How Not to Make a Car Bomb

The recent car bombing attempt in Times Square makes me feel a little bit safer. If people who have the will to carry out a terrorist attack only have the intelligence to come up with the hilarious contraption discovered in the Nissan Pathfinder in Times Square, then we can all rest easy. Apparently, the "three-stage" explosive device used to carry out the attempted attack was based on watching James Bond and other action movies, rather than actual science. It was about what you'd get from a giving fourth grader a $100 dollar bill and 20 minutes in a hardware store. It's usually not cool to poke fun at attempted bombings, but this one is too funny to resist. Here are a few of the highlights:

• The man packed a gun locker with fertilizer. However, it wasn't the kind of ammonium-based fertilizer that actually explodes. It was normal fertilizer that you can get at any store. He may as well have filled the locker with sand. Glad he doesn't know how to use Google or Wikipedia!
• He strapped firecrackers to the outside of propane tanks. That's right, thick, steel propane tanks that are designed to withstand tremendous pressure. And the firecrackers? You might get a blister if you let one explode in your hand. And oh yeah, the valves on the tanks were closed, so even if the firecrackers caused a spark, absolutely nothing would happen.
• Finally, there were some full cans of gas, also closed. Apparently gasoline still needs oxygen to explode.

End result: several fire crackers ignite, smoke comes out of car, hot dog vendor calls police, vehicle owner, who used his own car for the "bombing", goes to jail. We should all be thankful that those American citizens who have half a brain are not terrorists!