increases in a system, energy can be derived from it, such as the kinetic energy of an explosion. In a TATP explosion, the gas molecules give up their energy of motion to the surroundings, in the process creating the shock wave that does the damage.

[edit on 12-5-2006 by uknumpty]

Originally posted by uknumpty
Cool boxes might explain non-explosion when transporting the explosive from Leeds to Luton (road journeys can still be bumpy) but what about the subsequent transfer to backpacks and the journey to London by train? How dangerous is the vibration from dumping a rucksack on the ground with 10lbs of TATP in it?
[edit on 12-5-2006 by uknumpty]

well again, im no expert maybe they were extreamly lucky.

I'm still trying to work out how these people got so badly burned, with all these reports fo military grade explosives im beinning to wonder.

the explosives used are interesting, the "offical story" is kinda starting to show cracks now....its rather interesting

I just think it's a massive risk to transport such a unstable explosive over such a large distance. I can think in Palestine/Israel where it was used previously it may only travel 10s of miles at most.

If they created it in Leeds, to me it would be "safer" to detonate there instead of London. As much damage would have been done.

Regarding blast burns, until more evidence comes forward it does look very suspicious. So much of the official story has been changed and then changed again it loses more and more credibility.

The only way that I can think of that this was not an inside job is that it would have to be a fuel air bomb. Look at Alex Jones' video on it.

Fuel Air Bomb? In rucksacks?

The official report says they used TATP. The supposed evidence for this was the "bomb making bathtub" they used to create the compound which stank the house out and bleached their hair.

However as I said before, the explosive characteristics don't match those reported by eyewitnesses (heat) and by the burn injuries many recieved.

I didnt see much on that conspiracy and am very new to it. Sorry I really dumb mistake I know... I was tired when I posted that... dont take it seriously... god I feel dumb...
ahhh.... embarrased...