Did anyone see this? It was all about that Abdulunderpants chap who tried to blow up his balls and an aeroplane bound for Detroit last December.
Lots of information about airport security and the failures of intelligence, but what I found most interesting was the experiment where the intended explosion was simulated. I sat there somewhat infuriated by the fact that the experiment seemed to be set up to cause even more damage than Abdulunderpants would have caused, the explosive being placed on a dummy’s knee, next to the fuselage wall and not in his pants, and that they used a bare fuselage without cushioning effects from the interior walls. All this, to my mind, made any explosion more damaging than what our flaming jockstrap friend would have caused. And then came the explosion; the effect on the structure of the plane was barely greater than a powerful sauerkraut fart and the effect on the inside hardly more significant than someone just getting up and punching the neighbouring passengers.
Now then, given that after the incident governments wheeled out all sorts of ‘experts’ to tell us that he could have blown the aircraft out of the sky and even showed supposed test films showing the effects of a similar device with aeroplanes exploding in spectacular ways, and given the succession of lies about WMDs, electricians running onto tube trains carrying wired up jackets, scientists slashing their wrists without bleeding and now the successfully disproved claim that a pathetic little firework could have blown up an aeroplane, who are we to be afraid of?
Lots of information about airport security and the failures of intelligence, but what I found most interesting was the experiment where the intended explosion was simulated. I sat there somewhat infuriated by the fact that the experiment seemed to be set up to cause even more damage than Abdulunderpants would have caused, the explosive being placed on a dummy’s knee, next to the fuselage wall and not in his pants, and that they used a bare fuselage without cushioning effects from the interior walls. All this, to my mind, made any explosion more damaging than what our flaming jockstrap friend would have caused. And then came the explosion; the effect on the structure of the plane was barely greater than a powerful sauerkraut fart and the effect on the inside hardly more significant than someone just getting up and punching the neighbouring passengers.
Now then, given that after the incident governments wheeled out all sorts of ‘experts’ to tell us that he could have blown the aircraft out of the sky and even showed supposed test films showing the effects of a similar device with aeroplanes exploding in spectacular ways, and given the succession of lies about WMDs, electricians running onto tube trains carrying wired up jackets, scientists slashing their wrists without bleeding and now the successfully disproved claim that a pathetic little firework could have blown up an aeroplane, who are we to be afraid of?
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