things that blow up

TRX
April 16, 2013
44:
@34:
>>Whatever happened to that good old word "bomb"?
>It seems to now refer to "things dropped from aircraft"...

At the beginning of WWII, it was still reasonably common for some militaries to use the term "aerial torpedo." Meaning anything dropped from a plane that was intended to explode, not just dropped over water.

Then there was the "Bangalore Torpedo", also WW2 vintage. The British and American armies still stock them, though they use gobbledegook acronyms for them now.

TRX
April 16, 2013
46:
@41:
b) if you're not a farmer and you're buying large amounts of ammonium nitrate, red flags go off
--
For a while the only way I could get it was "laboratory grade." Then it started showing up on eBay at reasonable prices.

Homeland Security is trying to get legislation enacted to require licensing to purchase, keep, or sell ammonium nitrate; the proposed ruleset is actually more restrictive than that for dynamite. Amusing, considering not long ago I could buy the stuff in 50 pound bags at any hardware store or home center...

Besides spreading it in your garden or making bombs, ammonium nitrate has various uses for DIY rocket propellants, several metal blueing formulations, etc.

TRX
April 17, 2013
84:
@75:
Actual black powder is much harder to get because of the stricter safety rules on storage and transport.
---
Black powder is trivially easy to make; it's practically a rite of passage for children of a certain mentality. Shooting hobbyists make it to feed their rifles and cannon, and the rocket guys make it in large quantities.

To make black powder you need potassium nitrate and wood. Ammonium nitrate will work, though it's not as good. There are no restrictions on potassium nitrate in the USA; it's commonly found for $6 or $7 dollars a pound, packaged as "stump killer." You can make it yourself, but the classical process is lengthy and disgusting, though basically cost-free. Traditional black powder mixes include sulfur, but it's not mandatory.

Unless you find a practical way to prevent people from urinating and burning small quantities of wood, there's no way you can stop them from making black powder.

Commercially-made black powder is subject to regulation by the DOT and the ATF. There are also municipal and state regulations, usually guided by an NGO called the National Fire Prevention Association. But that doesn't stop an individual from making his own, any more than outlawing commercially-baked bread would stop someone from making their own from flour and yeast. It's not exactly rocket surgery.

As far as adding ball bearings to increase damage... a quick look at what those suckers cost makes me wonder "WTF?" when a handful of grade-zero Chinese hardware store hex nuts would work as well for the purpose.

TRX
April 18, 2013
109:
@88:
I've never understood people who say "Oh, I never watch the news, it's too depressing." Might as well put your head in the sand. Sure a lot of the news media is garbage, but if you recognize that you can still get something out of it
---
"The truth is out there, but the lies are inside your head."

Just auditing "the news" is going to give you a very one-sided slant on what might be going on.

Knowing today's headlines isn't nearly the same thing as being well-informed, which takes both time and effort.

TRX
April 18, 2013
110:
@107:
This is why most "free" news sites today are turning into peddling "Daily Mail"-style shite
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Back in the dark ages, many people felt that customizeable online news was going to be the "killer app" for the internet.

Unfortunately, that never happened. You could usually customize it all you wanted, but you were still going to get "celebrities" and "politics", which were the two categories I emphatically did *not* want. And then the ads came, effectively driving away any potential viewers who didn't have high bandwidth. And then splitting each article up into strings of pages, each one a single paragraph. And more animated, flashing, dancing ads. And auto-playing movies. And Java. And Flash. And "you must download this plug-in that won't even work on your computer." And if you persist and bore through all that... you get a headline and a teaser.

Unfortunately, it's not *that* much better in the print world. Charlie mentioned "USA Today" a while ago as an example of a useless "news" medium. What's hidden behind the curtain is that "USA Today" is basically an aggregator, and you're looking at "best of" a large number of papers that are much, much worse...

Partisanship has always existed in US newspapers, but it is, in my opinion, being carried to ridiculous extremes now.

TRX
April 23, 2013
213:
Charlie said:
"Such speculation in turn increases anxiety levels and causes depression"
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I think we're seeing some of the effects of that, right here.