On 12 Sep 2004 17:26:07 -0400, (James Nicoll)
wrote:

In article ,
Harold Groot wrote:

I haven't seen comparisons of a Saturn V, but there are many items
around the world that have more energy than an atomic bomb. The ships
that carry liquified natural gas, for example. If terrorists don't
want the cachet of nuclear weapons, setting off an explosion of one of
those ships in the harbor of a large city would be an attractive
alternative.

By any chance, do you own a copy of _The Health Hazards
of Not Going Nuclear_?

No. There have been articles detailing the energy potential of these
things for a couple of decades now. It's nothing new.


I wondered about LNG explosions when Beckman's book came up
a while back, and did a little digging, because it seemed to me that
given that people do stupid things all the time, if it were possible
to cause an H-Bomb scale LNG explosion, someone would have done it.
It turned out the range of concentration of LNG to O2 that gives you
an explosion is rather narrow so it's unlikely you'd get a nicely mixed
cloud in just the right range before something set it off. Uusually
the mix will be wrong, too O2 rich or too LNG-rich.


Hey, I didn't say it would be EASY, merely that there was a
sufficiently large concentration of energy available.

Of course, even if it just all went up in a fire instead of explosion
it would be quite a disaster. I'm thinking of a certain port city
down in Texas almost 60 years ago.