
How ISIS Built the Machinery of Terror Under Europe’s Gaze - Futurebot
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/world/europe/isis-attacks-paris-brussels.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
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xkcd-sucks
>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 :)

