Parsons Green Tube Bucket Bomb

[Elvis]

When I saw the bucket, my first thought was a house painter carrying his mostly-empty bucket of paint thinnner which spontaneously ignited. Seems a little crazy, I know, but it could totally happen.

Spontaneous Combustion:
Help Keep This Serious Fire Hazard from Happening to Your Home

What is Spontaneous Combustion?

The actual definition is “the outbreak of fire without application of heat from an external source”. This combustion most often occurs when a flammable material (oil, stain, gasoline or other solvents) comes into contact with a combustible object (rag, towel, or drop cloth).

Spontaneous combustion, sometimes referred to as spontaneous ignition, begins when a combustible object is heated to its ignition temperature by a slow oxidation process. Oxidation is a chemical reaction involving the oxygen in the air around us gradually raising the inside temperature of something (like a pile of rags) to the point at which a fire starts.

Spontaneous combustion happens more than you would think and causes major fire losses each year. One of the most common scenarios is when floors, woodwork or decking are being refinished and stain-soaked rags are left in a heap on the floor or deck. Simply not storing these rags properly can cause major fire damage. The warmer the weather, the quicker the rags can reach ignition temperature.

Common Offenders*:
• Linseed oil and other drying oils
• Wood Stain
• Alkyd Enamel Resins
• Motor Fuels
• Oil-based products such as primer, sealer, paint, White-Pigmented Shellac, paint thinner, turpentine, mineral spirits and denatured alcohol.


* Read and follow the safety precautions listed on the container of any solvent-based material

https://www.chubb.com/cpiebcontent/cpih ... ion%20.pdf

It does look like there's some kind of fabric in/on/coming out of the bucket.

I honestly think this theory makes more sense than "misfired terrorist bomb." Unless I missed the revealing of the precise contents of the bucket or mechanism. The bucket reminds me of a Home Depot™ project.

Okay, now: could some paint thinner, paint, woodstain or petrol in a bucket cause a pillar of flame that would expand out along the carriage ceiling for at least a metre or two?

A cursory check on YouTube coughs up this mostly inconclusive experiment:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vv8p6WHpno


In this one it doesn't look like much paint thinner to get a pretty high "fireball":


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLVZyGYnHM

[Elvis]

^^^^ Put that together with this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0Spw3tGqQ

Case closed.

[Elvis]

Here we have a loud "BANG!" and explosion of sorts—a mostly-empty can of thinner tossed into the flame? or, the bang might be gunfire, which stirred up the flames.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVxHMxVXiKw

[MacCruiskeen]

Nah, Elvis, I've seen a police spokeman claiming a detonator was found. (Though not [yet] a passport, amazingly enough.) They are playing up the TERROR angle for all it's worth.

But all this stuff is just a distraction from the obvious question: Who brought a heavy bucket in a Lidl bag onto a "packed" (sic) Tube train in the early-morning rush-hour, and then parked it in front of a door?



That is not a typical commuter's typical accessory. It's impossible to believe that nobody saw him, or it. He must have been noticed, and no doubt glared at - floor space is at a premium on a crowded train. So how did he manage to get away? - and entirely unscathed too, despite that terrifying "wall of flame shooting through the carriage" (sic). Was he wearing a suit of armour?

The police must have had several eyewitness descriptions of the culprit almost immediately. Not to mention that there are multiple survellance cameras on every train and in every station.

[MacCruiskeen]

The mismatch between the physical evidence and the media freakout is really striking. It's almost as if the story was written before the incident non-event took place. A wet fart blown up into a national emergency. Armed cops are out in force as far away as Scotland.

[Elvis]

Ah thanks, I see wires there in that pic.

Has the explosive/flammable/combustible material used been reported? I'd guess a volatile, fast-burning solvent or liquid fuel to make a big fireball that burned out quickly.

My friend's nose got singed pretty good when his mixture of hash oil and 30-60º pet ether caught fire.I was reading the newspaper and looked up in time to see a column of solid flame going from floor to ceiling. It was pretty cool much worse than that train car bucket incident, not including the stampede of course. We got into my lime-green Ford Galaxie and calmly sped to the ER. I waited about twenty minutes and he came out with big bandage on his nose.

BTW what's that white thing behind the bucket, that looks like an enamel kitchen appliance?

[MacCruiskeen]

No idea what the white thing is. (The lid of the bucket, maybe?) But what's that black towel doing there? The alleged "wall of fire shooting down the carriage" wasn't even strong enough to destroy the towel, or even to shift it from the bucket.

But I'm not going to pay much more attention to this nonsense, if I can help it. As Grizzly says, what's the point? It's all just post-reality as usual. Journalism died with 9/11 and 7/7, so it's no wonder they're now selling us a smouldering towel as a dire threat to civilization.

I do wonder how the culprit performed his vanishing trick. Maybe he dematerialized? In post-reality, anything is possible.

[MacCruiskeen]

OT:

WR, if you're around I'd be much obliged if you'd replace this shouty thread title with "Parsons Green Tube Bucket Bomb". Thanks.

While I'm at it, would you mind also replacing the thread-title "novaramedia.com" in the Lounge with the much more accurate title, "some websites". That's been bugging me for a while now.

No more requests, I promise. No, wait, maybe you could also play "My Sharona" for my ex-wife Sharona and tell her she's the tops. Thanksh, buddy.

[MacCruiskeen]

Back on-topic:

The police arrested this 18-year-old kid in Dover nearly 36 hours ago, yet they still haven't charged him or released him. Why not? Why the delay? They must have both multiple eyewitness descriptions and numerous CCTV images of whoever carried that conspicuous bag into the station, onto the platform and then onto the train.

If he really is the culprit, then it really cannot be hard to identify him as such.



Running down the length of my thiiiiighs, Sharona. (Danke schön.)

[MacCruiskeen]

Say what you like about the Parsons Green Tube Bucket Bomb; it has at least inspired some amazingly bad writing:

Yummy mummies, stampeding mini-tsunamis, a very british queue, and a small but sweet setback.

It will make your eyes bleed.

[DrEvil]

It's perfectly possible that the device in the picture was moved around in the rush to get off and that it went off somewhere else in the carriage.

Logically possible, but not even remotely plausible. People do not rush towards a just-exploded bomb, most especially if it is still burning. And they certainly do not kick it around like a football.

Sure they do. If you're in a packed crowd that's panicking you don't really have much choice where to go.

Of course you do: You go straight for the exit. Extremely easy to locate on a Tube train, especially in broad daylight when the train's in a station and the doors are wide open.

You're missing the point. If everyone is rushing for the doors then that's the way you're going too, whether you want to or not. If you're stuck in the middle of the crowd you don't have the option of stepping to the left or the right, you go where they carry you, even if the device happens to be between you and the nearest door.

You go with the crowd whether you want to or not, and panicking people don't usually look too closely where they're going (that's how people get trampled in the first place) and could easily have kicked the bucket around without even knowing it.

Complete nonsense. You are confusing sane and intact human beings with headless chickens. No one ran towards the blast. Why on earth should they? They were neither insane nor blind. The burning bucket was parked, in broad daylight, right in the corner on the track-side of the train, i.e., where the doors remained closed, So there was absolutely no reason for anyone to approach even within a foot of it.



Meanwhile, the doors were wide open on the platform-side when the blast took place. Departure could not have been easier,

Do you even know what the word panic means? You have no way of knowing if where the bomb was pictured is where it went off. Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that it went off in the middle of the crowd somewhere to the left of the doors in the picture. Isn't it then feasible that it was kicked/dragged/pushed along with the panicking crowd heading for the doors, and that it ended up in the corner where it was later photographed?

panicking people don't usually look too closely where they're going (that's how people get trampled in the first place)

Take a closer look at the news reports (and google some images of a London Tube train while you're at it.) Not one witness has even suggested that anyone got trampled in the carriage. The panic and the trampling took place on the stairway in the single exit from the station after the entire train was evacuated ("Run!" "Run!") and hundreds of baffled people from other carriages got jammed on the stairway to the street. Parsons Green station is not Kings Cross; it's not equipped to cope with hundreds of people departing all at once and in a terrible hurry.

At least two people filmed and photographed the bucket in situ, always in the same position and never knocked over. So I don't know why you would even bring up the absurd idea that this semi-exploded bomblet might have been moved.

Those pictures were taken after it all happened. My point is we have no way of knowing if the bomb was moved (intentionally or not) in the rush to get off the train. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. We don't know, and claiming otherwise is just stupid.

Wider view of the carriage here (phone camera, 37 secs):

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pa ... n-11175267

The whole carriage is spotless, despite the alleged "wall of flame".

ON EDIT: Also, why are those women - and the person doing the filming - hanging around on the platform, three yards away from the still-burning "bomb"? Chatting away, perfectly unworried. ("Ooh, look!") Clearly they haven't a care in the world. But I thought everyone on the train had just rushed off in a terrible panic? I thought there was a scene "like Hillsborough" (sic) in the sole exit from the platform? I thought people were crushed, lying in heaps, bloody and screaming?

Someone is telling lies. That much is obvious.

Disclaimer: I'm just speculating. I don't know any more than you do what exactly happened there, but as a general rule of thumb I think it's a good idea to try out the mundane explanations before you go jumping down the whole manufactured event rabbit hole. You seem to be implying that the witnesses are lying for some reason, with no actual evidence to back that assertion up. You're building a narrative on very shaky ground.

[MacCruiskeen]

Look, Dr Evil: Find me just one (1) eyewitness who even remotely suggests that the "panicking" passengers kicked the still-burning bomb about while struggling to find the wide-open doors of the train in broad daylight (!!), and I will bother replying to that very lengthy post. Just one witness will do. Otherwise I refuse to waste my time on these ridiculous hypotheticals. They are all in your own head and nowhere else.

You clearly missed this photo, or else you just chose to ignore it:

That's what the carriage looks like. That's how many doors it has, and how wide they are. That's how sunny the day was. And the doors were open. (Those particular carriages also have flip-up seats, btw, so that means plenty of space to move when no one is sitting. That's why there is not a seat to be seen in that photo.)

PS I also cannot prove that the bomb was not shifted by a sneaky Russian spy or by a passing fox, so let's nip those two options in the bud as well, please. (Poltergeists? Hmmm...)

[MacCruiskeen]

From that execrable Mail on Sunday article, by Mr Ben Felsenburg, who quotes an alleged eyewitness:

I was, to be honest, in a bit of a state. I wasn’t alone. I got talking to a young man, Sam Flay, who was teary and shaky but bright and remarkably cogent.

His story came out: he’d been right there, at the ground zero end of the train, and simultaneously heard the blast and saw the fire erupt from what he described as a ‘bag for life’. [WTF?] He felt the heat on his face from the flames that seemed to be everywhere.

He said: ‘There was a kind of thudding noise and the lid of the bucket popped off. [WTF?] The next thing I knew a blinding ball of fire just filled the whole carriage.

‘The heat and light were so intense. There was some kind of thick yellow gel that filled the carriage and had squirted out of the bucket. [WTF?] Luckily I was sitting down and surrounded by people.

‘I turned my head away from the heat and only singed the back of my hair. But there were others whose faces were really badly burned and just looked dazed. People suddenly started screaming and trying to bundle out the train.

Some had been knocked to the floor by the force of the blast. One woman was just rocking back and forth, frozen to the spot, and had to be carried out.

...


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4szD2P07c

This sounds entirely fictional, to be honest. I'm not sure Young Sam Flay even exists. But let's take it at face value. Young Sam says that he saw the Lidl bag (which he bafflingly refers to as "a bag for life" *), that he saw the bucket, and that he saw the lid terrifyingly "pop off". He's a very observant young man. But what's this "gel" he refers to? And above all: WHO was in charge of that bag? Who was even in its vicinity? Young Sam doesn't say, and of course Old Ben (the Mail hack) doesn't ask him. Yet a descripton of the bag's owner would be the single most important lead in solving the fucking crime. No doubt that's why Ben doesn't ask Sam the question, or at least doesn't report what he replied.

It's all very striking this, seriously. All these alleged close-range eyewitnesses, not one of whom even mentions the bag's owner, much less describes him.**
.

* A plastic carrier bag from the Lidl supermarket chain is one of the most mundane sights in Europe, from the Hebrides to Bavaria. I have no idea why Young Sam refers to it as "a bag for life". Was he tripping on acid at the time?

** Or her. I am beginning to suspect it was Miss Pretty in Pink (of MI5), aka Miss Moneypenny. She's the most prominent and the most-photographed of all the alleged victims, she's strikingly pretty and well-dressed, she's as cool as Bond himself, and she's (striding) all over the media. Her boots are made for walking, Yet she's practically the only "victim" photographed who has never yet been named or interviewed.

And, unlike all the others, she's never not accompanied by the police.


The Angel of Parsons Green (left)

[SonicG]

This photo was reportedly taken "minutes after"



From this Mail article
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ondon.html

There is also an interesting video there of the bomb still "burning" and being watched through closed doors...Bomb failed and person responsible got off a stop or two prior...

[Grizzly]

I personally think someone has been given the go ahead to literally fuck with our heads by seeing how far they can methodically push reality; and how much we will 'moo like cows'.... just to fuck with us. There's, 'the strategy of tension', but also some tavinstock (sp?) shit I remember reading about about pushing the collective past their window of tolerance. What's above and below the average persona's window of tolerance?