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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
by sb8244 4y ago
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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jonathankoren 4y agoAssuming 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.
- sb8244 4y agoWe 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 4y agoIn ~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 4y ago> 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 4y agoA 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.
- phkahler 4y agoThat seems unlikely to explode and more likely to push the dowel and hammer back while creating a fountain. But I guess it might explode.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WalterBright 4y agoI can hardly think of a more certain way to get matchheads to explode. The guy's lucky he only lost a hand.
- diydsp 4y agoit depends if they're strike anywhere or safety matches. making them with strike anywhere will probably just blow up while you're making it. safety matches can be compressed like crazy, I heard.
- philwelch 4y agoThe 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 4y agoThe 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.
- philwelch 4y agoIs there a safer way to make IED’s? I would assume that guerrilla warfare is inherently a “safety third” type of situation anyway.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoThere are relatively safer ways to achieve the same objectives. A lot of the safer ways to do things are also a lot more efficient. Safety is quite relative when it comes to anything that explodes.
- diydsp 4y agoThat was a classic that got passed around our high school... My favorites were the ones that started with practically nothing. IIRC, they made gunpowder from campfire ashes, a 5 gallon bucket, and a t-shirt filter. Another one - was it rocket fuel? - was made from urine! I think you could even progress that one from urea nitrate to nitric acid, and with the improvised sulfuric acid from elsewhere in the book, make actual dynamite! but our high school teacher warned us that many high school geniuses had blown themselves up making dynamite. Anyway we actually didn't care about blowing things up, really.... we were into fireworks!!!! So we enjoyed concentrating the powder from zillions of sparklers to make an "artificial sun." We also made humungous smoke bombs that went on for a long time making the neighbors antsy.
- nibbleshifter 4y agoA lot of the Usenet/BBS files are equally ... Well, let's just say you will lose your fingers probably.
- Natsu 4y agoNI3 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.
- KMnO4 4y agoI, 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 ΔH) for education and safety. That’s actually the origin of my username.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y agoI 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 4y agoCould you explain the “through paper” bit? I can’t picture this.
- tempay 4y agoI 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.
- phkahler 4y agoYeah, and foam at several hundred kph was also enough the damage the wing of a space shuttle. Not sure the paper thing is terribly relevant. The shells were fired after all.
- bronson 4y agoNeither the foam or the shuttle wing detonated. It's about testing volatility, not doing damage.
- nine_k 4y agoI wonder how the stress of shooting the munition from the gun did not set it off. Must have something to do with the direction of acceleration, but I can't see how exactly.
- 4y ago
- insane_dreamer 4y ago> We were again (somehow) given permission to remake it since it went off. That's insane
- swader999 4y agoNowadays they lockdown for peanut butter.
- IAmGraydon 4y agoNitrogen 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.
- chris1993 4y agoSome 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.
- sb8244 4y agoWe also tried to do this... But it turned out that our chem teacher wore open-toed shoes that day (not a lab day for her) so she made us detonate it all ourselves.
- willjp 4y agoI 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.
- bloudermilk 4y agoI'm guessing this is primarily a generational thing. Boomers got a very different education in practice than Millennials.
- thedailymail 4y agoI'm an older GenX and can state that my high school chem teacher was more about checking how we kept our lab notebooks (neat handwriting, correct spelling and notation, no doodles) than about doing any cool practicums. I got a C minus. I did try making the tear gas recipe from Anarchists Cookbook in the crawlspace under a friend's house. Gas of some sort escaped from a stoppered flask midway through the process - I don't know if it was anything close to actual teargas, but the stench was memorable! We rolled out from under the house gagging and laughing, very happy his mom wasn't home. We utterly failed in our subsequent attempt to make thermite. In retrospect, maybe that C minus was generous.
- phpisthebest 4y agoWe were still doing that stuff in my generation (80's) It was not until the 00's that the schools went crazy
- gregmac 4y agoI'm very early (old) millennial. One of my high school chemistry classes stands out as a favorite course of all high school. The teacher was good (likable, engaging, smart) but also did open book tests that had some new never-before-seen problem. Many people, even those that were "top students" in other STEM classes, complained about how hard his tests were. As someone terrible at memorizing, I not only enjoyed the challenge but aced that course, despite not really being that interested in chemistry. The remainder of high school and a lot of university was just memorization. If you knew the formula you could do great, but I had such a hard time remembering that type of detail. I did ok, but on many occasions I remember wishing more courses were like that Chem class, and it still stands out over 20 years later.
- collyw 4y agoCan I ask what age are you are and what country you lived in? No way that would happen now in most Western countries.