Think about it. You'd have to contain the explosive in something that not only keeps the explosive from leaking and doing bad things to the bomber's innards, but is also sterile enough to prevent an infection from debilitating or killing the bomber from the date of surgery, through the recovery period, to the "mission" date. And to sterilize PETN in something like a breast implant shell, you're not going to put it in an autoclave, you'll need something low-temperature like an ETO sterilizer, which you're probably not going to find at the local bazaar.
Yes, I thought about this.
None of this is a technical, medical or supply problem.
- You can use any type of plastic explosive for this bomb, no need to go with PETN.
- Your implant doesn't have to survive decades like a regular surgical implant, it has to survive weeks. You could wrap the thing in teflon foil and seal it with a household vacuum bagger and it would be fine.
- I could probably find an ETO tabletop sterilizer in about 3 days. This is not a regulated export article, you ship it to 'Al Jihad Medical Clinic Lotsofvowealbad, Pakyrgistan' and nobody will bat an eye.
Then, you're counting on multiple failures in screening to get on the plane.
The current screening process doesn't screen for this kind of bomb. Pretty easy to count on that part.
Then the bomb has to actually work.
The ass-bomber was a dilletante whose handlers where dilletantes. Next go-around, we may not be that lucky.
Do you honestly think that the people who manage to kill US service men in armored vehicles using remotely detonated roadside bombs every week wouldn't be able to rig up something in the form-factor of a cellphone to transmit a signal through 1in of skin ?
I just don't buy this as a significant threat, sorry.
Odds are probably low, I don't loose much sleep over it either.
