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A laptop bomb would presumably be fairly small in size and would probably have to be placed directly against some sensitive part of the plane in order to be eff
by cstejerean 9y ago
A laptop bomb would presumably be fairly small in size and would probably have to be placed directly against some sensitive part of the plane in order to be effective. The cargo hold meanwhile is already reinforced and any bomb would most likely end up in a middle of a lot of baggage that would absorb most of the blast. It would probably force the plane to make an emergency landing but it's unlikely to be catastrophic.
- enraged_camel 9y agoThe risk with laptops in the cargo hold isn't the blast force of explosions causing a hull breach, but fires. Now any terrorist who wants to bring down a plane simply needs to rig their laptop batteries to catch on fire, which is much, much easier to do than rigging it to explode.
- ulrikrasmussen 9y agoDoesn't planes have automated extinguishers in the cargo hull? I actually don't know, but it is something I would assume.
- tgummerer 9y agoThe article goes into more details on that. Basically the fire extinguishers are not powerful enough against lithium-ion battery fires.
- manicdee 9y agoBatteries contain their own oxidiser and fuel, so the only way of extinguishing a better fire is to remove the heat (fire triangle: fuel, oxidiser, heat). The best lay-person's method for extinguishing battery fires is flooding with cold water, which will be hard on an airplane at the best of times.
- tim333 9y agoLooking at a youtube video of a laptop battery fire https://youtu.be/pizFsY0yjss?t=3m15s https://youtu.be/pizFsY0yjss?t=3m15s I find it hard to see that taking out the metal box http://www.eyeno.net/2007/07/15/american-airlines-paul-bunyan-box/ http://www.eyeno.net/2007/07/15/american-airlines-paul-bunya... and then the plane.
- dom0 9y agoThese boxes are probably aluminium, which should be ignitable by another metal-fire.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- grey-area 9y agoHere's a video of a lithium battery fire in a cargo hold, as you can see it causes an explosion and swiftly a fire that burns the entire compartment. If you imagine every checked in bag containing a laptop, you'd get a similar effect if you rig one to catch fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0EzQaEiZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0EzQaEiZQ
- pdkl95 9y agoNote that the video claims it's 5000 Li+ batteries. It's hard to tell from the video, but it looks like it was ~4 boxes filled with only the batteries. Even a large pile of laptops (no bags) would have a hard time making the explosion[1] in the video. If you separated each battery+laptop into separate bags, the density of Li is so low a single battery burning/exploding may not even reach the other batteries. [1] obviously a fire is still possible, even with a single battery
- grey-area 9y agoYes I guess it would only contain a few hundred laptops if they force all into the hold. I imagine a fire is quite possible though from a rigged laptop (or just an accident) and impossible to put out, unlike a fire in the cabin.