Mailing it In

What was that...thing they tried to terrorize us with in New York last night?  Honestly, have the terrorists begun recruiting at special needs schools?  They aren't improving with practice, in fact, at the rate they're regressing, they're going to be jumping out of tiny cars in giant shoes and big red noses squirting us with seltzer bottles before much longer.  Osama must be deeply embarrassed.

Propane tanks, check.  Gasoline, check.  M80s.  What the fuck?  Look, I don't want to say anything that would actually help these clowns, but it's pretty obvious they're beyond any kind of help whatsoever.  Hell, I was building more reliable, effective and lethal devices before I was ten.  The thing about a car bomb is you've got all kinds of time to put it together, and then it's just a matter of parking and walking away.  The device doesn't have to be hastily constructed, or poorly designed.  There's just no tactical threat until its time to actually deploy it.

Gasoline, as an initiator, is a fine idea.  But you need the fumes, not the liquid.  Spread it around, poke a bunch of holes in the plastic bottles, let the whole car fill up with heavy, gaseous, highly flammable fumes.  That's what's going to get you that big, hot fireball.  And propane tanks are serious, there's a lot of energy in there, but they are metal tanks designed to actually reduce the likelihood of explosion, so it should be pretty obvious that you need to break the integrity of of the tank in order to weaponize it.  A small tamped black powder - based bomb will do that nicely if your local procurement folks can't get their hands on some Primacord.  But come ON.  M80s as your primary?  Who's idea was that, Dennis the Menace?  What did you think these firecrackers were going to do?  Did you ever think about going out in the desert and doing a test?  You're building a BOMB, fer crissakes, not trying to scare away the evil spirits.  Sheesh.

First there's Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian supervillain who attempted to terrorize America by setting fire to his own junk, and now we have the Bozo Jihadi show trying to blow up New York with firecrackers.  Frankly, I'm a lot more afraid of the gangbangers in the apartments to my east than I am of these idiots.  Until they figure out how to produce something on the order of, say, those goofy kids at Columbine, I don't think I'll be losing a whole lot of sleep...