So I’ve got a medical gel that contains nitroglycerin – but is this something I really wanna pack in my luggage these days?
That is, is the amount of nitroglycerin (either 2% or .2%) gonna unleash all hell with lights and buzzers and men with machine guns when a bomb sniffer gets wind of it?
Nope, it is a common medicine and in its pill form can not be rendered explosive. The air port rent-a-cops know this, I hope, and it should not be a problem.
Im no expert, but I doubt that it contains the same nitroglycerine that explodes when knocked violently.
Of course it is the same nitroglycerine that explodes when knocked violently. Dynamite has it, too. It is just mixed with the appropriate binders to render it more stable, in the latter.
In pill form, the required concentration is certianly low enough that the amount of binders added make it completely non-explosive.
From Beeblebrox’s link:
Now I have a friend that carries around this plastic vial of nitro and it’s a liquid. I’m sure this stuff is non explosive also but could someone destabilize this stuff and make it explosive with whatever they could smuggle on a plane? Or would that take more work and materials than a group of terrorists could fit in the airplane restroom?
In order to make an explosion big enough to do any damage, they would have to have a huge amount of the medicinal liquid to start with because it’s so dilute. Concentrating it enough to make it explosive would be difficult and time consuming and probably not practical to do on a plane in the amount of time and space you’d have. (Stewardesses usually notice when you set up a distillation apparatus or a chromatography column in the seat next to you, for example.) It would probably be easier just to find a way to smuggle the pure stuff on board.