Word: ammonium
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...blast that size also required a great deal of explosive material--4,000 lbs. by one estimate. If the terrorists bought ammonium nitrate in standard 50-lb. bags, that's 80 bags--a cumbersome load for sure, but one that would fit snugly into a midsize Ryder truck. If all the material detonated--and there is reason to believe it didn't--the explosion released more energy than the blast from a ton of dynamite...
Some 95% of all commercial explosives work done in the U.S. uses ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in specially prepared mixtures called ANFO, according to Jeffrey Dean, executive director of the International Society of Explosives Engineers in Cleveland. The combination is ideal for blowing rock out of quarries, mining rich veins of ore and laying roads. It's ideal not only because of its destructive potential but also for its relative safety. So stable that it cannot explode spontaneously, ANFO is considerably safer than dynamite, which contains volatile nitroglycerin. You can light a match to ANFO, jump up and down...
There are more than 800 different commercially available ANFO preparations. One of the more common mixtures uses pellets of ammonium nitrate mixed with diesel fuel to form a semiliquid that has a consistency of mayonnaise. Because of ANFO's stability, it is usually transported in heavy- duty trucks that often resemble cement mixers. Or construction crews can mix it on site by combining bags of high-grade ammonium nitrate with drums full of fuel...
While it is doubtful that the ANFO used in the Oklahoma blast was purchased or stolen, someone with the right kind of knowledge could have concocted it by using ammonium- nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel. The fertilizer is not as pure a preparation as what is used for demolition work and has to be treated before it can be converted into an explosive substance. But such information is available in books published by fringe presses and on the Internet...
...explosives, amateur bombmakers can easily blow themselves up if they are not careful. "ANFO is easy to make if you know how to do it, but it takes years of experience to work with it safely," says Dean. Moreover, it is almost impossible for amateurs to mix thoroughly the ammonium nitrate with the fuel oil. (Commercial manufacturers use industrial-size blenders for the job.) Clumps of ammonium nitrate will fail to detonate--leaving investigators with good clues about the materials used to make the bomb. That is apparently what happened in California one morning in 1990, when a disgruntled engineer...