explosives

[Greg Hermann]

Thanks fror the professionally stated and accurate answer, Chris!

 Second, the original point, that propane in air
>*can* be hazardous, is the real point, IMHO.

Very true, but it is not significantly  more or less dangerous than the
mixture of virtually any other motor fuel in a "wet" intake manifold!
Presumably we all are aware of the dangers of said mixtures, and take
normal precautions whenever dealing with them. IMHO, no need to insult one
another, or feed egos over the obvious!
Ethane, particularly propane, and butane are all stable enough (when not
vaporized and mixed with air) that they are commonly used as refrigerants
in locations such as refineries where their flammability is a non-issue
because of all the other dangerous things hanging around anyway.
>
 (BTW I believe McVeigh used
>AN and *nitromethane*, an interesting twist on plain old ANFO.)
>
Yes he did. I have a friend who has some (highly classified) think tank
type experience with what a cruise missile warhead will do.  One of these
weighs a bit less than the weight of stuff Timmy used. We talked about it
(without violating anybody's duties, of course.) The general lack of
information let out to the press about how Timmy did that, even at the
trial is truly impressive. The Ryder truck he used prolly had a GVW rating
in the 26 K range. Although they may be telling the truth about how much
ANFO /nitro he used (3,000 lbs.), they left out the (detail?) that the
truck was probably at or, more likely, far over its GVW rating, with the
rest of the weight in sand! That truck about had to have contained an
extremely sophisticated shaped charge, surrounded on top, bottom, front ,
back, and driver's side with the same kind of plastic pails full of sand
(carefully arranged) to do what it did.  Note the lack of a crater in the
street, and the lack of damage to the front, rear, and other side of the
truck! Also note the huge cloud of dust (sand) in the air when the thing
went off! The pails of "stuff" must have been made to act like a shaped,
focused charge by timing their firing sequence with det cord. One of the
very key questions in my mind about that whole thing (and which was never
publically answered) was whether the famous rear axle housing landed (a
long distance) ahead of or behind the truck. I think that the answer to
that one would go a long way toward answering whether that housing was the
one which arrived on the scene under the truck or a plant (set loose on top
of the charge)!!
Obviously, I do not trust the gummint version of the thing. I think that
Judge Matsch is a very capable judge, and a patriot, who got hoodwinked and
got his courtroom horribly misused by other parts of the federal
bureaucracy. Established facts make it pretty obvious that the whole thing
was pretty likely a whole lot more sophisticated than what Timmy was
capable of doing without some pretty capable, highly trained help! Not to
mention what the poor people from Okie City would justly do to the rest of
those responsible if the full truth ever got out!
>
>Okay I'll shut up now. Contact me off list if you know more or want to
>talk more on this one.

Regards, Greg