The only reason to smuggle a bomb inside one’s body would be to get it through a strict security system, as exists in most airports. Crump says it’s not worth the trouble; it’s almost impossible to bring down a plane with a cache of explosives small enough to be alimentarily smuggled. A packet the size of a cocktail wiener is about the limit of what can be swallowed without undue travail. An accomplice could push the explosive material into the bomber’s stomach in the form of a long thin tube, but the bomber would still need to swallow the timing device and somehow keep the digestive juices from rendering it inoperable.
Crump says a rectal bomb wouldn’t bring down a plane either. “At most, you’d blow the seat apart.” I showed him a Fox News piece that quoted unnamed explosives experts saying that a body bomb containing as little as five ounces of PETN could “blow a considerable hole” in an airline’s skin, causing it to crash. “Total codswallop,” said Crump. As fans of the TV program MythBusters know, even blowing out a window in flight won’t create explosive decompression. The cabin will depressurize, but as long as the oxygen masks drop, people are likely to survive. “Remember that Southwest 737?” asks Crump. “The roof panel ripped partway off and they were fine. As long as you’ve got the pilots at the controls, and the plane’s got wings and a tail, it will still fly.”
Most suicide bombers don’t achieve their goals via the explosives themselves. It’s shrapnel that kills people. The typical marketplace suicide bomb is packed with nails and ball bearings—things you can’t get past the airport metal detectors. To make a bomb that could bring down a plane, you’d need something that is, ounce for ounce, more explosive than TNT or C-4. Generally speaking, the more explosive the material, the more unstable it is. Trip and fall, or cough in the security line with a stomach full of TATP, and you may explode prematurely.
Materials found at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan are said to have included a plan for surgically implanting a bomb in a terrorist’s body—“in the love handles,” according to an unnamed U.S. government source quoted on the Daily Beast. (Breast implants have also been tossed around as a possibility.) Crump has heard credible rumors of Al Qaeda physicians having tried out body implantation on animals. “But here again,” Crump said, “there are a lot of issues. How to detonate it. How to keep the body from absorbing most of the blast.” How to protect the explosives and the detonator from moisture.
This was comforting, but only for a moment. “Really, why bother with all that?” Crump said. “With a bit of prior observation, I can generally figure out a way to avoid going through a body scanner at most international airports.”
THE PREFERENCE IN California prisons for rectal smuggling is a little surprising given the preponderance of Latinos and African Americans—two populations that are, taken as a whole, somewhat less comfortable with homosexuality. Prison, I’m guessing, is a place where extenuating circumstances erode the stigma that otherwise attaches to extracurricular uses of the rectum.
Rodriguez speaks freely about the situation in Avenal. Rather than antagonize gay inmates, he says, gang leaders tend to employ them. “We call them ‘vaults.’ If they’re reliable, the homies will approach them—‘Hey, check it out, you want to make some money?’”