On December 25, 2009, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab "boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam, which was bound for Detroit with some three hundred passengers and crew on board. Secreted in his underwear was a bomb made with eighty grams of PETN, a plastic explosive that was not detected at airport security in Amsterdam or the Nigerian city of Lagos, from where he had originally flown. He also carried a syringe with a chemical initiator that would set off the bomb. As the plane neared Detroit the young man…tried to initiate his bomb with the chemical, setting himself on fire and suffering severe burns. Some combination of his own ineptitude, faulty bomb construction, and the quick actions of the passengers and crew who subdued him and extinguished the fire prevented an explosion that might have brought down the plane… Immediately after he was arrested Abdulmutallab told investigators that the explosive device 'was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used.' "
– Peter Bergen, The Longest War, 304