Posts Tagged ‘Nayef’

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN, also known as pentrite) is one of the most powerful high explosives known.

PETN is used in Detonating Cord of which it is the explosive core where it develops a velocity rate of 21,000 feet per second. PETN is also the component used in percussion caps of bullets and also a component of detonators used to detonate High Explosive charges. The more conventional types of High Explosives require a massive shock to be passed through it in order to detonate it and that is why PETN is so efficient as PETN requires very little energy to initiate it but when initiated provides the massive boost to detonate more conventional High Explosives. In layman’s terms it is a very effective and powerful explosive that requires a lot less energy to detonate it than most other High Explosives but when detonated has devastating effects.

PETN is a component of the plastic explosive (Semtex-H) used to destroy a commercial jet (Pan Am Flight 103) near Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.

PETN explosive was used by the so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid, who attempted to blow up an American Airlines flight between Paris, France, and Miami, Florida, in December 2001.

The would-be assassin of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Nayef hid his bomb in his underwear, apparently believing that cultural taboos would prevent a search in that part of his body. The Saudis said they think the bomb weighed 100 grams of PETN.

Cut and paste the link below into your browser and see what 50g (typical bag of peanuts) of PETN can do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZENvUVG6TE