Explosives Camp 419
theodp writes "How about a summer camp where you get in trouble for not blowing things up? Students with a passion for all things explosive and proof of US citizenship pay a $450 fee to attend Summer Explosives Camp, 'We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives,' quipped a professor at the University of Missouri-Rolla, which offers a minor in explosives engineering. Here's the brochure (PDF), kids!"
Kaboom (Score:4, Funny)
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I haven't gotten to play with explosives under the watch of a trained professional since I was a wee lad before my great grandfather passed away (he was a demolitions man for the railroad). *grin*
Safety isn't first (Score:5, Insightful)
1. How to prime and shoot dynamite.
2. Safety precautions when handling explosives.
3. Where explosives are used.
4. The curriculum and department of Mining Engineering at UMR.
5. What careers are available that are explosive related.
6. How underground blasts work.
7. How explosives are used in industry.
8. How to set up and shoot off a fireworks display.
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:5, Insightful)
Who to sign up... (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, I'm not feeling motivated to sign my kids up, but can I set up a scholarship for the neighbor's kids?
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Re:Safety isn't first (Score:5, Funny)
Also known as the "We're gonna need another Timmy" method.
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Re:Safety isn't first (Score:4, Informative)
As a father whose daughter asked to go last year and was accepted, SAFETY was the first and foremost emphasis. Not only did my daughter have a "blast" (pun intended) it built up her confidence and now she has chosen engineering as her major. She will be attending UM-Rolla next year as a freshman. The course was not only very well done with lectures and practicum, it was done on an campus that refuses to be politically correct. Would be terrorists were weeded out. Some child threatened to blow up a building from the middle east and he was deported 12 hours later. I think they know a lot about safety.
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you can have joint citizenship, but can you be subject to immediate revocation of your American citizenship AND immediate deportation without a hearing? More to the point, can you do that to a minor?
I don't mean to call your statement into question (okay, I guess I do, but I don't mean it as a personal attack) -- this just doesn't seem to add up somehow.
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I have to say it sounds kinda odd that that could happen,
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--
Lots of people got it for free.
Re:Safety isn't first (Score:4, Funny)
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uhm, what? (Score:2, Offtopic)
So why is this even being submitted now? It's not like it has any relevance for the rest of the year.
April fools day (Score:5, Funny)
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Forget students.... (Score:4, Funny)
Why US citizenship? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why US citizenship? (Score:5, Funny)
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In a post 9-11 world, is it really surprising things like that are done to cover their butts?
Because mining explosives are different? (Score:3, Informative)
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unlikely everyone else here it appears, i actually work at a mine site.
you are correct though, the object of a blast in mining it to break up rock. And yes i think most of the /. crowd would last 1 shift on a blast crew, not because of any danger but because it's actually fucking hard work.
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The US-only thing is simple - it's so no-one can claim they're training foreign terrorists, simple as that.
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The fact that non-citizens can gain access to our university system is one of the big things that keeps our immigration rates of highly skilled professionals sky high. For decades the US knowledge work economy has been too large to run on local brains alone.
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If you attend a state school, without actually having lived in that state, you pay an arm and a leg to go there, just like the international students do. If you grew up in a state without a good public university system, you're pretty much screwed. Students in Virginia get a much better deal than those in Wyoming.
Many colleges in the US are also privately owned and operated, which m
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What's good for the goose... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, so it's OK for USA to teach its kids about explosives? Imagine the outcry if someone heard about a similar program taking place, say, in Iran. I can already see the headline we would be getting: "Iran training dozens of kids into becoming terrorists with an expertise in explosives."
This is the same sort of fuzzy logic we see with USA possessing nuclear weapons and yet demanding that Iran be prevented from ever having any.
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same sort of fuzzy logic we see with USA possessing nuclear weapons and yet demanding that Iran be prevented from ever having any."
Uh, I seriously doubt that they are deomonstrating how to create a 'human bomb' and are more along the lines of how explosives work. Experts in the field are always needed. Think demolishion, mining, or construction. Iran has these types of training schools already. They have construction and mining as well you know.
And as for the argument 'the US has them and no one else can' really doesn't work. What the hell is the US supposed to say: "We have nukes, so lets give them to every nation in the World." I don't think so. Kumbaya politics never worked and never will. (unless you live in Star Trek world) People want to 'play nice' with other nations, yet they still have their gun of choice under their pillow, or house alarm, or large dog(s) because they can't even trust someone from their neighborhood breaking into their home.
Re:What's good for the goose... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh really... [religioustolerance.org] In particular, note the column "Bombing, Arson, Attempted Bombing or Arson".
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http://http//www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/index.ht ml/ [http]
China does not need your "permission" to have nuclear weapons.
They seem to have managed to avoid using them over the past 50 years somehow despite your dire warning. Still, only one country has launched nuclear strikes against another. Hint: It wasn't China.
Sign me up! (Score:2, Funny)
Wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
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I have a different take on this one. Even if it started with good intentions, it will very soon end in: "More power to people making sure the Homeland Security no-fly database is populated from as early age as possible".
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(Not that I'm advocating banning such camps, just pointing out not all terrorists have access to proper training.)
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camp memories (Score:4, Funny)
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Only applicants with a lisp need apply... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. The 1th.
Not the 1st. Becauth they're not that type of inthituthun. Dammit, Jim, they're miners, not phythithiths!
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But explosives are only used by the bad guys... (Score:2, Informative)
Oh well.. (Score:2, Interesting)
"This camp is limited to 20 Junior and Senior high school students who are interested in enrolling at UMR and are at least 16 by the first day of camp."
I am sure there are quite a few people out there with lots of "disposable income" that would pay lots to do this. I know I had to take a look - maybe something worth a week or two of vacation time, especially seeing the 450 dollar price tag (not sure what my upper limit would be,
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That was one of the fun things that I remember as a kid. My great grandfather was a trained demolitions man for the railroad. I got great enjoyment blowing things up with the cantankerous old man =]
Yes, I got to learn about explosives from my great grandfather, bladed weapons from my martial arts teachers, and va
Lets create the Urban Scouts!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets create the Urban Scouts, where children will learn how to pick locks, phone phreak, hack computers, and social engineer.
US Citizen? (Score:2)
Requesting name change to... (Score:2)
Heck, they blow up enough stuff there, why not.
You could even have the MB crew there - all the blokes would be chanting "Kari! Kari! Kari!", and Jamie & Adam would just be standing there wondering why they bothered turning up at all.
We never get fun stuff here (Score:2)
I wish we had things like that in the UK. I also wish I wasn't nearly 30 and thus could go to them if we did have them.
All of this reminds me that I need to renew my explosives certificate.
Not so fun (Score:5, Insightful)
You can have the demo camp. I want a $450 camp where you just lay on a beach and get drunk with beautiful women. Where's that brochure?
It's perfectly safe (Score:2)
Illegal (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/ar
UMR (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:UMR (Score:4, Funny)
If THAT is how you spell or make acronyms in Missouri, I'd be looking out of state for school too.
MadCow.
Park that sucker next to Beer and Tits Camp! (Score:2)
screw band camp (Score:3, Funny)
I went to UMR (Score:3, Interesting)
In reference to another thread, I seem to recall that Worsey is a US citizen. It was quite a multi-cultural experience, there was another prof from England, a brief visit from a South African, a Pole and a Russian.
If you meet Worsey (and aren't in mixed company), ask him about sheep and wellies...
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody could be a terrorist.
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact the people who go to the camp would have a greater appreciation of the dangers of explosives and be safer than those idiots on YouTube with the anarchists cookbook.
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Yes, knowledge is dangerous. But ignorance is *MUCH* more dangerous.
Humans in the world today overwhelmingly suffer and die as a result of *lack* of knowledge. (or to some degree, lack of *application* of knowledge)
I live a *much* safer life because I live in a country where there are experts on explosives, poisons, dangerous creatures, radioactive substances, cancerous agents and firearms.
Any idiot can figure out how to make a fertilizer-bomb. If anything amazes me with the Lo
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
It is extremely sad that science and chemistry are being destroyed in the name of "fighting terrorism". Explosives, chemistry and other "dangerous terrorist activities" are used extensively in many industries. Most people are completely oblivious to this fact, and don't have a clue about how 'heavy industries' work. Therefore they continually do stupid things like call for a ban of chemistry in school or a ban of explosive substances needed for mining and other industries. School chemistry is already so useless and watered down (mostly because of the threat of litigation if something goes wrong) that I fail to see how there will be enough chemists in the future within mining and manufacturing industries.
Training Domestic Terrorists: Dumb (Score:2, Informative)
Yes you do. Bruce Schneier ("Secrets and Lies") says the reason the Glasgow Attacks were a failure was because the terrorists didn't know how to use them: "putting a propane tank into a car and driving into a building at high speed is the sort of thing that only works in old episodes of The A Team. On television, you get a massive, extensive explo
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The Glasgow Flamers (Score:3, Funny)
The Glasgow (for want of a better word) "bombers"
I think Flamers is a better word. It suggests a degree of crispyness or that flame grilled flavour.
Fair to assume they're capable of intelligence
Hmm. I'm not so sure. I'm far more concerned that these guys were imported into the NHS, and that there are potentially even more equally dumb people masquerading as doctors.
Still. It's good that religious nuts don't believe in experimentation.
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
It's this kind of reflex thinking that would encourage someone to get enrolled and attend classes wearing a turban muttering occasional Allahu Akbar under his breath. Just for laughs.
Lighten up. The country is filled with people who drive cars, own and carry guns, have arguments with their ex-wives, hold a grudge against the IRS, hate the President, or work at the post office. I'd be more worried about the sheer numbers of people in any of those groups before I'd worry about someone who wants to pursue what could be described as a slightly juvenile interest or hobby.
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and how could we compare student grades across different schools?
oh, nevermine...
Re:School Mines (Score:5, Funny)
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It is usually a skilled technician or chemist who is the one who actually oraganises the manufacture of the explosive for the suicide bomber and i
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
If those 'kids' got a little 'inspiration' they could find far more dangerous information in a public library. I've got an old chemistry book from 1902, copies or similar books are no doubt common. That book reads like a Betty Crocker cookbook. I'd much rather interested kids receive real training and experience than try some of the stuff they could cook up on their own.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally, teaching these kids about the stuff that class presents has to be statistically about one-hundred-thousandth the danger level of not sufficiently teaching them about more mundane stuff, like driving, for instance.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't really think any of friends at kids didn't nearly blow of fingers or eyes. You end up getting yourself injured with stuff like explosives when you have no idea what you are doing. Blowing things up teaches you how things blow up and how to set the fuse. I'd rather teach my kids the knowledge that I learned while doing bad stuff than have them getting same scars and keep them in one piece.
Getting the information how to do things is pretty easy from books and net, learning how to do it safely has to be learned from the hard way, hopefully by somebody else, or to be teached. I'd rather by teaching my kids how to handle napalm than taking them to hospital after "ooops, it does burn, thow some water on it".
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now when I teach firearms safety, I have the student teach me back and I question the reasoning for each rule just to verify as much as possible that they understand and to force them to do extra consideration. The mindset when working with dangerous technology needs to include the foresight into what could go wrong. Understanding the context of each safety rule is very helpful.
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While high energy devices and explosives are used in everyday life, and anyone wanting badly enough can build a bomb from gasoline or a number of common items, there is some danger in proliferating knowledge of destructive explosions to people not old enough to drive.
So what's to fear?
- Big storms, flooding, tropical diseases, drought, famine from global warming?
- Fake products? Toxins and harmful elements of legal products?
- Terrorists? Punks? Nutcases?
- Bird flu?
- Identity thieves? Cri
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Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
But you know what, let's pretend that explosives are widely available. You have two cases:
Case 1:
Kids have explosives. Kids do not go to this course and thus have no training. They play with explosives and blow themselves up.
Case 2:
Kids have explosives. Kids go to this course and thus DO have training. They know how to safely use them and thus don't end up killing themselves.
Attempting to restrict information is never a good idea if that same information is already available in any form. For example, all of this information is already in a book or on the Internet somewhere. Restricting it just leaves an aura of curiosity around it.
I don't understand your argument of "The safety training these kids get will be unlikely to stick". Why would the safety training not stick? I find it interesting that a lot of people are willing to believe that kids immediately think that being safe is bad or "uncool". The belief that kids won't be safe simply because it involves safety is completely unfounded and more likely a result of your own fear than anything else.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
My country, shop classes in upper secondary and high schools teach kids basic tasks like how to operate very real, very serious tools from bandsaws to circular saws and lathes, welding (arc and two-gas), metalworking (the typical item made is an oversized spoon for throwing water in a sauna) and various techniques of soldering electronics components. Yet the number of accidents is very low, generally due to the quality of teaching is high across the board but most of all because kids 1) learn rather quickly and 2) with the exception of the dumb ones, have a very good instinct for self-presevation especially around tools that are designed so that they can be operated safely. I assume things are very similar in the US, at least in some of the more progressive states.
There's nothing I see as being particularly dangerous in a "miner jr." camp compared to a circular saw that'll cheerfully take off both of your hands at the wrist if you fuck up well enough. At least proper explosives are close as can get to inert until triggered, preferably from a healthy distance and then some. Hell, a mining explosives camp sounds like just the thing for children of mining families; not many places to train when you're young for the kind of thing your parents did.
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This is the most popular type of explosive used when making car bombs. They've known it for years. McVeigh used this. It's been on prime time news.
There's more to it than what he said. The details are available in various manuals; both chemical and terrorist.
I've heard that some farmers mix some up themselves to assist with stump removal and such.
Great, so engineers are Masons now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is a terrible attitude, and it's sad.
You need a license to buy explosives, not to learn about them. One of the precepts of our entire society is that information isn't sectioned off into little 'need-to-know' chunks, controlled by cabals or trade organizations.
You can't practice medicine without a license either, but nobody goes around trying to lock up all the first-aid manuals or anatomy textbooks. We don't let random individuals set up shop as Professional Engineers and start greenlighting bridges, but anyone who wants to can go and read about finite element analysis [colorado.edu]; there's no secrets there.
Turning society into a series of closed, medieval-Masonic-ish 'knowledge cults' isn't going to help us in the long run. And frankly, if that sort of secrecy is what's required to "protect" society from terrorists, I seriously question the value of what you're preserving.
Re:Suicide Bombers anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, it's bad for business. I'm amazed that the far-right fundie Christian crazies don't actually align with the far-right fundie Muslim crazies. After all, they want pretty near the same thing and the fundie Muslim crazies can do a better job of the abortion clinic bombings, and cheaper. Why not just outsource?
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It is legal and happens publicly, I think the DHS can easily get the list of everyone registered
It is easy for CIA agents to register and see what really happens there
It is about explosives used in mines. That is, huge quantities of industrial explosives. I think that such a training is completly useless for a terrorist : they won't say how to plant a bomb in urban area, how to maximize the number of death, how to get into a plane wit
I kinda doubt it (Score:5, Interesting)
If nothing else, reading TFA, it doesn't seem like it would make that useful training for 007-like or terrorist use of explosives. Stuff like how to safely blow up a side of quarry, or better yet, how to make a spud gun, are useful for mining or respectively entertainment, but don't translate well into how to do that much else with explosives.
Or, rather, not much that you couldn't already google. I mean, you can look up ANFO [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia, and that's the main explosive used by the mining industry. If you can buy the ammonium nitrate and wanted to make a car bomb with that, you don't really need courses in how to drill the holes and calculate the dosage to blast a rock face in a quarry.
Also, about CIA use, again, I may be wrong about America, but it seems to me that:
1. People aren't that interchangeable between mining jobs and covert ops type jobs. Just knowing how to drill a hole and prime a stick of dynamite doesn't also make you want to go abroad and blow up some Arabs. Between making a decent risk-free living at home and going and risking your life abroad for better pay, most people would choose the first.
2. And it doesn't mean you even could, probably. About 95% of the people have this interlock in the brains against being _too_ mean to other people. About 3% are sociopaths, and don't. And there are a few more in between. So, really, statistically chances are higher that you'd be in the "nice guy" category, not in the "sociopath" cathegory.
The army has had millenia of figuring out how to (A) drill people into executing some stuff mechanically against cardboard targets or with blanks, until it becomes reflex by the time they have to do it against live targets. (B) Instill an "us vs them" theme and some groupthink notions of duty, honour, patriotism, etc, to help get people pull the trigger even if they don't really want to. (C) Getting people in a situation in which, one way or the other, it's your ass if you don't cap that other guy. Now that really helps get people to pull the trigger. (D) Creating a whole organization and hierarchy for dissipating responsibility, so noone from the guy who mines pitchblende to the general who orders the strike to the pilot who drops the atom bomb on Hiroshima feels particularly responsible for it all.
And it still gets a lot of people waking up in cold sweat for the rest of their lives, a.k.a., Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder [wikipedia.org].
Heck, even some of the war atrocities are, ironically, traceable to the fact that man wasn't designed to kill man. People either get to (A) break down not understanding why the other guys shoot at him, what's wrong with them? Are they savage animals? and/or (B) get caught in that grouphink trap, thinking everyone else around is brave and fearless and all patriotic, and do dumb things to hide the fact that personally they're scared shitless.
Anyway, a lot of those only work in a group, and only work in a situation where it's short term "it's either them or me" and no easy way out. It doesn't quite apply to a lone killers.
Briefly, it might be a lot easier easier to first select with someone without scruples and give them explosives training, than to convert a peaceful mining engineer into a commando trooper.
3. The last person you'd want in the army or some secret service is some "Explosions are cool, Beavis!" type who makes spud guns or blows stuff up when they're bored, and wears a "I [heart] explosives" t-shirt. You'd probably want someone a lot more mentally stable than that.
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It also seems to have started with (A) religion, and (B) missile weapons. Whatever prehistoric record (fossils, cave paintings, etc) we have seems to be mostly about hunting animals, until the bow is invented. Then we start having paintings of groups of archers, led by some shamen with some relics/totems/etc, shooting at each other.
I don't think e
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To sum up, Jane Goodall observed what can most readily be described as a war between groups of chimpanzees at Gombe. IIRC, a particular group of chimps crossed the threshhold into "too large," and so broke up into two tribes, one of which went to a different area (this is normal chimpanzee behavior). The new area, however, was less fruitful than the old area. The new tribe
Ah, yes, Milgram (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's just say, though, that:
1. That people can obey authority, isn't exactly new in and by itself. We have an army, don't we? Claiming that you can just turn people into an equivalent of Eichmann, though, is a whole other thing, and so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres.
On one hand we have (A) people who were coaxed at every step, weren't face to face with the victim, in some versions were a
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Religion was just the excuse.
In the Soviet Union, where Atheism was the "state religion" - people were indoctrinated and trained in their military to kill others. Kill the rich? Kill the religious fanatics? Kill the oligarchs?
Religion is just a convenient tool for manipulation - and in its absence, humans will always find another tool.
Despite the use of "designed" being flawed; I think humans were well-designed for killing other humans. It really is quite natural for us. And I disagree t
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Blowing up a specific target without damaging anything else around is a difficult skill to master that requires lots of training and years to experience.
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Terrorist training isn't what it once was [somethingawful.com]. Modern terrorists have difficulty even making bombs that can actually explode [theregister.co.uk].
Also I heard that terrorist summer camps are actually a front for some sort of fundamentalist church. So not only do you not learn how to be an effective bomber, you also get brainwashed with a load of crazy nonsense about Je
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