Monday, March 01, 2010

Breast Implant bombs - Can you weaponize an implant? Unfortunately yes.

I saw a story today which touched on something I'd been thinking about for years. Apparently Islamic terrorists have been working on a way of turning a breast implant into a way to smuggle explosive liquids onto airliners. While that may sound like a joke headline from The Onion, it's really a scarry idea.

From relatively simple and innocuous ingredients, a highly explosive liquid can be produced.



This link to a BBC story demonstrates the devastating effect on a plane fuselage that such a liquid explosive could have:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7536167.stm

I'm not exactly sure how you would trigger it, but presumable you could stab into the implant with a wire or pin and wire it to a celphone or battery (this type of liquid material can be ingnited with an electic charge)

4 comments:

Leigh Ann Otte said...

Oh my gosh. How do you screen for THAT? What a crazy world we're livin' in.

F. B. McCutcheon, Jr., MD said...

If I'm not mistaken, these types of bombs are supposed to be ignited by combining two sets of ingredients...a "binary explosive device"...and the second ingredient can also be a liquid. So ignition could be accomplished by taking a syringe containing the second ingredient then simply sticking the syringe needle through the skin and fat over the implant and into the implant itself, then injecting forcefully.

Anyone ready to blow themselves into shredded, partially incinerated bits will not likely be squeamish about suffering a small needle stick first.

Plastic surgery Beverly Hills said...

Every time they come out with explosive ideas really.This is scary and I doubt anything could be done about it.

paulene said...

Scaarryy.....I'm glad there are now X-ray machines installed in airports. I'm amazed that surgical implants can really be a cause of worry other than the surgery didn't go well.