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Speaker 1: Welcome to brainstoff from house stuff works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. I am our so brain. With today's question,

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Speaker 1: how do terrorists bombs work? For example parcel bombs or

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Speaker 1: truck bombs or suicide bombs. Terrorists have a new way

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Speaker 1: of getting bombs to the United States. They simply mail them.

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Speaker 1: For example, recently there were package bombs sent from Yemen

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Speaker 1: to the United States disguised to look like ordinary packages.

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Speaker 1: And these bombs could have brought down their respective airplanes

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Speaker 1: or they could have exploded at their intended destinations. This

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Speaker 1: is just the latest in a string of terrorist bombing

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Speaker 1: attempts that goes back for decades. The string includes truck bombs,

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Speaker 1: suicide bombs, luggage bombs, and parcel bombs. Although they come

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Speaker 1: in difference shapes and sizes, all these different types of

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Speaker 1: bombs have the same basic ingredients. They include the explosives themselves,

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Speaker 1: some way to detonate those explosives, and some kind of disguise.

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Speaker 1: Let's take a look at how these elements come together

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Speaker 1: to create different types of terrorist bombs. Timothy mcveigh's truck

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Speaker 1: bomb is one of the most famous terrorist bombs in history.

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Speaker 1: It extends a tradition that started with a truck bomb

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Speaker 1: placed in nineteen twenty in the heart of the New

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Speaker 1: York Financial District. In that case, the truck was a

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Speaker 1: horse drawn wagon, but even so more than three dozen

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Speaker 1: people died and hundreds were injured. There are still marks

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Speaker 1: on the New York Stock Exchange left by that bomb.

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Speaker 1: In the case of Timothy mcveigh's truck bomb, the disguise

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Speaker 1: was the truck itself. The explosive agent was ammonium nitrate

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Speaker 1: fertilizer mixed with either nitro methane, the type of fuel

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Speaker 1: that's used in top fuel dragsters and funny cars, or

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Speaker 1: diesel fuel. The fertilizer fuel mixture was held in large

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Speaker 1: plastic barrels in back of the truck. When ammonium nitrate

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Speaker 1: is mixed with fuel like this, it creates an extremely

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Speaker 1: powerful explosive agent that's approximately equivalent pound for pound to

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Speaker 1: t NT, but it does need a detonator. It needs

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Speaker 1: a smaller explosion that's powerful enough to set off the fertilizer.

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Speaker 1: In this case, McVeigh used two fuses that he lit

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Speaker 1: to ignite three fifty pounds of an industrial blasting agent.

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Speaker 1: The shock from that smaller explosion set off the ammonium nitrate.

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Speaker 1: Mcveigh's truck carried approximately two and a half tons of

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Speaker 1: that fertilizer fuel mixture, a huge amount that could be

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Speaker 1: heard fifty miles away when it exploded. It was enough

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Speaker 1: to destroy an entire office building. Suicide bombs use a

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Speaker 1: far smaller amount of explosive material, but the effects are

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Speaker 1: often just as devastating. Despite the small size, a suicide

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Speaker 1: bomb can explode in the middle of a crowd, making

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Speaker 1: it extremely lethal. Suicide bombs are therefore the most common

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Speaker 1: type of terrorist bomb. In the case of a suicide bomb,

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Speaker 1: the disguise is the bomber's clothing. Therefore, the bomb is

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Speaker 1: normally fabricated as a vest or a belt that's laced

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Speaker 1: with explosive charges. The explosive agent itself varies depending on

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Speaker 1: the location. It could be tnt harvested from other military

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Speaker 1: munitions like land mines SE four, which is a common

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Speaker 1: plastic explosive, or acetone peroxide, which is made of common

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Speaker 1: household chemicals. The detonation starts with a switch pressed by

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Speaker 1: the bomber himself. That switch could activate a blasting cap,

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Speaker 1: but an igniter might be as simple as the filament

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Speaker 1: of a light bulb. The switch in the bomber's hand

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Speaker 1: connects a battery to the bulb. The filament heats up

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Speaker 1: quite hot in a fraction of a second and sets

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Speaker 1: off the bomb. In the case of the two parcel

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Speaker 1: bombs sent from Yemen, the use of a toner cartridge

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Speaker 1: as a disguise is particularly interesting. The reason is because

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Speaker 1: toner cartridges are a very common cargo. If you have

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Speaker 1: a laser printer at home, you know that the box

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Speaker 1: for the new cartridge doubles as a mailer, so you

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Speaker 1: can return the old cartridge to recycle it. Therefore, there

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Speaker 1: are thousands of toner cartridges flowing through the parcels system

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Speaker 1: on any given day. It would be nearly impossible to

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Speaker 1: screen all of them for bombs. The use of household

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Speaker 1: chemicals to create the explosive agent would also be beneficial

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Speaker 1: here because it would throw off dogs used to detect explosives.

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Speaker 1: In the case of this particular bomb, p e t

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Speaker 1: N appears to be the explosive. P e t N

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Speaker 1: is most commonly found in something like debt chord, a

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Speaker 1: debtonation cord used to set off explosives. The debtonator is

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Speaker 1: often a modified cell phone. This allows the bomb to

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Speaker 1: be remotely activated at any time, simply by making a

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Speaker 1: call to the phone. Another common detonator is an ordinary

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Speaker 1: battery operated alarm clock. Had either of the bomb exploded

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Speaker 1: in the air, the airplanes would likely have been blown

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Speaker 1: out of the sky. Recovery from the Atlantic Ocean would

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Speaker 1: have been unlikely, so we might never have known exactly

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Speaker 1: what really happened to the planes. The reason why a

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Speaker 1: small bomb can take down an entire gigantic passenger jet

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Speaker 1: is because the cabin is pressurized. Once the bomb punches

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Speaker 1: a hole through the side of the plane, the pressure

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Speaker 1: of the cabin rips off a large portion of the fuselage,

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Speaker 1: and then the plane is doomed. For more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how staff works

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Speaker 1: dot com