I would just like to add that I find it very interesting how the initial narrative coming from the media and, according to some, Joe Biden himself was
that home grown terrorists did this.... Which would give at least minimal credence to why someone would build a bomb using Low explosives such as
black powder as the filler. And with the amount of smoke created from each blast as well as the freakishly low number of dead victims it's a fairly
safe bet that a low explosive such as black powder was used instead of a more commonly used high explosive.
The problem with this though, and where the narrative really kind of breaks down is that a Saudi National would be much more likely to build an ANFO
based device which would allow a much more deadly device in a MUCH smaller package for literally a tenth or less the cost of a black powder based
device..
Honestly though these devices would have had to have been fairly large devices to create the MASSIVE plumes of smoke we see very clearly after the
explosions which turned into a smokey ground hugging haze that spread out quite widely and was thick enough to drop visibility very sharply. Either
that or the bomber could have added ingredients in with the explosive to create large volumes of heavy smoke, but generally you do not build a bomb
that puts out lots of smoke AND has a fragmentation sleeve of ball bearings. Plus black powder is an EXTRAORDINARILY anemic explosive for creating
fragmentation effects or launching loosely packed ball bearings around the bomb casing.
So there are quite a few problems with this story from the explosive device and suspect angle.
These are:
1. Black Powder is now a specialty product which is actually more expensive and less easily accessible than smokeless powder especially when you
consider the explosive yield of smokeless powder is around 3x more powerful by volume or weight over blackpowder. Not to mention the black powder
community is .... shall we say usually pretty conservative so unless our saudi friend used a stolen cc to order his powder, of which he'd have
probably needed at least 5 or 10 pounds of powder to get the results we are seeing the purveyors of the establishment he ordered from would have seen
an islamic sounding name and FLIPPED and called homeland! Whereas when you consider the same yield could be achieved with AT MOST 3 pounds of READILY
AVAILABLE , CHEAPER, MORE DEADLY, and a host of other advantages smokeless powder it kind of makes you think.
2. That is ALOT of smoke we see just from the first detonation alone! Not only is it a LARGE amount of smoke but it is also very very sooty very very
persistent smoke. As someone who has some limited experience with blackpowder arms I can tell you it's actually fairly doubtful that a blackpowder
device capable of producing that much smoke would be able to be successfully placed and go unnoticed at an event like this where there were bomb
sniffing dogs and rooftop observers. To further compound this IF the bomber had specifically built the device to produce large smoke clouds he would
actually have to go to EXTRA trouble to build the device in such a way that it would produce large amounts of smoke without spewing out lots of very
hot and or outright burning debris inside the blast radius. We know there was not lots of hot or burning debris because it's the boston trauma
centers NOT the burn centers that are treating patients from teh marathon. One thing Bombers DO NOT do is specifically build a bomb so it will hurt
LESS people when they are trying to create a mass casualty event. It makes ZERO sense for the bomber to use obscurant producing bomb materials that
won't also cause lots of severe burns for those caught in the blast radius. Especially considering it would have probably been cheaper to use the
crap that would cause severe burns over the stuff that wouldn't.
3. A saudi National would be much more likely to use an ANFO based High explosive which would give him much bigger bang in a much smaller package....
Hell most home grown terror cells would use ANFO over black powder to be honest.... but a middle easterner, well as i said before, it strains my
credulity to the breaking point that a Saudi national would use a low explosive based device.
These are just the problems I can think of off the top of my head... it's nowhere near all of the issues with this scenario but it's just stuff I
noticed right away. Below are some references I've pulled up so you can see what I'm talking about as far as the pricing of various powders and
their effective yields.
Black powder prices
smokeless powder prices
rough comparison of the efficacy of black powder versus modern smokeless powder
If any of you have questions feel free to U2U or ask in the thread.