Boston Bombing: Pressure Cooker Bombs Explained

[AsahinaKimi]

[Plucketeer]

1. How long before there's background checks to buy a pressure cooker?

And what about private sales (re-sales) of such? You can find second-hand units at yard sales and swap meets. How long before the NRA holds up pressure cookers as a viable weapon???

[Moostache]

7. I see your point as soon as you can reload one of these.

You have no valid analogy and are clearly just being an incorrigible to even suggest this in ignorance or jest.

[Plucketeer]

8. Yeah - Right

You think the NRA isn't gonna use this to further their contorted logic? This is Right in line with their "automobiles are deadly too" argument. Reload? When you can kill or maim over 100 in one shot??? It's like an automatic that fires all it's bullets at once.

[Moostache]

14. Yeah, which is one reason you cannot own gernades or cannons....

The analogy to gun control is a right wing idiot move...the kind of thing Rush Limbaugh does. It really is an invalid claim and stupid comparison, so we would do well to leave it on the crazy farm with the rest of the wingnut ideas and analogies...IMO.

[magic59]

2. Ham Hocks and Beans will never be the same again

Evil people with way too much religion & time on their hands.

[rocktivity]

3. I still don't get it

Wouldn't the pressure cooker have to be heated?


rocktivity

[Xipe Totec]

4. It's just basically used to generate shrapnel and contain the explosives

until the explosives inside reach the pressure at which they disintegrate the pressure cooker.

[rocktivity]

5. Which wouldn't work as well

as with a pot with the lid taped on?


rocktivity

[Xipe Totec]

6. The damage caused by an explosion is determined by the pressure diferential

The higher the pressure differential between the outside and the inside, the greater the effect when the pressure is released.

A pot with a lid taped on will detonate with the force necessary to break the tape.

A pressure cooker will detonate with the force required to tear a quarter inch of steel.

[Plucketeer]

9. Yup

Take it from my first-hand experience as a teen, space-crazy, amature rocket-maker of the 60s. Light a piece of solid rocket fuel uncontained by anything and you get a furious burn. Light that same piece in a closed container (I used an old steel paint trhinner can) and you WON'T be able to get away from it before the metal can is converted to shrapnel. The more stout the container - the more intense the resultant blast will be.

Health tip: Do NOT try this at home - or anywhere else.

[Xipe Totec]

10. I just recently learned about my son's exploits with thermite when he was a teen

Now in his 30's he can laugh about it.

There's no way they could do something like that now, post 9/11

[Plucketeer]

11. My poor mother!

I was about 14 or so - happily cooking up solid rocket fuel in the kitchen when she returned from a shopping foray. "What'er you cooking dear?" "Oh, just some rocket fuel."

The ensuing moments are still kinda blurred. I'm fairly certain tho that the pan of rocket fuel landed in the back yard before I did.

[Xipe Totec]

13. With me it was calcium carbide

Which I could still purchase at the general store.

Yes, there were still generals stores where I was growing up.

Made my own carbide lamp out of a Gerber bottle, a metal refill for a ball point pen, and some solder.

A little too much water and the carbide foamed up and clogged the refill. The Gerber bottle blew it's top right into my mother's soup pot.

Yes, I too was working in the kitchen.

She chased me out with a broom, I kid you not.

[Plucketeer]

16. Those were the days, eh?

I used to get powdered zinc from my dad's place of employment. I'd go to our small-town drug store and buy a big bottle of sulphur - no questions asked. Make a 50-50 mix and pack it into a spent CO2 cartridge and WOW! I was never able to build a rocket body that could hold together with those motors! The motors flew far and high - always leaving the rocket body at the launch point! LOL.

Oh the innocence of ignorance.

[Doc_Technical]

12. Since November 22, 1963,

I'm very suspicious of "experts" explaining
how a serious event was executed in great detail.

[NoMoreWarNow]

15. yep-- definitely need to take this with a grain of salt