Magnesium and the TSA
I just reviewed Jack McDevitt's latest Alex Benedict novel, Echo (look for the review in December's SFRevu). In it, an ingenious device is used in an assassination attempt, and it occurs to me both that it would work nicely on an airplane and that the TSA wouldn't have a clue until well after the fact.
Picture an ornamental metal sculpture (a pagoda in the book) about the size of a long shoebox. It's filled with powdered magnesium, which when ignited combines with oxygen to make magnesium oxide. The shoebox sized unit holds enough magnesium to use up all the oxygen in a 40 cubic meter room, promptly suffocating anyone in the room. The interior of a jet is more than 40 cubic meters, so you'd need to have more than one of these gadgets. In action, removing the oxygen (20 percent of the air) would cause a pressure drop, triggering the release of oxygen masks, but I bet people would die anyway.
Hey, TSA! Are you ready for this?
posted by Tom Easton @ 6:12 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I estimate that for a 40 cubic meter room one would need to ignite the entirety of 53.6 pounds of powdered magnesium at STP. However realistically I believe that the air turnover in most modern homes could accommodated this reactions demand for oxygen. Maybe in the far future homes will be more efficient and thus susceptible to Magnesium strikes. However, much like modern homes air planes have a surprisingly high air turn over. The Boeing 747 has an air turnover every 2-3 minutes. If you could get this heavy package past the TSA (perhaps 100lb of Mg powder), which I believe could be done. I don't know what it would do. A Magnesium burn is bright and I believe the high temperatures may ignite surrounding items. This would cause smoke and other irritants in the air. However, I don't think this would kill by suffocating anyone. It would give the TSA an excuse to ask for more funding.
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