Really?

>Investigators also found hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, which the agency described as “an explosive material that is so unstable it can be exploded merely as a result of friction or temperature changes.”

I mean, I don't even have to look that chemical up to see that it is explosive.

> The people who want to harm our country don't seem to have any difficulty doing it.

We see the examples of successful attempts at harm, most of us don't pay much attention to the failed attempts, which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about how hard it go from "attempted harm" to "actual harm".

It seems likely you could do far more harm with 150 finished explosive devices than driving a truck through a crowd. There’s many examples of people driving into dense crowds and the death totals are rarely in the double digits. Ex: 5 dead 235 injured https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Magdeburg_car_attack

Though obviously the amount of explosives per device is going to modify the risk profile.

Some are very effective: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

86 deaths, 434 injured

That’s leaving the territory of what most people have ready access to.

The poser referred to a “6,500lb truck” vs “19-tonne Renault Midlum cargo truck” used in that attack.

it is fairly trivial to get access to a medium or large panel truck, either by theft, or by simply getting a CDL.

the 9/11 attackers went though flight school to be able to hijack planes. meanwhile getting a CDL is like $6k for out of state, $2k for in state, and ~$400 if you can demonstrate need / poverty. the classes are readily available at any community college, and can be done by anyone who can drive, basically.

The difference between things that can happen through inattention vs a drunk person might do while really pissed vs things that require significant preparation has major implications for how often they occur.

Vehicles are used to kill a great number of people per year, but it’s really unusual to find someone who actually killed 50+ people through a vehicle alone. Meanwhile there’s significantly more people who used bombs to reach those numbers, despite how much more difficult it is to access significant quantities of explosives.

They're pipe bombs so quite low yield. They're typically based on smokeless powder so they're "low explosives" meaning they don't really detonate, they deflagrate at below the speed of sound.

Pipe bombs cover a wide range and can be extremely deadly or basically a dud.

There’s no mention of the guy using smokeless powder just hexamethylene triperoxide diamine which is an actual high explosive.

Some of the bombs shown were labeled ETN [0], likely erythritol tetranitrate [1]

0: https://ktla.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2024/12/FBI-pipe...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythritol_tetranitrate

A truck full of ammonium nitrate, which trucks occasionally carry, could do a lot more damage than 150 handmade explosives.

There is occasionally discussions if we should ban trucks that carries dangerous materials from driving near large cities. The main counter argument is that the number of people who has access to trucks with dangerous goods in them is so few compared to the number of people with access to a car. Thus the more logical solution to mitigate risks is to address car access to areas with crowds.

Again, scale isn’t mentioned. 150 devices could be several tons of high explosives which are more dangerous than a truck of ammonium nitrate which only becomes an explosive when mixed with other chemicals.

> ammonium nitrate which only becomes an explosive when mixed with other chemicals

This is incorrect, ammonium nitrate is intrinsically high-explosive. It is mixed with other ingredients to improve performance and/or sensitize it but this is not required. There are several famous examples of stored ammonium nitrate exploding e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosion

The confusion likely stems from Ammonium Nitrate (uncontaminated) generally only being explosive when hit with a very high speed shockwave (aka a booster charge + detonator in typical mining/blasting applications), or when sensitized with other chemicals (like with tannerite).

Most of those other blasts, including Beirut, involved lots of contamination of the AN + large fires + very large quantities of ammonium nitrate.

In truckload or less quantities, and when not contaminated with specific substances, ammonium nitrate is pretty much impossible to detonate without a sizable quantity of some other high explosive.

You’re of course technically correct, but in practice a truck of ammonium nitrate is basically inert on its own.

If you’re going to assume they have access to significant explosives to actually detonate pure ammonium nitrate, then you also need to consider flour and other ‘safe’ compounds due to the potential for even larger fuel air explosions.