Bomb makers

There has always been a need to detect the presence of threats. The classical threats from smuggled weapons and poisons remain, but new threats from explosives as well as from chemical and biological agents must also be considered. Threat must be defined rather broadly, to include both immediate threats, for example, a bomb on an airplane, and longer term threats, for example, smuggled drugs. To prevent explosions requires the detection of bombs, bomb makers, and bomb placers. 

In considering detection issues, we need to find ways of narrowing down the scope so as to focus on questions that can be addressed and solved in practice. This involves making some assumptions about what a terrorist or other bomb maker might do and why they might do it. 

Broader experimentation with IEs has been coupled with more documented cross communication between terrorist groups and the systematic training of a new generation of bomb makers. Put plainly, the bad guys are getting better at what they do. To address the threat they pose, it is imperative that those who fight this ever-evolving enemy also advance in sophistication. 

An examination of the current anarchist literature enforces this point. The term anarchist literature is used to refer to the dozens of books that have historically been available through mail order companies such as Desert Publications and Paladin Press dealing with the production of explosives and bombs. Many of these sources are still copied today as primer material to train current A1 Qaeda bomb makers. The same information has been disseminated over the Internet in numerous bomb-making websites. 

Numerous terrorist groups still apply chlorate-based explosives to this day. Sodium chlorate is a principle ingredient found in many weed killers in Europe. As seen, the applicability of chlorates to IEs has been well documented. This has not been overlooked by bomb makers throughout Europe. One of the more popular mixtures involves combining the chlorate with icing sugar. This fuel will be encountered again in the next section. 

Historically, and to this day, terrorists tend to utilize fertilizer precursors in their explosive production for large-scale charges. The ready availability of these materials in large quantities, coupled with the low cost per pound, makes them attractive to many bomb makers. It needs to be stressed that bomb makers will utilize what they have at their ready disposal. Most of the ingredients they adapt to their nefarious purposes will have legitimate uses. Fertilizers are common materials found throughout the entire world. With minimal processing they have shown themselves to be effective weapons in the terrorist arsenal. 

Interviews of suspects associated with the Bali bombings indicated that the bomb makers produced approximately 1000 kg of a chlorate flash powder incorporating both aluminum powder and sulfur. This device was delivered via vehicle to the targeted nightclub. Precursor chemicals were easily purchased in Indonesia due to the geographical proximity to China, which remains one of the largest producers of pyrotechnics in the world. 

National Research Council, Black and Smokeless Powders Technologies for Finding Bombs and the Bomb Makers, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1998. 

See Haynes 1994. Most influential for the shift to biology and biological hubris was H. G. Wells s The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), which became the basis for many films. However, Wells continued to use mad chemists , as in The Food of Gods, and How it Came to Earth (1904) and The World Set Free (1914). The latter novel is interesting not only because it was an apocalyptic call for World War I, but also because it narrates a history of chemistry that culminates in the development of a kind of nuclear fission bomb. Whereas this appears to anticipate the discovery of nuclear fission by the chemists Hahn and Strassmann in 1939, later mad scientist stories featured physicists as bomb-makers. 

Indeed, the key to developing an atomic bomb tested in the ability to control the chain reaction. In other words, the bomb maker must have the ability to spark the separation of the neutrons and initiate the fission reaction at a prescribed moment. (If a bomb is dropped from an airplane over an enemy city, the bomb must ignite at a precise moment in order for it to be effective.) That was the purpose of the experiment... 

Paul Olum, Hiroshima Memoir of a Bomb Maker, George Mason University History News Network, 2013. http //hnn.us. 

What has become one of the hallmarks of suicide attack is deliberate inclusion of material for its fragmentation effect. Nuts, nails and ball bearings are all typical of the readily available arsenal of the bomb-maker and cause a great deal of the secondary injury seen in these attacks. 

This data instrument developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will help health departments and other decision makers collect core data useful for investigating the number, type, timing, and severity of injuries associated with a mass casualty event. The instrument was adapted from a tool initially used to collect information about injuries among survivors of the World Hade Center bombing. Its contents or format can be modified to accommodate the circumstances of a particular mass casualty event. Each data element is defined in the Explanatory Notes so that a local or state health department can quickly train and dispatch workers to collect comparable injury data from area hospitals or where other casualties are treated. These data can then be provided to decision makers to help guide public health responses to the mass casualty event or provide the basis for more in-depth investigations. 

By the time Truman took office, Japan was near defeat. American aircraft were attacking Japanese cities at will. A single firebomb raid in March killed nearly 100,000 people and injured over a million in Tokyo. A second air attack on Tokyo in May Idlled 83,000. Meanwhile, the United States Navy had cut the islands supply lines. But because of the generally accepted view that the Japanese would fight to Ae bitter end, a costly invasion of the home islands seemed likely, though some American policy makers held that successful combat delivery of one or more atomic bombs might convince the Japanese that further resistance was futile. 

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