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2007-08-09 Down Under

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Posted by Phil_B 2007-08-09 05:44|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 I think the kid read The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn and Hal Iggulden just a little too seriously.

Posted by Eric Jablow">Eric Jablow 2007-08-09 08:56|| 2007-08-09 08:56|| Front Page Top

#2 Then there's the Nuclear Boy Scout

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-08-09 09:19|| 2007-08-09 09:19|| Front Page Top

#3 By the time I was 13 I could make ammonium nitrate fuel oil explosives (and even knew which accelerants to add), made my own thermite and even had magensium igniters for it, and used NI3 as a contact explosive to mess with mice. I even made napalm (well sort-of - polystyrene and high octane avgas, a little bit of Tide detergent), because "Napalm sticks to kids".

Thank God these laws were not in effect when I was a kid.

Posted by OldSpook 2007-08-09 10:09|| 2007-08-09 10:09|| Front Page Top

#4 Before you get the wrong idea, I learned to use dynamite and blasting caps with my grandpa when he was clearing stumps. He was what people would term today "a character".

Posted by OldSpook 2007-08-09 10:17|| 2007-08-09 10:17|| Front Page Top

#5 Potassium permanganete, magnesium, and sulphur burn very quickly, and when confined - say in rolled-up sheet of paper with the ends sealed - can make quite a bang. Ignites quite handily with standard cannon fuse.

Posted by Why You Should not Have Guns 2007-08-09 11:20|| 2007-08-09 11:20|| Front Page Top

#6 My father was a science teacher and we promptly raided his chemical locker. We made our own gunpowder, "caramel candy", napalm (gasoline and Jell-O) and contact explosives (permanganate and sodium perchlorate). We subsequently discovered the joys of refilling CO₂ cartridges with perchlorate and sugar then gluing in a length of underwater fuse.

My oldest brother had sufficient nerve to hand throw one of these in the air for grins down near the bottom of our one-acre lot. My mother, who was in the house at the time, thought the Southern Pacific train that ran by our house had derailed.

Our parents made all of us sign a test-ban treaty.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-08-09 20:18|| 2007-08-09 20:18|| Front Page Top

#7 Zen you should see what they do in an old water filled quarry. We staged WW2 submarine (fantasy) battles before we got caught by someone wondering who the hell had started blasting at the old quarry.

Posted by OldSpook 2007-08-09 21:06|| 2007-08-09 21:06|| Front Page Top

#8 I am proud to say that all of us were very safety conscious. Not a single one of us was ever seriously injured, just minor and some not-so-minor burns, but that was it. Kids who packed film cans with match heads never impressed us. I'm still a big fireworks fan to this day.

One thing I want to try in my lifetime is visiting this gang of pyros who party in Nevada. These folks have "races" where they take an old Electrolux "bullet" horizontal canister vacuum cleaner, dip the intake hose into a bucket of gasoline and then spark off the outake once the thing gets up to speed. The last one still blasting out several feet of flame "wins" the prize.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-08-09 22:15|| 2007-08-09 22:15|| Front Page Top

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