I posted this after watching a Waco documentary. I imagine it took years for the town to become attractive for people wanting to find a new place to live. Still hard to comprehend a bomb could do that much damage. Two years earlier, I didn't realize McVeigh was watching the Waco incident from his vehicle.
Anyway just posted this out of curiosity on how much bomb making materials was required. Must have blown the lower floors and the rest collapsed. Oddly, McVeigh was already in custody before they could find him for a speeding ticket or something.
Reminds me of Ramzi Yousef's plot in '93. He wanted one of the WTCs to collapse into the other sending the whole thing over. Yousef was planning the Bojinka Plot which involved the Pope assassination, detonating 11 airliners, and sending a plane into the CIA headquarters. It was Khaleed Sheikh Mohammad who took his idea and made it into the 9-11 plot. I remember an agent or someone saying the 9-11 plot wasn't very sophisticated, but I disagree. Terrible as it was it was
very sophisticated. KSM knew the laws and boundaries to operated without being discovered. After leaving Afghanistan, the hijackers would ditch their passports saying they lost them, which would erase their travel history. Sure the plot didn't cost a staggering amount of money (maybe $1 million) but the effect was it worked.
en.wikipedia.org
Building the bomb[edit]
On April 17–18, 1995, McVeigh and Nichols removed the bomb supplies from their storage unit in Herington, Kansas, where Nichols lived, and loaded them into the Ryder rental truck.[56] They then drove to Geary Lake State Park, where they nailed boards onto the floor of the truck to hold the 13 barrels in place and mixed the chemicals using plastic buckets and a bathroom scale.[57] Each filled barrel weighed nearly 500 pounds (230 kg).[58] McVeigh added more explosives to the driver's side of the cargo bay, which he could ignite (killing himself in the process) at close range with his Glock 21 pistol in case the primary fuses failed.[59] During McVeigh's trial, Lori Fortier stated that McVeigh claimed to have arranged the barrels in order to form a shaped charge.[45] This was achieved by tamping the aluminum side panel of the truck with bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer to direct the blast laterally towards the building.[60] Specifically, McVeigh arranged the barrels in the shape of a backwards J; he later said that for pure destructive power, he would have put the barrels on the side of the cargo bay closest to the Murrah Building; however, such an unevenly distributed 7,000-pound (3,200 kg) load might have broken an axle, flipped the truck over, or at least caused it to lean to one side, which could have drawn attention.[58] All or most of the barrels of ANNM contained metal cylinders of acetylene intended to increase the fireball and the brisance of the explosion.[61]
McVeigh then added a dual-fuse ignition system accessible from the truck's front cab. He drilled two holes in the cab of the truck under the seat, while two holes were also drilled in the body of the truck. One green cannon fuse was run through each hole into the cab. These time-delayed fuses led from the cab through plastic fish-tank tubing conduit to two sets of non-electric blasting caps which would ignite around 350 pounds (160 kg) of the high-grade explosives that McVeigh stole from a rock quarry.[58] The tubing was painted yellow to blend in with the truck's livery, and duct-taped in place to the wall to make it harder to disable by yanking from the outside.[58] The fuses were set up to initiate, through shock tubes, the 350 pounds (160 kg) of Tovex Blastrite Gel sausages, which would in turn set off the configuration of barrels. Of the 13 filled barrels, nine contained ammonium nitrate and nitromethane, and four contained a mixture of the fertilizer and about 4 U.S. gallons (3.3 imp gal; 15 L) of diesel fuel.[58] Additional materials and tools used for manufacturing the bomb were left in the truck to be destroyed in the blast.[58] After finishing the truck bomb, the two men separated; Nichols returned home to Herington and McVeigh traveled with the truck to Junction City. The bomb cost about $5000 to make.[62]