Binary Explosive, Tannerite: the Truth

Now why is there so much fuss over Tannerite. All a punk would know about Tannerite is that, it’s a binary impact detonate explosive. The hack is to mix a jar of white stuff with some grey stuff and get it kicked by a high speed amunition (30-06 round) from 50m distance. Well Stallone didn’t do the same stuff in The Specialist, the explosive experts can tell you better. Primarily Tannerite is sold as explosives for police use or to control avalanche. But now that its a legal explosive for unlicensed users the concerns are rising. Tannerite is fast growing as a home made explosive. More because Tannerite is easily available at Tannerite.com.

There is much ado about Tannerite being used as a potential threat as an explosive.  I’ll let you the rudimentary to elborate things for you to decide. Tannerite combines two components, a sensitizer and a bulk material. The sensitizer is a mixture of 90% dark flake aluminium powder, 5% Titanium and 5% zirconium hydroxide. The bulk material is a mixture of 85% ammonium nitrate and 15% ammonium perchlorate. To generate a less sensitive Tannerite a mixtures of ammonium nitrate and aluminium powder would do.

The grape-wines suggest, domestic terrorist are using this stuff to wreak havoc. There are certain incidents in favor of such apprehensions. On January 14th, 2008 a man in Red Wing, Minnesota detonated a 100 lb tannerite inside the bed of a dump truck by shooting it. Impact of the blast was felt at the Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plant.

The apprehensions cannot be grossly overlooked. There are voices against the legal status of the explosive. Still, it needs to highlighted that tannerite needs to be detonated by a high speed detonator, say a bullet. Hardly would a terrorist avail the risk to shoot the explosive only to see his head blow out before he could pull off the trigger. Most importantly, the bottomline reads even if Tannerite is totally prohibited that wouldn’t stop the assassins from manufacturing their own explosives.