On this week’s episode of The Wire on HBO (a great show, by the way!) some underworld figures are trying to get some dock workers to steal mass amounts of the following chemicals: acetone, sulfuric acid, and potassium permanganate.
Why would criminals want these things? My guess is to make plastic explosive or some other explosives for terrorist uses.
Not looking for recipes, just trying to predict where the plot is heading. Thanks.
Look up the chemical separately and check their incompatibilities. Your guess is probably accurate.
I’m guessing they won’t use an exact bomb formula (kinda like the “orange juice concentrate and gasoline” fake napalm in Fight Club)… but acetone, sulfuric acid, and potassium permanganate DO sound likely for a bomb.
However, if I remember correctly, more sulfuric acid is produced industrially than any other chemical, and potassium permanganate can be used for many, many reactions… so it COULD end up being something else… but, really, what fun would it be if The Greek just wants to make a new nail polish remover?
Yeah, when I searched I got a bunch of links to lists of chemical incompatibilities. So obviously they don’t play well together.
I was just hoping someone could say whether these specific materials are used to manufacture C-4 or some other particular product.
It looks like they just picked out some chemicals that sound nasty. Maybe the writers did a search and found the same lists mentioned above.
Potassium permanganate and sulphuric acid react to give IIRC a green oil, manganese oxide Mn2O7, which is explosive and very unstable.
Generally, oxidizers (eg permanganates) should be kept away from flammables (eg acteone) and sulphuric acid can be used as a catalyst.
So, looks like authors poetic licence as far as some special type of explosive goes, but I could be wrong.
Short answer, you will have to watch the rest of the season.
They are all very common chemicals and can also be used in a variety of drug syntheses…
Phenyl-2-Propanone (precursor to methamphetamine)
methcathinone (cat)
mescaline
methaqualone (quaalude)
as well as the extraction and conversion of cocaine alkaloids to their hcl salt.
Why not google the whole lot, Squink?
Note that that’s coke, not heroin.
But in that reference, those are listed as waste products of producing cocaine, not ingredients for making it. They don’t sound like something you’d want to steal.
No, those are the raw materials. They may end up contaminated and dumped, but you don’t get them as byproducts of the extraction process. It’s not like kerosene or any of the other listed items are actually generated from coca plants.
Ah, I thought that might be it, since there were at least two earlier (brief) discussions in the episode about cutting heroin… but the detail is EXPECTING drugs, so I figured it’d find something else…
If you have no idea what I’m talking about… watch the show. Definitely one of the best things on TV these days.
Ah, my apologies.