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How ISIS Built the Machinery of Terror Under Europe’s Gaze

• xkcd-sucks 11y ago
  >In a utility closet in the same building, they found three Red Bull soda cans filled with 600 grams of TATP, the temperamental peroxide-based explosive that would later be used to deadly effect in Paris and Brussels It's quite amazing that (1) ISIS actually promotes use of acetone peroxide and (2) that there aren't several orders of magnitude more self-inflicted casualties. Any chemist (or rural child who attempts pyrotechnics) knows that low molecular weight organic peroxides are horrendously touchy, to the point where large crystals can detonate under their own weight. An amount of AP sufficient to cause a big boom... rattling around in a can... with chunks of metal in it... is just plain irresponsible. Unless there's a way to stabilize it, one would almost think that reporting the explosive as TATP is misinformation intended to make aspiring terrorists blow themselves up. Maybe we'll hear about nitrogen triiodide disasters after acetone gets banned :)