Ft. Bragg soldier, returned from Iraq, sets off acid bomb....MacDonalds.

[madfloridian]

This just struck me as odd behavior by this guy and his brother in the Coast Guard. It is just a weird, strange thing to do.

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040919/NEWS/409190341/1134

LAKELAND -- Three men, two serving in the military, were arrested after they built and set off a lightly explosive, improvised "acid bomb" inside a North Lakeland McDonald's on Friday, the Polk Sheriff's Office reported.

One sheriff's official said the men were angry because they had received a bad milkshake from the restaurant a few days ago...."

SNIP..."Investigators say the men mixed toilet bowl cleaner and aluminum foil in a plastic soda bottle as they sat at a table Friday evening near the restrooms of the McDonald's at 6330 U.S. 98 N., near Daugherty Road.

The men then capped the bottle and left the restaurant, with the concoction still sitting on the table. It exploded about 10:45 p.m. Friday, Taylor said. It was unclear exactly how long the bottle sat before exploding.

When the bomb went off, most of its contents splattered against a wall and not across the aisle where a customer was chatting on his cell phone just 10 feet away, Taylor said....."

This is just bizarre stuff. He returned from Iraq in April.

[bluestateguy]

1. There will be a lot more like this one coming home from Iraq

..and the neo-cons, Bush cabal and the RNC will be content to cast them all out into the streets because they are no longer useful to their agenda of world conquest.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. No it is not taht bizzarre

let me take you back ten years, to Tijuana Mexico

We got a call from the Police Station, an Ameircan tourist had just driven his hand through a window doing nice damage to it while breaking the window

here is there things got interesting... he was a guard member, just come back from Kuwait, where he was present at the scudd missile bombing... he adressed me altaernatively as Ma'am, name rank serial number and motehr... we knew what was going on

And it comes down to lack of mental health services to over stressed troops... and a good dose of PTSD.

This is nto strange or weird... expect more of this. this is part of the price we will pay for this lunacy

[HawkerHurricane]

3. Teach men that violence is how you solve problems...

and they will solve problems with violence.

[madfloridian]

6. And violence begets more violence.

It is disturbing. I am so worried about our guys over there and what they are going through.

[TrueAmerican]

4. Now that the kids reading this story know how to make one

Not really responsible reporting when it details how to make a bomb.

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. hmm you can find that over the net

trust me you can... now I have to say it as a ficion writer I ahve to be careful not to put those details in

[TrueAmerican]

12. I know that

But it does not make it okay for a reporter to put the details in.

[madfloridian]

13. I never thought of that aspect.

That is not a good idea.

[silverlib]

5. Strange....

Weird things happen at McDonald's...

Two little boys, ages 5 and 3, were abandoned on the play-scape at the McDonald's down the street from my house today.

People don't get paid enough at McDonald's to put up with this stuff.

[fob]

22. Don't get paid enough? I thought they were all reclassified as MFG

jobs and now get prevailing wage?

(end sarcasm)

[AlCzervik]

8. disturbing indeed, maybe it will help get them out of the military.

hopefully no one got hurt.

[Cha]

9. It's starting like the many "weird" bizarre

things that the Viet Nam Veterans were compelled to do after coming home from War.

Things that the neoconers never take into consideration.

[madfloridian]

18. Yes, that is often forgotten.

I had friends whose husbands were never the same again.

[madfloridian]

10. All because of the bad milkshake.

This reminds me of the returning soldiers there at Ft. Bragg who killed their wives. (Was it 6) Almost impossible to find anything on that now. I have some articles saved just to remind myself it really happened.

[chemteacher]

11. Really Dangerous!!

In actuality, most cleansers are very basic...not acidic. If one of these went off near you, the chemical burns could be pretty bad!

This mixture is potentially explosive, too. I don't want to get too into the details in case freepers are lurking...but I use a similar process for demonstrations to my classes.

[kodi]

15. that's right, one can make a wmd from stuff under the kitchen sink

its true that most hard surface cleaners have a high pH but toilet bowl cleaners are usually acidic.

actually, in america with so many people with experience working with chemicals, i am surprised more crazy stuff doesn't happen, and you don't need fertilizer either like mcveigh did.

making chlorine and chloramine gases are a cinch.

[Eloriel]

19. Basic as in "alkaline" -- some of us more science challenged

DUers might need a little clarification on that. I needed to read "basic" a couple of times before I remembered.

[ProfessorGAC]

21. Sorry, That's Not Correct

Most toilet bowl cleaners have significant levels of hydrochloric, phosphoric or oxalic acid. The purpose is to assure that iron deposits from the water are brought to the Fe+3 stage salts, (like ferric chloride) which are highly soluble. The Fe+2 stage salts are not very soluble at all, and such iron compounds precipitate.

Most laundry products are basic, but not toilet bowl cleaners. Most laundry soaps are built around sodium carbonate, with neutral salt detergents as part of the matrix. So, these typically, in solution, have a pH of a little more than 10. But, the ionic strength tends to be fairly low.

While it is true that aluminum will directly react with strong alkali (like sodium hydroxide), giving off enough heat to vaporize some of the water, the reaction rate is far too slow to explode. The velocity of such a reaction would be under 20 meters per second. (An "in the head" calculation gives me about 19.6 m/s.) So, that wouldn't make a bomb. The heat is the result of the formation of aluminum hydroxide and sodium hydride, which then reacts with the residual water to form more NaOH. Until the water is gone, this reaction continues, or at least until no elemental aluminum is exposed. (Mass transfer rather than reaction rate limited.)

However, in the presence of a strong acid (like HCl), the aluminum chloride formation releases free hydrogen. That, plus the heat of reaction can cause conflagration. Hydrogen burns at about 400 m/s, so you could get a "bang" out of that, but still not a damaging one.

This "bomb" was meant as more of a nuisance odor generator, and not intended to destroy anything. At least i assume not, because it would have been a waste of time to build an explosive device that wouldn't really explode.
The Professor

[LisaL]

14. It's not really a surprise, is it?

This war screws up with their brains.

[IkeWarnedUs]

16. 60 Minutes tonight

Talked about how the Iraq war has changed - gotten more up close and personal. They interviewed a few soldiers, one of which talked about how there was always a distance between him and the people he killed. Now they were close enough for him to look them in the eyes before he killed them. He had a vacant look.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

17. Makes you wonder what kind of acts these guys have committed and witnessed

in Iraq that we will never know anything about.

[Toucano]

20. I feel MUCH safer now that Saddam is in jail. n/t