[HN Gopher] Anarchist Cookbook (1971) [pdf]
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Anarchist Cookbook (1971) [pdf]
        
       Author : brudgers
       Score  : 107 points
       Date   : 2023-01-14 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ia600700.us.archive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ia600700.us.archive.org)
        
       | chris1993 wrote:
       | I had a holiday job at the police forensics lab library in
       | Auckland in the early 80s. This was one of the many documents
       | that had been confiscated by police and carefully catalogued and
       | stored away.
        
       | lampshades wrote:
       | I remember downloading this and something published by some
       | Islamic group on Freenet almost (or exactly?) 20 years ago. Never
       | read either of them. I just wanted them because I wasn't supposed
       | to have them.
       | 
       | Edit: really makes you feel old when you start talking about
       | things you did 20 years ago on the internet.
        
         | itronitron wrote:
         | 20 years ago was still 21st century, if that helps you feel any
         | better.
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | No, 20 years ago was well back in...
           | 
           | Oh dear.
        
         | brudgers wrote:
         | I read my older brother's borrowed copy when I was in junior
         | high. Me and two buddies went to the Ace Hardware and bought
         | more than a dozen packets of morning glory seeds and then some
         | cheese cloth at the Publix in the shopping center across
         | Michigan Ave. June, 1980.
        
           | abruzzi wrote:
           | i had a copy back in the early 80s. Made the mistake of
           | lending it to somone and never got it back. It was notorious
           | as a book that once borrowed, was never returned. I've hear
           | from many other people who lent it then lost it. I wonder if
           | your brother ever returned it?
        
             | brudgers wrote:
             | I have a memory of its return, but it has been a few years.
             | But I know it left after a few weeks, and then at the end
             | of summer he went off to UF.
        
             | codetrotter wrote:
             | Maybe his brother is the one that borrowed it from you
             | :thinking_party:
        
         | jonathankoren wrote:
         | Usually these things end up with instructions like:
         | 
         | How to make a car bomb:
         | 
         | Ingredients:
         | 
         | 1 car
         | 
         | 1 bomb (large)
         | 
         | Directions: Mix.
         | 
         | That may be practical instructions if you're in a war zone, but
         | getting four live 105 mm artillery rounds is bit harder in the
         | suburban United States
        
           | daveslash wrote:
           | How to make a time machine:
           | 
           | Ingredients: 1 car. 1 Plutonium powered flux capacitor. Mix.
           | 
           | " _Doc, are you telling me this sucker 's nuclear? Doc, you
           | don't just walk into a store and-and buy plutonium! Did you
           | rip that off?_"
        
         | alex_young wrote:
         | I remember 30 years ago, when I had just started using the
         | internet, that all one had to do to feel rebellious was to send
         | a bit of data using so called "strong encryption". You could
         | even get shirts with this stuff printed on them.
         | 
         | And talking about the internet decades ago doesn't make us old
         | at all, it just gives us a little more perspective.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
        
         | runsonrum wrote:
         | I can remember things I've done before there was internet,
         | barely ;-)
        
         | WalterBright wrote:
         | > really makes you feel old when you start talking about things
         | you did 20 years ago on the internet
         | 
         | That only gets worse.
        
           | danesparza wrote:
           | ^^ This.
        
           | worik wrote:
           | > that only gets worse.
           | 
           | Better than the alternative
        
       | IAmGraydon wrote:
       | It's funny how I loved reading the AC as a kid in the early 90s
       | vs now how I wouldn't even click that link due to the
       | surveillance state we live in. If you've ever wanted to see a
       | panopticon in action, just look around.
        
         | squarefoot wrote:
         | Or maybe everyone clicks on it so that the surveillance lists
         | are polluted by false positives, forcing lazy spies to actually
         | investigate real criminals and not just geeky curious people. I
         | just did: From page 114 ("How to make mercury fulminate"), 1st
         | line of the recipe says "take 5 grams of pure mercury and mix
         | it with 35 ml of nitric acid".
        
       | GTP wrote:
       | I found it funny to see a copiright notice inside such a book :D
        
       | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
       | Hehe, I remember finding an "underground" bookstore that
       | published all of this stuff. It made for fun reading and was a
       | great conversation starter. I was even watching Nightmare on Elm
       | Street and the girl was setting booby traps for Freddy and I was
       | like holy smokes, this is pretty much Poor Man's James Bond in
       | chapter order.
       | 
       | But I never made any of this stuff so I can't say if the recipes
       | are valid or not, but at the time of their release the US was
       | much more concerned by communists then terrorists and this seems
       | like the sort of thing they'd sprinkle out there so that
       | patriotic hero types could wage a war of insurrection and
       | attrition if ever needed to defend the country from an
       | occupation.
        
       | KMag wrote:
       | In the late 1990s, MIT's East Campus dorm organized an annual
       | Sodium Drop from the Longfellow Bridge. (Later discontinued after
       | a chunk of sodium survived, oxidized to concentrated lye, and
       | chemically burned an unfortunate clean-up worker who mistook it
       | for styrofoam.) As I remember, the MC of the event would first
       | throw 500g of some foodstuff (I forget which) into the river for
       | comparison, and then throw 500g of metallic Sodium into the
       | river.
       | 
       | At least one year, I remember them following up the Sodium with a
       | salute made with a similar mass of TATP (apparently called
       | "Mother of Satan" by Hamas, due to its tendency to detonate
       | during manufacture). A friend of mine described the assembly line
       | process they used for making the TATP. It sounded like they had
       | several kg of TATP out drying on baking sheets at one time. My
       | understanding that around that time, TATP was the most common
       | filler for HAMAS suicide vests. I don't think it took very many
       | kg to blow up a whole bus. Batshit insane.
        
       | euroderf wrote:
       | Tried the stink bomb recipe but no dice. Anyone else had luck ?
        
       | insane_dreamer wrote:
       | A classic, but not one I'd want to have on my hard drive these
       | days
        
       | speedplane wrote:
       | "Power is not a material possession that can be given, it is the
       | ability to act. Power must be taken, it is never given."
       | 
       | "'This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
       | inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing
       | Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of
       | amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or
       | overthrow it.' Abraham Lincoln"
        
       | issa wrote:
       | This was a very exciting book to get my hands on as a teenager.
       | Now I think this is the best take on it:
       | 
       | https://thehardtimes.net/blog/recipes-anarchist-cookbook-tas...
        
       | Giorgi wrote:
       | Good old totse days.
        
       | waynecochran wrote:
       | Classic. Had a copy in high school in the 1980's. I always loved
       | the warnings at the beginning of some of the instructions that
       | went something like this: "do not create this -- it can be very
       | dangerous... maybe lethal --- here is how you do it."
        
         | brk wrote:
         | Yup, gave my dot-matrix a good workout printing and selling
         | copies!
        
       | bluedino wrote:
       | I remember passing a floppy disk with this on it before we got
       | online.
       | 
       | And I remember people lying about what they made and blew up etc
        
       | h2odragon wrote:
       | see also:
       | https://archive.org/details/The_Poor_Mans_James_Bond_Vol_1_K...
        
       | JoeyBananas wrote:
       | I got in trouble for reading this on a school iPad in middle
       | school.
       | 
       | The anarchists cook book is severely outdated. Most of the info
       | it contains is straight up fabricated. It's no longer worthy of
       | the controversial reputation that it has.
        
         | mingus88 wrote:
         | The prevailing theory when I was in high school was that this
         | AC was a honeypot.
         | 
         | Anybody trying to order the misspelled chemical names in the AC
         | to cook homemade explosives would get a visit from the FBI
         | 
         | Even the size of it suggests that it's not an actual
         | revolutionary manual. The thing was huge, and couldn't fit in a
         | bookshelf. Not exactly something you could hand out and conceal
         | if it wanted to do covert ops outlined in it like blowing
         | bridges and sabatoge.
         | 
         | It's like the only purpose it served was to be found and tip
         | off who was interested in that stuff.
         | 
         | And it also served to indoctrinate a generation of us that
         | Anarchism as a social movement was nothing more than blowing up
         | shit; illegal and violent by definition.
        
           | alchemist1e9 wrote:
           | > Even the size of it suggests that it's not an actual
           | revolutionary manual. The thing was huge, and couldn't fit in
           | a bookshelf. Not exactly something you could hand out and
           | conceal if it wanted to do covert ops outlined in it like
           | blowing bridges and sabatoge.
           | 
           | What are you talking about, it's 160 pages. I remember
           | carrying around a binder in my school backpack, it's fairly
           | slim actually.
        
             | edmundsauto wrote:
             | My copy was a very tall book, black cover. I think this is
             | what OP meant - not book length.
        
               | alchemist1e9 wrote:
               | Oh I see. I've only ever seen printed copies of it on
               | regular sized paper.
        
           | starkd wrote:
           | In secondary school, I remember some people buying this book.
           | You could not buy it off the shelf, but you could order it
           | just fine. They were more interested in the drug recipes, but
           | I don't think any of the recipes worked out or were
           | practical.
        
           | greesil wrote:
           | The term "bomb throwing anarchist" has been around a lot
           | longer than the cookbook.
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
        
             | mingus88 wrote:
             | Yes the AC didn't start that bit of indoctrination, but
             | renewed it for a new generation. It was published in the
             | 70s when the counter culture was at it's strongest.
        
               | greesil wrote:
               | Maybe it's time for a re-brand with a new name. This
               | worked for Joe Camel. Also, Christianity.
        
               | boq wrote:
               | Well, there exists "libertaire" in French (and other
               | languages as well I guess) as a synonym, but nowadays
               | people would hear "libertarian".
        
           | JoeyBananas wrote:
           | > And it also served to indoctrinate a generation of us that
           | Anarchism as a social movement was nothing more than blowing
           | up shit; illegal and violent by definition.
           | 
           | Anarchism has earned this reputation for a reason, and it's
           | definitely not a conspiracy.
        
             | sofixa wrote:
             | There are different movements/leanings of Anarchism, and
             | some of them are outright mainstream in multiple countries
             | (e.g. Anarcho-Capitalism is very popular in the US).
        
               | vorpalhex wrote:
               | Those folks also believe in blowing things up and burning
               | down government buildings. They just believe that
               | capitalism will be sustainable in the absence of a
               | dominant power.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | horns4lyfe wrote:
           | As a Portland resident, I haven't seen anything evidence
           | against that.
        
             | mejutoco wrote:
             | Noam Chomsky identifies as an anarchist, and he is not
             | violent and blows things up, so evidence exists that it is
             | possible.
        
               | yakshaving_jgt wrote:
               | Chomsky seems to be pretty cool with the appeasement of a
               | genocidal terrorist regime though.
               | 
               | He's not one of the good guys.
               | 
               | https://www.e-flux.com/notes/470005/open-letter-to-noam-
               | chom...
        
               | mejutoco wrote:
               | Thanks, that was an interesting letter. I was unaware of
               | it. In any case, there are things to learn from Chomsky,
               | without agreeing on everything with him.
        
               | fancybouncy wrote:
               | who decides who the good guys are? if you get a good
               | anthropology book, you'll find plenty of societies that
               | value violence (to varying degrees). in fact, you don't
               | even need an anthropology book, just open the old
               | testament.
        
           | Spooky23 wrote:
           | That's probably true. There's a program down to the county
           | level where law enforcement establishes relationships with
           | places that sell certain materials.
           | 
           | If you show up and buy a big bag of ammonium nitrate or order
           | a few hundred pounds of sugar and aren't known to the seller,
           | you'll be looked into or talked to.
        
             | brudgers wrote:
             | It is true now. Fifty years ago, not so much. The first
             | crackdown on chemicals was - I think but could be wrong -
             | the precursors for quaalude manufacturing...it came even
             | before the US got serious about drunk driving...around
             | 1982.
             | 
             | Oklahoma City made explosive precursors an area of concern,
             | but meth precursors are a 21st century
             | prohibition/restriction.
             | 
             | Anyway, your local police are likely to have live access to
             | security cameras in area businesses in addition to real
             | time license plate readers in cruisers.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _"Anarchist Cookbook" author William Powell has died_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14001238 - March 2017 (85
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Burn After Reading: William Powell and the Anarchist Cookbook_
       | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9132852 - March 2015 (10
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _I wrote the Anarchist Cookbook in 1969. Now I see its premise
       | as flawed_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936672 - Dec
       | 2013 (190 comments)
       | 
       |  _Anarchist Cookbook authors hopes for discontinuation (read the
       | author review)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694601 -
       | Sept 2010 (41 comments)
        
       | alasdair_ wrote:
       | There was also the Jolly Rodger Cookbook
       | (http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/JOLLYROGER/) that was thee
       | first set of "philez" that I read as a kid. Finding more like
       | that led to me frequenting a bunch of interesting BBS, then
       | learning how to, um, creatively pay, for those international
       | calls and later into setting up my own board. It all kind of died
       | off as the web became a thing but it was still a lot of fun.
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | Perhaps an update is in order, but to make it more releveant, use
       | a modern title like "Walter White's Guide to Improvised
       | Chemistry" (hmmm... would that be an IP violation of some kind?)
       | 
       | In reality all the information needed to make a wide variety of
       | explosives, chemical and biological weapons, illegal drugs and so
       | on is available in any university library and quite a few public
       | libraries as well as the Internet - a Google Books search for
       | "History of Explosives" is illustrative. The training necessary
       | to successfully carry out the required protocols is available in
       | any university chemistry program. Requisite raw materials are
       | more carefully tracked and monitored than in the past, however
       | (with good reason), but even so, such materials can themselves be
       | synthesized by the skilled industrial chemist from non-trackable
       | sources.
       | 
       | The real risk is not that some isolated nutcase will go on a
       | rampage, however - such people are more likely to blow themselves
       | up or poison themselves than anything else - it's that nation-
       | state governments and the private contractors they hire will
       | decide to do something psychotic like produce drone warfare
       | systems for the wide-area distribution of biological and chemical
       | weapons in some place like eastern Ukraine (indeed, there may be
       | some evidence that this is already going on or being planned).
       | 
       | The real sociopaths all go to work for governments, as history as
       | shown. The largest bioweapon and chemical warfare programs in
       | history were run by the Japanese, British, American and Soviet
       | governments, and they employed hundreds of trained scientists who
       | justified their lunatic behavior with vague appeals to
       | patriotism, duty, and national defense.
        
         | yakshaving_jgt wrote:
         | Please keep your kremlin propaganda off this website, and take
         | a long and hard look at yourself.
        
           | photochemsyn wrote:
           | The Soviet bioweapons program was arguably the largest and
           | longest-running of them all (see for example Sverdlovsk
           | anthrax), so I'm not sure how drawing attention to it counts
           | as 'Kremlin propaganda':
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
           | 
           | The use of drones to deliver biological and chemical weapons
           | is also a long-standing issue of concern in all warzones, not
           | just in Ukraine. (Not every comment is part of some organized
           | PR war between NATO & Russia)
        
       | jabthedang wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | Growtika wrote:
       | Wasn't familiar with the book until I came across this Reddit
       | thread few years ago.
       | 
       | "The author of the Anarchist Cookbook, an infamous instructional
       | book on homemade explosives, weapons, and drugs, regretted its
       | publication. He attempted to have it removed several times, only
       | to be thwarted by the publisher Lyle Stuart."
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/b2b3m7/til_t...
        
         | culi wrote:
         | The original author went as far as to publish a "second
         | edition" more recently. This second edition is actually
         | literally a cookbook. It's geared towards the mutual aid scene
         | and the recipes are recipes you can make for hundreds of people
         | 
         | We actually used it when starting a new Food Not Bombs chapter
         | locally and most activists I talked to seemed to mainly be
         | familiar with the followup. So I guess it had some level of
         | success in covering up the original
        
       | sammalloy wrote:
       | I ordered this book from a local bookstore in 1984 because I
       | heard about it in a book or a movie I saw, but I can't remember
       | which since it was so long ago.
       | 
       | Four months later I got a call from the store telling me it came
       | in and quoting me an exorbitant price to pick it up. I never did,
       | and I'm sure they didn't have any difficulty selling it off the
       | shelf.
       | 
       | Coincidentally, just a short while later, I got a phone call from
       | an Army recruiter asking me if I was interested in JROTC. I think
       | I was put on some kind of watchlist for ordering the book.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | mgarfias wrote:
       | Grab the army's improvised explosives handbook instead.
        
       | kypro wrote:
       | Just FYI, assuming this is a legit link (I'm not checking). You
       | can get into legal trouble here in the UK for downloading this
       | book onto your hard drive. At a minimum it's presence on your
       | hard drive can be used against you in a criminal trial.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ndsipa_pomu wrote:
         | I'm also in the UK and a friend brought up the illegality of it
         | once, when we were discussing it, so I ended up having a look
         | and it's freely available and sold by Amazon.co.uk, so I think
         | your fears are exaggerated.
         | 
         | There's an instance where two teenagers were charged with
         | possession of it, but were found innocent:
         | http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/7685636.stm
         | 
         | However, if you're also involved in terrorist activities, then
         | possession of it could count against you.
        
           | sbaiddn wrote:
           | Why not assume that illegal, fake, stolen, etc goods are
           | easily available on Amazon?
        
           | Spooky23 wrote:
           | Probably depends on context. Possession of little plastic
           | bags can enhance drug charges.
        
         | IndySun wrote:
         | The title appears under "Collecting or possessing information",
         | section 7.25, but presumably having a copy would be evidence
         | against along with other nefarious activities.
         | 
         | If this link works...
         | 
         | https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-terrorism-act...
        
         | bnralt wrote:
         | Good point. This BBC article said that a man was sentenced to
         | two year in prison for having a copy of it on his computer[1].
         | 
         | [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire-60051861
        
           | ThrowawayTestr wrote:
           | Two years for downloading terrorist fan fiction. What a joke
           | of a country.
        
         | PaulRobinson wrote:
         | It is not in itself an offence to possess this document on your
         | hard drive in the UK
        
         | generalizations wrote:
         | Checked for you. It's legit. It's too bad that the UK is so
         | locked down.
        
           | boomskats wrote:
           | It's ok, the UK is only going to get better.
        
             | danuker wrote:
             | How do you know?
        
               | bombolo wrote:
               | He's going to make some anarchy real soon.
        
               | DAVer98 wrote:
               | [dead]
        
             | lampshades wrote:
             | Seems to me it's only getting worse.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | nickt wrote:
       | In a similar vein, from back in the BBS days, The Big Book of
       | Mischief.
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/Big_Book_Of_Mischief/mode/2up
        
         | superkuh wrote:
         | TBBOM was hilarious in middle school. But not nearly as funny
         | as the "Bananarchy" text; a whole set of banana based
         | explosives and weapons that was probably just a joke on the
         | anarchist cookbook / the big book of mischief and their often
         | not quite right "recipes". Things like making explosives out of
         | banana peels or freezing bananas into ice bullets, etc.
         | 
         | Unfortunately I can't find the file anymore with a restaurant
         | called "Bananarchy" polluting the namespace.
        
           | starkd wrote:
           | Did any of them involve sticking a banana in a car's exhaust
           | pipe?
        
       | jimnotgym wrote:
       | Wasn't there a similar one that floated around in the 90s called
       | something like 'the terrorists handbook'?
       | 
       | I never saw it myself of course...
        
         | lampshades wrote:
         | Yeah, that was one of them (the Islamic book I mentioned
         | above).
        
           | jimnotgym wrote:
           | It was rather more than 20 years ago that i... heard about
           | this book. I am guessing the Islamic group you mentioned
           | simply redistributed it
        
       | nathias wrote:
       | ah yes, the artefacts of the good old web
        
       | gfd wrote:
       | Oh man this is nostalgic. I remember finding this when I was in
       | junior high and wanted to try out their recipe for a smoke bomb
       | (mostly because it seems to be the least complicated thing on
       | there, requiring only sugar + potassium nitrate). But living in
       | the city, it was hard to find some place that sells
       | fertilizers/stump remover! So that was the end of that. Fun trip
       | down memory lane.
        
       | jonathankoren wrote:
       | The author of this book was interviewed for a documentary. It's
       | kind of interesting to watch the author's relationship to a book
       | he wrote (I believe) in high school as a man of 66 years.
       | Especially since he repeated tried to stop the book from being
       | published, but couldn't because the sold the copyright with the
       | initial publishing deal.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Anarchist
        
         | dragonwriter wrote:
         | > Especially since he repeated tried to stop the book from
         | being published, but couldn't because the sold the copyright
         | with the initial publishing deal
         | 
         | Had it been a feemw years later when he wrote it, he could have
         | reclaimed the copyright between 35-40 years thereafter, even
         | having sold it. (Note as well as transfer, this applied to all
         | licenses, expressly "notwithstanding any agreement to the
         | contrary".)
         | 
         | https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/203
        
       | Ishmaeli wrote:
       | I read a hard copy that was passed around my high school in the
       | early 90s.
       | 
       | The only chapter I remember was the one about tamping explosives
       | in order to concentrate the force of the blast in the direction
       | you want. That was really interesting to me for some reason.
        
         | Normille wrote:
         | >I read a hard copy that was passed around my high school in
         | the early 90s...
         | 
         | Slightly veering away from the subject. But your comment
         | reminded me of _' The Little Red Schoolbook'_ --which was the
         | [supposedly banned] book that we all passed around in school.
         | Although being sadly older than you, this would have been the
         | early 80s. I wonder if anyone else remembers it?
         | 
         | As I recall it was pretty subversive in content, with sections
         | on sex, drugs and anrachist politics.
         | 
         | EDIT: Seems it was quite well-known after all. Wikipaiedia has
         | an article on it:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Red_Schoolbook
        
       | evanwise wrote:
       | Please, for the love of God, don't follow any of the recipes in
       | here. Many are dangerously wrong (as in blow yourself and your
       | neighbors up dangerous).
        
         | brk wrote:
         | FWIW, I am living testament to the fact that they weren't
         | _that_ wrong, at least not to a  "blow yourself up" extreme.
        
           | evanwise wrote:
           | While it's true that some of the simpler recipes will work, a
           | lot of the others just won't work or are dangerous. From
           | memory, the TNT and mercury fulminate recipes are wildly
           | dangerous and omit key steps. Messing with stuff like this in
           | any capacity is dangerous, even with proper PPE and good
           | procedures, but if you must, there are much better resources
           | available freely online these days.
        
         | sph wrote:
         | Meh. Follow them at your own risk. The best way to learn is to
         | make mistakes and blow your neighbours garage, not being
         | prevented from doing so by someone else.
        
           | evanwise wrote:
           | I hope this is sarcasm.
        
             | sph wrote:
             | Your comment I replied to is overbearing, overprotective
             | advice about something titled the Anarchist Cookbook, for
             | God's sake.
             | 
             | I tried to restore a bit of that reckless spirit with a
             | cheeky comment, but I am very sad to see the nanny state is
             | out in force today. Gah, so boring.
        
             | culi wrote:
             | There's just some lessons everyone's gotta relearn in life.
             | Touching the stove, accidentally committing manslaughter of
             | your childhood friends, etc
        
       | nickpinkston wrote:
       | Be careful with this - IIRC some of the recipes aren't very safe.
       | 
       | I think the Army's "Improvised Munitions Handbook" is
       | better/safer - for educational purposes only of course... :-)
       | 
       | https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Army-Improvised-Munitions-Handboo...
        
       | GartzenDeHaes wrote:
       | A couple of times a year, the FBI scrapes up the remains of
       | someone trying to make explosives with the recipes in this book.
        
       | ada1981 wrote:
       | I remember being a teenager in the 90s in Erie, PA and making
       | things from the AC was our go to entertainment. Many a weeknight
       | was spent cutting the heads off matches, stuffing them into PVC
       | pipes and throwing bombs at each other in the woods.
       | 
       | It's nothing short of a miracle that we all made it out of that
       | time period alive, with our limbs and fingers intact, and not in
       | federal prison.
        
         | euroderf wrote:
         | Growing up in the 70s, I remember seeing lots of injunctions
         | against being a "basement bomber". Apparently it had been a
         | thing (in the 60s?) to make pipe bombs, from match heads etc.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | starkd wrote:
         | I think most people were intrigued because of the
         | experimentation and just having that kind of knowledge
         | (ability) at your fingertips. There's a very strong DIY
         | mentality that gets spawned from information like this. I don't
         | think the mere presence of such material should be discouraged
         | for that very reason. Anyone who seriously wants to implement
         | any of these projects for nefarious purpose will need an
         | extraordinary amount of self-discipline to carry it out. Even
         | if they succeed, it's hard to believe any will succeed without
         | raising red flags. The societal benefits outweight the risks.
        
           | sammalloy wrote:
           | In my specific case, I never actually wanted to blow anything
           | up, I was just curious as to /how/ and /why/ things could be
           | blown up.
        
         | cameron_b wrote:
         | I was a half-step back from you. I was in high school after Y2K
         | and some had already paved the way of foolish use of this stuff
         | such that I got long quiet interrogative looks from my dad over
         | the material. Glancing through the introduction, I'm sure I
         | never understood that stuff at the time.
         | 
         | I remember looking through the electronics ideas and wanting to
         | make a pen-microphone-transmitter, but then wondering why go to
         | all the trouble. I'm glad I filed it away as "I know where to
         | look if I need the information" and didn't do anything with it.
         | 
         | I do remember the discussion of the honeypot nature of some
         | topics and keywords. It is important to understand more about
         | the giant before you attempt to stand on his shoulders.
        
       | cratermoon wrote:
       | I still have my hardcopy that I bought at a punk music/book store
       | in the 80s. It's on a shelf next to titles like J. G. Ballard's
       | _The Atrocity Exhibition_ , _RE /Search #6/7: Industrial Culture
       | Handbook_, and _Book of the SubGenius_.
        
         | sammalloy wrote:
         | RE/Search was and is an incredible source. They saw the future
         | of literature and media as far back as 1982. They were way
         | ahead of everyone.
        
       | sb8244 wrote:
       | I used this to make NI3 (feather explosive) in high school as
       | part of my senior project. It was somehow blessed by the teacher.
       | 
       | The book very specifically says to not make this due to how
       | volatile it is.
       | 
       | We made it in the morning and put it in the undisturbed back room
       | to dry for the afternoon.
       | 
       | We got news of it exploding during a silent study hall and
       | scaring the crap outta everyone there, especially since it was a
       | different teacher in the room. The air current from the AC set it
       | off.
       | 
       | We were again (somehow) given permission to remake it since it
       | went off.
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | > We were again (somehow) given permission to remake it since
         | it went off.
         | 
         | That's insane
        
           | IAmGraydon wrote:
           | Nitrogen triiodide really isn't very dangerous as it doesn't
           | generate a lot of gas upon detonation, and its unlikely that
           | you'll ever get enough of it in one place at one time to
           | cause a large explosion. It's really just a chemistry
           | novelty. It DOES make a mess, though.
        
           | swader999 wrote:
           | Nowadays they lockdown for peanut butter.
        
         | chris1993 wrote:
         | Some secondary school mates made this and spread it in the
         | corridor. We heard the explosions as the head science teacher
         | stamped through to detonate it all before the classes were
         | allowed out.
        
         | KMnO4 wrote:
         | I, similarly, had a high school chemistry teacher who allowed
         | me to experiment with recipes from the book.
         | 
         | Before we touched any chemicals, we would go through the
         | reaction on paper and calculate what would happen (eg DH) for
         | education and safety.
         | 
         | That's actually the origin of my username.
        
         | willjp wrote:
         | I get the impression that most people's chemistry experience
         | was much different than mine. Ours was about rote memorization,
         | period. I kind of feel like I missed out.
        
         | jonathankoren wrote:
         | Assuming you did this in the past 30 years, it's doubly
         | worrisome that you got this blessed, because the book is
         | absolutely notorious for being dangerously inaccurate.
         | 
         | Supposedly the "The Terrorist Handbook" series of filez from
         | Usenet corrected the errors, but I'm not a chemist, so I can't
         | judge either's reputation.
        
           | nibbleshifter wrote:
           | A lot of the Usenet/BBS files are equally ... Well, let's
           | just say you will lose your fingers probably.
        
           | Natsu wrote:
           | NI3 isn't hard to make, there are only two ingredients and I
           | also made it in chemistry class by pouring ammonia on the
           | crystals which we left on filter paper. The real 'trick' is
           | not to use that much iodine crystal so you don't get a huge
           | bang. You want to stay under 0.1g of crystal.
           | 
           | There's precious little you can do wrong with the synthesis
           | other than using too much iodine to make too much of it. It
           | won't become particularly unstable until it dries a bit, but
           | after that, yes, it may just go off on its own.
        
           | sb8244 wrote:
           | We did not say that we got the idea / recipe from this book
           | of course. We actually got the idea from our previous chem
           | teacher who retired the year before. (Meaning first year for
           | the new teacher.)
           | 
           | This was in 2010.
        
             | DavidPeiffer wrote:
             | In ~2006 a group in my brother's AP Chemistry class got
             | permission to make thetmite for their class project. Set it
             | off in a fume hood which I believe was already scheduled to
             | be replaced that summer.
             | 
             | In 2010 my AP Physics teacher gave us all really long
             | leashes in terms of how much we could. One fellow made what
             | equated to a water bottle capacitor, charged on a Van de
             | Graff generator. After playing with it for a few days,
             | trying to get the practicum teacher to touch it, and
             | various other shenanigans, he felt a shock across his chest
             | and was writhing in pain on the ground for a few minutes.
             | We all lost Van de Graff privileges after that.
             | 
             | Somehow that happened in 2010-2011 and there wasn't really
             | concern to call for medical supervision. He's still doing
             | great today thankfully.
        
           | WalterBright wrote:
           | > the book is absolutely notorious for being dangerously
           | inaccurate
           | 
           | I always wondered if that was propaganda in order to
           | discourage people from trying things out in it. I've also
           | wondered if the corrections were also propaganda in a
           | malicious way.
           | 
           | I wouldn't touch any of that stuff without being a trained
           | chemist.
           | 
           | A friend of a friend blew his guts out with a homemade pipe
           | bomb. My friend had the dubious pleasure of driving him to
           | the hospital with him bleeding out all over the car.
        
             | KMag wrote:
             | A few years ahead of me in high school, the wrestling team
             | had a one-handed wrestler. A friend of mine on the
             | wrestling team told me it was because the guy was helping a
             | guy make a pipe bomb, using a hammer and a wooden dowel to
             | pack match heads in a pipe. One guy was holding the pipe,
             | and the other was swinging the hammer.
        
           | philwelch wrote:
           | The reliable counterpart to the Anarchist Cookbook is TM
           | 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook, which is also freely
           | available without copyright by virtue of being an
           | unclassified US Army technical manual subject to FOIA.
        
             | nibbleshifter wrote:
             | The IMH contains a whole host of instructions that may lead
             | to loss of digits.
             | 
             | Its kind of a "safety third" document for really shitty
             | situations, lol.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | TheRealDunkirk wrote:
         | I decided that I could make the fulminate recipe, and asked my
         | grandfather --- who had taught me to make cap gun material ---
         | to get the stuff I would need. He asked me again, to make sure
         | he heard me right, and then flatly told me no. He said he
         | loaded shells for WWII, and that's what they put in the
         | detonating tip. He said it was so sensitive, they tested it by
         | shooting shells through PAPER. I gave up on my dreams of making
         | anything from the book after that.
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | Could you explain the "through paper" bit? I can't picture
           | this.
        
             | tempay wrote:
             | I suspect it's that the tips of the shell are intended to
             | be pressure sensitive and trigger an explosion that then
             | detonated the main payload. The explosive in the tip was so
             | sensitive that tearing through paper was enough to detonate
             | it.
        
             | esquivalience wrote:
             | If the ammunition touches paper when shot, it detonated
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-01-14 23:01 UTC)