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Notes -
The obvious question is then how good is 25 pounds of black powder compared to just driving a car into a group of people?
It's not like you can easily pack it very tightly against a building etc since it's, well, 25 pounds, so just slightly smaller than 2 gallons of water.
I'm no expert, but purely by the numbers, the energy density by volume of TNT is only about 33% higher than that of blackpowder, while TNT's combustion speed is 3-6 times higher. I'm not saying that BP is harmless, but constructing a bomb for terrorism purposes using it instead of modern explosives probably requires a much different design.
Depends on what the goal and/or target of the terrorist is. Is there an effective difference between dozens and hundreds of causalities? How important is successfully evading law enforcement before and after?
A relatively small number of standard pipe bombs or nail bombs - each containing a couple of pounds of black powder - are devastating in crowds, i.e. the classics in modern terrorism: packed bars, Christmas markets, street events/demonstrations. The chance to escape after is higher than with a truck attack, and the chance to evade detection before is higher than with most more modern explosives.
But yes, if you want the headlines to contain "hundreds" or "thousands", you don't want an empty truck, and you don't want black powder.
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