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[Duke 2.0]

 I'm liking this topic for the sole reason that with my contacts-damaged eyes are seeing this as the Underwater Bomber, which sounds like a cool new military device to take out R'lyeh.

 But yeah, unless I get a feeling of what this particular extremist branch was preaching and what the guy was like before all this crap went down I cannot objectively say what made him do what he did. Although I like to think in the end he saw somebody he was about to kill do something nice that made him proud and so nervous that he screwed up.

[sonerohi]

You know what would have been funny? Had he been patted-down and the checker guy thought it was the normal 'package', hence implying that the underwear bomber was... sub-par.

[eerr]

To blow a hole in a window using his underpants, the guy would need some seriously powerful explosives. Unless he wanted to hump the window in the process(while using said lighter).



On looking up the substance(PETN), I don't think it was a good choice for anything other than burning his crotch off. Or wiring an explosive to his crotch with PETN detonator cord. Additionally, due to the poor combustion properties at room temprature, Grabbing the crotch-bomb to compress it would have significantly increased the burn rate. But then his crotch would have burned at a normal rate rather than more like slow-detonator cord.

Due to his inexperiance and the quality of the choosen explosives, if he had any training at all, it was not from someone who knows explosives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentaerythritol_tetranitrate

"PETN was widely used in the plastic explosives terrorists used to blow up airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s."
Except that those guys knew what they were doing.
The article mentions the requirement of a primary explosive. I'm not sure if that means a primary bomb or a primary detonator cord but either way that guy had none.
http://www.fox8.com/news/wjw-news-airliner-attack-underwear-explosive,0,3701623.story

[kuro_suna]

On looking up the substance(PETN), I don't think it was a good choice for anything other than burning his crotch off.

The only reason to use PETN is it can be made with materials from a typical big-box store.

Due to his inexperiance and the quality of the choosen explosives, if he had any training at all, it was not from someone who knows explosives.

Strangely enough their aren't very many experienced suicide bombers.

The article mentions the requirement of a primary explosive. I'm not sure if that means a primary bomb or a primary detonator cord but either way that guy had none.

Primary explosives are ones that can be detonated by themselves through heat, electricity or impact like black powder.
Secondary explosives like c-4 require a primary explosive to detonate.

[The Mad Engineer]

In my opinion, the guy wasn't indecisive or anything.  We aren't rational beings that make the best choices available to us and our knowledge 100% of the time.  He was probably thinking, while on the airplane, "Okay, I'm going to detonate this in the cabin, just like I planned", focusing on that fact, so that when he went to the bathroom to adjust his package, he didn't realize that "oh yeah, I can just do it here, and with more sucess!".  Instead, he was being nervous about what was going to happen, going over the plan in his head repeatedly, which added to his inflexibility.  In the bathroom, he probably was just concentrating on getting comfortable for the "big event" that loomed on the horizon.

Stuff like that happens to me all the time.  Like going through a big hassle to ask your friend to call someone else for you, instead of just asking to borrow their phone.  Hindsight is 20/20.

[Jude]

The fact that he was about to kill himself probably hit him and consciously or not, he sabotaged his own chances and did something he knew would lead to him getting caught.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if a lot of intended suicide attacks end this way, only the person isn't on an airplane and so instead of getting caught just sneaks back to whereever they came from

[Zironic]

Here is the thing, If the bomb was successful in it's action and did blow up the plane, we wouldn't know how right away because a plane crashing from 30,000 feet due to an explosion tends to destroy evidence when still full of jet fuel. However, The bomb wasn't successful and probably wasn't capable of causing a catastrophic failure thus his suicide only serves to lessen  Al Qaeda's ability to blow crap up via planes. 

Ironically PETN is a crappy explosive to use in normal atmospheric conditions a.k.a it's used with other explosives which can created the right kind of atmosphere to detonate it. And the terrorist on the plane lit the explosive via a syringe (injecting the bomb with a liquid). And the PETN does exactly what it does under normal atmospheric conditions, catches fire and slowly burns. It's most effective use is with other explosives and those explosives are hard to get and very hard to make compare to this stuff... basically It wouldn't work without a large amount of time. It's too bad terrorist don't use wikipedia because it says a third the way in the first paragraph [.. It is more difficult to detonate than primary explosives, so dropping or igniting it will typically not cause an explosion (at atmospheric pressure it is difficult to ignite and burns relatively slowly)...].

[Akigagak]

So he set fire to his crotch?

[Sensei]

No, he decided not to set fire to his crotch.

Maybe he's more of a fundamentalist, preaching the values of becoming a eunuch? ...don't even respond to that sentence.

[Luke_Prowler]

I think the reason he didn't detonate it in the bathroom is because it would have caused the least damage. It's like listening to music on head phones: the only person who would notice is you. And considering what the moron used for the "bombing" (which looks like it has less bang that M80 fire cracker), there would have been a fizzle followed by a small pop, and he wouldn't have been found until who ever has to use the john next.

[Neonivek]

I think the reason he didn't detonate it in the bathroom is because it would have caused the least damage. It's like listening to music on head phones: the only person who would notice is you. And considering what the moron used for the "bombing" (which looks like it has less bang that M80 fire cracker), there would have been a fizzle followed by a small pop, and he wouldn't have been found until who ever has to use the john next.

Goodness he could have done more harm carrying a Airhorn on board.

Assuming the Airhorn didn't explode... then again his crotch didn't explode so maybe that is an improvement.

[The Architect]

The truth is that there just can't be a significant amount of resourceful people out there who want to cause mass terror. It's not hard to think up effective ways of doing it.

I would normally not post something like this, but it's been a matter of speculation since the 9/11 attack: why didn't they follow it up? They could have had citizens of the US living in fear. It would be extremely effective to just firebomb a random school once monthly, sans suicide. The answer is that there just isn't much to be gained from such things, and even those who espouse "radical" or "orthodox" Islam recognize the folly of focusing on such courses of action.

[Leafsnail]

I think the idea was that the pressure of the bomb would break a window and depressurize the airplane.  Maybe.  I'm not sure.

As for these conspiricies... well... they're just ridiculous, for the most part.  I mean, what motivation does the government have to become Big Brother?  Why would they try to blow up their own citizens (making themselves look extremely stupid in the process)?

[zchris13]

Aqizzar, do you get the New York Times?  Check todays, that is Sundays, paper. On the front page.  The government can lie, and attempts to cover things up plenty of times.  Although yes, the government actually fabricating a story to manipulate the general populace is fairly far out.

[Aqizzar]

Aqizzar, do you get the New York Times?  Check todays, that is Sundays, paper. On the front page.  The government can lie, and attempts to cover things up plenty of times.  Although yes, the government actually fabricating a story to manipulate the general populace is fairly far out.

Did I ever say otherwise?  No.  I said you can't use that as an excuse to discount everything you don't want to be true.  Specific instances, not generalities.  And I don't get the New York Times, I probably should, but the problem with newspapers is you can only fit so much information into the page and they tend to be pretty dry as a result.  And I'm cheap.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if a lot of intended suicide attacks end this way, only the person isn't on an airplane and so instead of getting caught just sneaks back to whereever they came from

I've heard, how often it's true I don't know but often enough to make a movie about, that one solution to this problem is the eponymous dead-man switch.  If the guy chickens out at the last second, the nearby sniper can make sure his suicide goes off without a hitch.  I suppose rigging the bomb to detonate remotely would be a better guarantee, but aside from the obvious proof that suicidal terrorist organizations aren't all together upstairs, it's probably a lot easier to get a guy to wear a bomb if he thinks the only one with the trigger, even if he's supposed to set it off.  The supposed solidarity and commitment of their membership is about the only strong-point these guys have after all.

I think the best proof of the idiocy of al-Qaida leaning groups, or at least the gross overestimation of their strategic genius, is the fact that this event happened at all.  This was literally the exact same plot another al-Qaida sympathizer tried eight years ago.  The only differences were the bomb was in better hiding place predicted by several comedians, and the operative in question should have been a Hell of a lot easier to spot.  I mean, everyone has always believed al-Qaida to be insane, but actually using a failed scheme twice.

There's many other lessons to be gleaned here, but I think the most important one is that the biggest enemy of the American security apparatus is its own ego.