>* But what is the maximum possible damage from a burning battery?*

As opposed to the one from bottled water?

Airports around the world must make a fortune selling bottled water. That rule is never going away no matter how stupid it is :-(

I've yet to step foot in an airport that didn't have water fountains, and won't let you take an empty reusable bottle through security. There's no need to buy bottled water.

I take empty bottles always, but most airports have no fountains and only hot water in the bathrooms.

I don't remember any fountains in the Warsaw airport.

The exception that proves the rule (else it wouldn't be a rule, but a universal law that goes without saying)...

http://comicfury.com/forum/viewthread.php?id=26895

Heathrow, too, the last time I was there—though it was a long time ago. (I actually asked.)

I think the point is that it might not water...

In that case your "small toothpaste" (which is allowed) might not be that either.

And you can always dilute it in your air-hostess delivered water if you're so inclined and you just need to have your poison/whatever in liquid form...

The threat they are trying to guard against is binary liquid explosives, where you mix two liquids to make a bomb, so volume does matter.

Of course, it's a idiotic way to accomplish their goal anyway, but their goal is idiotic anyway, so it's all security theater anyway.

> binary explosives ...

Please, what a frigging joke. Be cooped up in a small bumpy space for hours trying to create a very touchy explosive.

... hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid ... put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.

I never said it was a legitimate threat (in fact, I called it idiotic), just saying that no one was ever worried about poison. You could say they should be worried about poison in the sense that poison attacks seem much easier and much more likely to be effective than explosive attacks, but then again they should be worried about nothing, since terrorism is so rare that it's not worth nearly the amount of attention it gets.

I hope you like lists.

Yeah a bottle of nitroglycerin would probably take down a plane while it would be hard with a battery. Amateur videos of both:

nitro: https://youtu.be/BLB_F2P9pSI?t=3s

phone battery: https://youtu.be/GEo0RhEhFYc?t=19s

Not sure health and safety would have approved of the nitro one.