Five people were arrested in London re: the attempted car bombings (BNP 1 and BNP 2). Two of the suspects are medical doctors (Sky News). British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, We are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al…

I don’t know. Careening down the street can be explained by the fumes in the car, that one report says accounts for the appearance of smoke in the car. The fumes were so think that it looked like smoke.

Leaving the cell phone – if it was the trigger, connected to the bomb, he would have to leave it, and then call it from another cell phone to ignite the bomb.

Not that I know anything about cell phone triggers, but that, at least to me, makes sense…

nailinmyeye on June 29, 2007 at 12:10 PM

I’ve been in the Environmental, Health and Safety field for 20 years with my main background being in hazardous materials management. I am by no means saying I’m an expert in explosive devices, however, volatile flammable liquids and gases have what is called a UEL (Upper Explosive Limit) and a LEL (Lower Explosive Limit). Without going into too much technical jargon, in order for a volatile flammable liquid (gasoline, etc) to ignite the liquid must give off sufficient ignitable vapor along with a sufficient amount of oxygen that falls between the substances LEL and UEL. If the mixture of ignitable vapor/oxygen is too rich it falls into the UEL and will not ignite, if it is too lean it falls into the LEL and will not ignite.

However, if the ignitable vapor of the flammable substance in question has just the right mixture of ignitable vapor and oxygen and falls between the LEL and UEL it will ignite, and if the material being ignited is confined (like in a cylinder) it will detonate. This is key, a deflagration is the unconfined burning of a substance, but a detonation is the result of a confined substance igniting and releasing all of its energy at once instead of a slow burn (deflagration).

IMHO with the information being presented by eyewitnesses as to the “smoke” (which was more than likely gasoline vapors) tells me the fuel/oxygen mixture was UEL (too rich) while the perp was driving the vehicle to its intended target and did not detonate when the ignition source (cell phone) was called the first time, then when the driver exited the vehicle and opened all the doors the fuel oxygen mixture became LEL (too lean) and again did not explode when the ignition source (cell phone) was called a second time.

Another possibility is the ignition source was not wired properly and did not provide sufficient “spark” to ignite the device. Again, just MHO, but these three potential scenarios seem to be the most logical reason why the device did not explode, but had it exploded it would have been a devastating explosion and not just a fireball (deflagration) because of the confined propane in the cylinders.

Law enforcement and intel officials note that there was no intel on this given incident – meaning they didn’t know that this particular plot was ongoing until it was discovered this morning….

Of course you have those on the left poo pooing the whole thing. So what? Who cares? A big story about nothing. The media shouldn’t tell us these things because it scares us….

Are the good ones all dead or are they simply lying in wait? If it were a professional bomb, it would have exploded when it was supposed to explode.

This scares the Mohammed out of the driver…dinasour on June 29, 2007 at 2:35 PM

That is funny! I’m still laughing!

HAHA!
Or George Michael

Yup.

These guys were amatuers. A paracticed cell would have had a secondary initiating device controlled by someone outside of the vehicle- In case he9the driver) lost his nerve or there was a better target of opportunity.

Also if it was a shaky would be suicide bomber they would tie his hands to the wheel.

Still makes no sense. The driver wouldn’t have careened down the street if this was a cell-phone bomb and he surely wouldn’t have left the cell phone in his haste to get away and detonate it if it was.

I have another theory. He thought he was going on a non-martyrdom operation somewhere else.

His Jihadi buddies try to detonate the bomb in front of the club, but it misfires.

This scares the Mohammed out of the driver and he crashes the car, jumps out and runs away, and is now somewhere in London, wondering if he has gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd.

Yea, but Al wants to make sure the other half is illegal as well.

The only way all of these details make sense to me is if the bomber parked the car casually, left the area, and tried to detonate it — but ended up with a fizzle. That would explain the smoke coming from the car that first alerted bystanders that something was up. It was a misfire. Otherwise you have to believe that the bomber walked away from the car intending to detonate it hours afterwards, but how likely is that given that the longer he waited, the greater the risk would have been that a passerby would notice what was in the car and call the cops?

Try this on for size… as he was driving to the destination something went wrong and he thought the thing was about to blow… with him still in the car. Perhaps he was panicking, trying to put out a spark he feared was going to set off the explosion (or something else along these lines) causing him to drive erratically. Finally he got too freaked out and thought he was on the verge of his head asplode and he baled.

Or what about this… Maybe someone else was to remotely detonate and did it while he was still in the car. Maybe he knew this was how it was to go down but chickened out at the last second, or maybe he didn’t know he was to be a martyr and freaked as soon as he saw what was going down.

I’m not saying any of those scenarios are true, but certainly plausible… don’t close yourself off to anything yet AP.

e-pirate on June 29, 2007 at 2:21 PM

That’s what 24hr. news has done. They have to fill up the time, so speculation is better than facts!

Any idiot who is on a tv and starts a phrase with “It’s entirely possible…” should immediately lose all credibility.

doriangrey on June 29, 2007 at 2:06 PM

Aren’t we(Texas) half illegal aliens already? It sure feels like it!

Driving erratically, smoke coming out of the car

Where was Tommy Chong?

No Al Gore is trying to turn half of Texas into illegal immigrants to Atlantis…

Time also confirms that the bomb appears to have been amateurish, which makes the Daily Mail’s claim of an Al Qaeda cell at work that much more dubious.

From what I can tell, al-Qaeda in Iraq car bombs are crude as well.

doriangrey on June 29, 2007 at 1:54 PM

God must be trying to form another sea in Central Texas.

Maybe trying to wash the Muslims out of here.

My internet acting funny in Austin, so it may not be just you.

As to the makeup of the bomb: I think that the propane tank would lack punch. It’s not just the energy contained within the volume of gasoline or propane, but the rate at which you can get it to burn. You need oxygen for that, and only the fuel at the surface has contact with oxygen. To get the fuel to really explode, you have to vaporize it first in order to get the most surface area. But in doing that, you’ve lost containment, and it’s more like just a big fireball. That’s impressive, but doesn’t generate the pressure wave needed to tear things, and people, apart.

The first Bali bomb was not a gas or propane bomb. They had collected quite a bit of high explosive. And there were two, the first which drew people into the street.

Hmmm, couldn’t possibly be all that rain trying to wash half of Texas out to sea to join Atlantis could it?