Originally Posted by williamsg4713

I may be veering badly off-topic with this question, but would it be possible to blow up a plane with swallowed explosives? One problem, I think, would be that stomach acid would immediately start working on the containers; but while you could not obtain a precise time for the explosion, if the flight were a long one and the container material and thickness were properly chosen you could be fairly sure that the explosive would be released during the flight. But are there substances that would become explosive in the presence of stomach acids? And would it be possible to swallow a container large enough to contain a sufficient quantity? or, if numerous smaller containers were swallowed, would the content of each be released after a sufficiently uniform time so as to permit the critical mass of explosive material to be reached to permit a detonation adequate to the purpose?