DIY Explosives Experimenter Blows Self Up, Contaminates Building (fdlreporter.com) 366
Long-time Slashdot reader hey! writes:
Benjamin D. Morrison of Beaver Dam Wisconsin was killed on March 5 while synthesizing explosives in his apartment... The accident has left the apartment building so contaminated that it will be demolished in a controlled burn, and residents are not being allowed in to retrieve any of their belongings.
It was just five years ago that Morrison graduated from Pensacola Christian College in Florida with a degree in pre-pharmacy and minors in chemistry and math. Though a local reverend believes 28-year-old Morrison was "not a bomb maker," USA Today's site FDL Reporter notes that "Officials assume he was making bombs that accidentally exploded and killed him... They have not publicly disclosed what chemicals were in apartment 11 where Morrow lived, only describing them as 'extremely volatile and unstable explosives.'"
It was just five years ago that Morrison graduated from Pensacola Christian College in Florida with a degree in pre-pharmacy and minors in chemistry and math. Though a local reverend believes 28-year-old Morrison was "not a bomb maker," USA Today's site FDL Reporter notes that "Officials assume he was making bombs that accidentally exploded and killed him... They have not publicly disclosed what chemicals were in apartment 11 where Morrow lived, only describing them as 'extremely volatile and unstable explosives.'"
Florida man (Score:2, Funny)
strikes again.
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He was from Wisconsin. He only went to college in Florida. Florida's humid climate is not a good place to make explosives, since you get more bang for the buck when you can fully desiccate.
Thoughts and Prayers (Score:4, Funny)
I'm helping by keeping them in my thoughts and prayers.
Everyone should help in this matter by doing this.
This is the most helpful thing that can be done.
beliefs (Score:5, Insightful)
The man just blew himself up with explosives he made yet...
local reverend believes 28-year-old Morrison was "not a bomb maker,"
I wonder if the reverend believes anything else that flies in the face of reality
Re:beliefs (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that the guy is a terrorist. He may just have been playing around.
Re:beliefs (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember some of the stuff that I had in a chemistry set back in the 60's that I got for Christmas when I was 10. It would get me on a watch list today if I ordered that stuff. I did blow some stuff up back then but it was out in the back 40, not in my house. My mom didn't let me cook up stuff in her kitchen.
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And if all his neighbors weren't unable to retrieve any of they possessions and now homeless, people would care less that he blew himself up.
Not everyone was born in a 1960's farmhouse.
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Re:beliefs (Score:4, Interesting)
I dug up a fire ant colony once when I was a kid. It's amazing, the Queen was almost 30 feet away from the mound. That pile of dirt is just that, where they put the dirt. I had a spray bottle of Chlordane that I had mixed up (instant death and now illegal) that I used to keep them from eating me up as I dug down the tunnels until I found the main nest. Interesting and informative. I discovered that when you pour poison on the mound they just dump the dirt somewhere else. The Queen never has to move. I use a bait now, it's pretty effective. I was the type of kid that was always wondering about things, nearly killed myself on multiple occasions.
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Fireworks is a very common thing that looks like your making explosives (because, well, YOU ARE!) but, has no nefarious purpose other than legal fireworks suck.
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Except that gunpowder isn't a volatile explosive material.
Explosive, yes, volatile, no.
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I wish they would ban sales of fireworks to the public. Some official ones are more than enough.
Twice a year at least we get random explosions all week. Freaks out pets and other animals, and sometimes kids use them as RPGs.
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This. He died making explosives. We don't (yet) know whether he was making a bomb.
I expect there will be an investigation that will seek his motives and mind-set -- interviewing friends and family, examining his posts on social media, and so on. For now, we have the supposition (until proven otherwise) of officials that he was making bombs, and the opinion of a reverend (who supposedly knew him) that he was not.
Re:beliefs (Score:5, Interesting)
He died dealing with volatile compounds, wether he was intentionally making explosives or not is unknown. The volatile state may have been an intermediate state of production, or may have been the result of an error during his process. It's not proven yet if explosive compounds were his intended end product.
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Good point. Thanks for the improvement. And let's wait to see what the investigation turns up.
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Whenever something of this nature happens, there's a rush in the media to be the first to dig up some exclusive detail. This usually means chasing after all of the friends and family in the hope of a juicy quote. Church leaders are a good place to look, as some of them - the ones who actually care about their community, rather than just building up the numbers and the tithes to line their own pockets - try to maintain some level of personal relationship with all the church regulars.
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The reverend's statement would have been 100% correct had he not left out a single word. "28-year-old Morrison was not a GOOD bomb maker".
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Things he could have been doing that resulted in a bomb without being a bomb maker:
1) Cooking with a pressure cooker. See Instant Pot
2) Making home made fireworks
3) Anything involving certain metals (sodium) and water.
4)sugar and a whole bunch of other chemicals.
Frankly, there are a LOT of explosive chemical reactions.
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He was also a trained chemist, so his hobbies may have included chemistry too. It might be he was just carrying out some dangerous reaction for the fun of it, and screwed it up rather badly.
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In discussions with deists, I have sometimes heard them deny that there is an objective reality.
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How many of those things contaminate an entire apartment building so much the best option is to burn it to the ground without allowing residents to collect their belongings? Hell, without sending firefighters in hazmat suits in to collect a few items from each apartment that are irreplaceable?
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Or even robots like the ones Boston Dynamics are always promoting. This would be a perfect opportunity for them. What would be the best robot to collect household items from an unstable building? Quadruped with donkey baskets or biped with backpack?
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Re:beliefs (Score:5, Insightful)
You assume there is actually a need to burn the building to the ground and destroy the possessions of everyone who lives there. There is another theory: Massive government overreaction in the name of safety. The CYA school of law: Better to render a few dozen people destitute and homeless than call in a team of real experts for a risk assessment.
Re:beliefs (Score:5, Interesting)
You assume there is actually a need to burn the building to the ground and destroy the possessions of everyone who lives there. There is another theory: Massive government overreaction in the name of safety. The CYA school of law: Better to render a few dozen people destitute and homeless than call in a team of real experts for a risk assessment.
Honestly, since they are opting for a controlled burn, this seems the most likely situation--most of the things I know of that would render it unsafe due to contamination to even retrieve some personal possessions while not having taken the entire building out already would also render it distinctly unsafe to burn the place down. Either it's going to explode some more, or spread these mysterious toxins even more...
I wonder what would happen if somebody near the building took them to court, insisting on a proper environmental impact statement before the controlled burn is done?
what's a contaminant, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Contamination is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
Some of these "contaminants" might have no human (or wildlife) health effects, but could simply be watch-list chemicals for terrorism screening sensors, and the authorities simply don't want to have to navigate false positives for years or decades to come.
Now grab your popcorn and watch the fire insurance companies declare this self-interested DHS bonfire an act of God.
Re:what's a contaminant, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
They probably mean that they can't be sure his apartment doesn't have more explosives in it.
To be sure they would have to clear it out and strip it down. In bomb disposal gear, with the risk of being blown up.
Not sure what the kind of job costs or even if it can be justified given that the loss is material things vs life.
Probably PETN or one of its derivatives. (Score:2, Interesting)
PETN is decently easy to make, if the drying is done wrong it is radically sensitized, and the precursors are easy to find.
Given the FBI's records for creating "bombers" and then busting them, I do wonder what the FBI's involvement was beforehand with this guy.
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I remember we had a "militia" group in Georgia a couple of decades ago. A bunch of loudmouths who got together to drink beer and bitch about the "Gubmint" and shoot guns at targets. They had a guy join up and he had all kinds of neat ideas about how to build bombs. He helped them source some stuff and build the bombs then they were arrested. I felt no pity for them, anyone building bombs needs to be in jail.
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As a pharmacy student he'd be familiar with PETN, which has similar medical applications to nitroglycerin. I'm not sure though why it would require abandoning the building and most of its contents.
Things I won't work with... (Score:5, Interesting)
Reminds me of an old part of an old blog: Things I won't work with.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pi... [sciencemag.org]
I'm guessing something with fluoride chemistry:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pi... [sciencemag.org]
It's a really fun read about a shockingly horrible bit of chemistry done by our military science.
Male Idiot Theory (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/Atr8iFcc0qQ [youtu.be]
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That's just a cartoon. Real world idiots playing with tannerite:
Blowing up a fridge with tannerite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
How to lose a leg while shooting a rusted lawnmower filled with tannerite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"He was a quiet man. Kept to himself..." (Score:4, Funny)
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Yuk yuk. Now let's look at TFA:
“I’d love to defend Ben because he has been described as a bomb maker and he’s not a bomb maker,” [Reverend] Marsden said. “He wasn’t a recluse as some have said he is. He was far from that.”
Emphasis mine.
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...until he blew himself up.
So you're saying he got mad over something that wasn't working right and ... went to pieces over it?
..... ohhh, never mind.
Too early? If I wait a week you'll forget about it; if I wait two weeks then I can't comment anymore. Come back and read it in a month or two -- it'll be funnier then and he'll still be dead. If you wait MUCH longer than that, then
Rave time! (Score:2)
Fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
How unstable can the remaining stuff be? I mean it obviously did not detonate when the fist blast went off.
My guess if the FBI is covering something up.
Re:Fishy (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I don't get the "we have to burn down the entire building". Won't that send dangerous chemicals into the air? Wouldn't it make more sense to tear down the building and send all the materials to a landfill for hazardous chemicals? Something seems fishy here.
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Yeah, I don't get the "we have to burn down the entire building". Won't that send dangerous chemicals into the air?
If the burn is done right, it destroys the chemicals. That's "if" though.
Wouldn't it make more sense to tear down the building and send all the materials to a landfill for hazardous chemicals?
Who would tear down the building? If it is as dangerous are reported, that would require people in Hazmat suits for weeks, months to tear down the building. Then the second half of your plan is to send hazardous material to a landfill. Most of these repositories take in solids and liquids and encase them in domes. They don't take in drywall, wood, plastic, etc. The dome would be considerably large if they had to take in ruble of a buil
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Yeah, I don't get the "we have to burn down the entire building". Won't that send dangerous chemicals into the air?
If the burn is done right, it destroys the chemicals. That's "if" though.
This is why all barrels of hazardous chemicals are disposed of by incineration, and we don't have to actually have any landfills for hazardous chemicals.
Wouldn't it make more sense to tear down the building and send all the materials to a landfill for hazardous chemicals?
Who would tear down the building? If it is as dangerous are reported, that would require people in Hazmat suits for weeks, months to tear down the building. Then the second half of your plan is to send hazardous material to a landfill. Most of these repositories take in solids and liquids and encase them in domes. They don't take in drywall, wood, plastic, etc. The dome would be considerably large if they had to take in ruble of a building.
Funny, I've looked into buying a house where, if it burned down or I decided to have significant work done on it, I would have to send the rubble produced to a hazardous waste landfill, because asbestos. (This is also why I decided I wanted nothing to do with it.) You have to look around a bit, but given I was able to find several sites local to me that a
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My wild guess:
His apartment, and the area immediately adjacent is contaminated with hazardous chemicals that also happen to be inflammable. If they take out his apartment, the rest of the building is structurally unsound. So they decided the simplest and cheapest approach is to burn it. This is making the presumption that he wasn't using anything that would survive a fire, but perhaps if he was making explosives that's a reasonable assumption. (Well, OK, he'd have some sulfuric acid, etc. but the explos
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Here is a thing that was claimed as fact: "The accident left the apartment building so contaminated..."
So according to you, when an explosion happens, all the materials that were used to make the explosion self-organize into neat little piles to be cleaned up. Or are the materials everywhere? They had to detonate twice after the explosion to clear away other ordinance as far as I know. Have you worked in a chemical lab? Do you know what kind of safety equipment that is required not to contaminate your workspace let alone the entire building. I doubt that he put in air purifiers, fume hoods, etc.
I don't think anyone even left a skeleton for you to put this straw on. The unsubstantiated assertion is up there, bud.
No I'm askin
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Hard to say. This was a trained chemist, so he might have been dabbling in hobby chemistry. It's possible the investigators just found his stock of big jars of chemicals now shattered and decided it would be safer to destroy the entire building than call in a team of experts able to identify and dispose it all - and burning down the building is a lot cheaper than safely demolishing it when you'd need everyone on the site dressed in full hazmat gear. If you can't identify the chemicals, you have to assume th
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Yet another amateur alchemist trying to create the homunculus. There's booby traps in them old books.
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My guess is that there was a ton of smoke from burning chemicals after the blast, and it spread through most of the other units. So there's your nice dress, only you can't touch it. Maybe it causes blisters. I knew someone who did professional fireworks and they always use gloves because of the minor irritation some of the chemicals have. Now if it were a major irritant, a carcinogen, etc, it's just not safe.
Re:Fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Lawyers. Let's look at our options: 1. pay people for their belongings, maybe a few mill max. 2. pay people if the authorities missed something and it goes boom, maybe a few 10's of mill. Gee, as a county executive, what would you chose...and do not forget if something else goes boom, your re-election will also go boom?
Yep, something's fishy here. Stop watching TV, it is bad for you.
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Option 2 also implies "drag this mess on for a month while we wait for the analysis results to come back, during which we will need a constant police presence on site to keep out the photographers, gawkers, and the residents who are trying to save their belongings from us."
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How unstable can the remaining stuff be? I mean it obviously did not detonate when the fist blast went off.,
Only if you didn't bother to read the article or know anything about chemistry. "The presence of dangerous chemicals on site make it unsafe to try to salvage the building, officials said, citing the risk of another explosion or chemical exposure to workers."
Depending on what he was trying to make, the intermediates and the by-products could be very toxic. This was compounded by the fact that the chemicals were spread by an explosion. Have you ever seen how law enforcement clean up a meth cook site. It's fu
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How unstable can the remaining stuff be? I mean it obviously did not detonate when the fist blast went off.,
Only if you didn't bother to read the article or know anything about chemistry. "The presence of dangerous chemicals on site make it unsafe to try to salvage the building, officials said, citing the risk of another explosion or chemical exposure to workers."
Depending on what he was trying to make, the intermediates and the by-products could be very toxic. This was compounded by the fact that the chemicals were spread by an explosion. Have you ever seen how law enforcement clean up a meth cook site. It's full Hazmat suits. Would you say the FBI is "covering something up" when they have to condemn a meth site?
They also usually don't try to burn meth sites.
Part of the problem is that the article and summary are not particularly good--it does not really make sense that they'd opt for a controlled burn unless they were doubtful that the place wasn't going to continue to explode anyway, but I'd generally expect that to be something that would be mentioned explicitly in the article. As it is, the summary seems to not list all of its sources, as it says nothing is getting removed due to contamination while the articl
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Just wait a few days, the alt-right will find a way to claim the FBI blew the boy up and then decided to destroy the evidence to cover it up.
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Well, it might not be the stuff that blew up they're worried about. I'm guessing he probably didn't confine himself to one explosive, or even explosives per se, so he probably had quite a collection of interesting reagents lying around.
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What has unstable to do with that? ... and the building is full with dust of that stuff.
Most stuff used for explosives is poisoness
Controlled Burn of the Apartment Building (Score:5, Informative)
Retrieved belongings update (Score:4, Informative)
While the residents weren't able to get any belongings, the FBI bomb squad did retrieve high value items for them.
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While the residents weren't able to get any belongings, the FBI bomb squad did retrieve high value items for them.
What do they mean by value; very often the things that are most precious to people are things of little financial value, like the small wooden boat that grandpa helped you to paint.
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They explicitly mention jewelry, papers and keepsakes/heirlooms. Apparently the residents were consulted before the items were removed.
Boom (Score:5, Interesting)
My unbelievably excellent chemistry teacher in high school guaranteed at least one explosion per week in class. Kept our attention grinding through stoichiometry, with the side benefit that most of us went through AP chemistry the next year and got some cheap college credits. The last week he filled a huge balloon with a perfect mixture of oxygen and some exotic relative of pentane, detonated with a remote piezo device he concocted himself. The shockwave blew covers off of the fluorescent lights and rattled windows on the opposite side of the fairly good sized school building.
My AP chemistry teacher was a bit more pedestrian, but as a bonus for attending a study session on Saturday, he demonstrated thermite burning a hole through 1" thick plate steel.
Of course, nowadays this would be completely vorboten, and such activities would end you up on an FBI watchlist.
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By the time I was in chemistry class, we got tiny thermite demonstrations and one flammable liquid fire. That was fun. But I work in a school now, and I can say that the fire would never be allowed any more. The thermite maybe, but only if it were done following a five-page risk assessment form signed by a department head and carried out with all the students kept on the far side of the room behind a safety barrier.
It took me two weeks to get approval for students to use a soldering iron in an after-school
Re:Boom (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. I bought a chemistry set for my kids, but going through the instructions I realize that by removing anything that could be dangerous from the set what they had left was just boring.
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There's Big Oops for You (Score:2)
We'll see what info leaks out over time (Score:4, Insightful)
This whole situation seems odd and subject to a wide range of interpretation due to the lack of information.
- He could have been just a guy who chose an extremely stupid hobby.
- He could've been cooking meth (although it's hard to see why the police wouldn't just say that).
- He could've been working on some other synthesized and highly volatile drug... has anyone sought out the expert opinion of John McAfee?
- He could have been an anti-government wacko planning an attack on a government building.
- He could've been a radicalized convert to Islam.
- He could've been planning an attack on an abortion clinic.
- He could've just been another dude with a grudge against someone and a psychological disorder.
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Right. There is literally no information about what he was actually doing, what caused the explosion, or what chemicals he had. Any speculation is speculation in complete ignorance at this point.
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Re:Offended or not? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually black powder and gunpowder are very sticky legal subjects in the US. Know your state and federal laws well before even looking into playing with them.
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Actually black powder and gunpowder are very sticky legal subjects in the US. Know your state and federal laws well before even looking into playing with them.
I would argue that the problem stems from using the words "black powder", "gunpowder" and "playing with them" in close proximity.
Re:Offended or not? (Score:5, Informative)
It is entirely possible to produce explosive compounds recreationally, without making them into anything that could be considered a bomb. The best candidate I know of is a highly-unstable compound that used to be often used in basic chemistry classes. Immediately after production, it is a wet paste, and can easily be spread in a very thin layer, preferably no more than a few grams covering a 2cm radius circle. Once it dries, that circle will make a lovely pop if disturbed, making it great fun to put on desk surfaces.
Of course, people are dumb. This particular compound grows in destruction exponentially as its quantity increases. A few grams is fun. A few dozen grams is dangerous. A few hundred is lethal. A kilogram in one location is probably a good reason to evacuate the building.
I am part of a group that, among many other things, handles explosives for educational purposes, partly to help chemists who are not "bomb makers" get an intuitive understanding for just how much of an explosive substance is actually safe, and how to treat them with respect. Sure, we do also build bombs, but they're also detonated safely and in a controlled environment, in full compliance with applicable laws.
Re:Offended or not? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is entirely possible to produce explosive compounds recreationally, without making them into anything that could be considered a bomb.
A lot of people make fireworks, not always professionally, and fireworks both require explosives and a reasonable level of competence in chemistry. They are also typically not considered bombs, and the same goes for any chemically-powered model rockets even though the chemicals involved are most definitely explosives.
Oh, and then there's dust. That explodes too [youtube.com]...
The part that should be questioned is how anybody with a college degree in chemistry did not get taught better than to experiment with explosive chemicals in their own living space. This falls pretty firmly under the heading of things you do in a purpose-built building.
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On explosives: The part that gets by most people is that there's quite a difference between "explosives" (burns quickly) and "high explosives" (burns supersonically, ie the stuff military use). Blackpowder is already "explosive", indeed a nice dust-air mix can explode, and oh hey, what to think of a BLEVE [wikipedia.org]?
The fireballs you see in movies as "explosions" are usually burning gas, not high explosives.
Source: Highschool chemistry. That was 25 years ago, they might not teach it now. On that note, the electrolysis
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"Energetic Materials" and "Energetic Materials in Application" are still still offered at a handful of schools in my state, but almost entirely for graduate students. Those used to be elective chemistry and engineering classes for undergrads during early 90's at the university I attended, but a slightly faster paced version was offered to graduate students or with department approval. I can't think of too may schools even then that offered those to undergrads back then, much less now.
School's have really ta
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Had a nephew's friend make 1.75L of that shit! Field that call at at 2am! Nephew had a "four wall" conversation with him after (as my instructions included how not to be arrested by the cops).
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It's all fun and games until a residence hall is condemned.
"Hilarious", indeed.
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It helped me understand how anyone could call someone who was quite apparently making bombs "not a bomb maker".
When I was in the military, one of the guys in base housing decided he could make a lot of money cooking up drugs in his kitchen. Like Breaking Bad, but a decade earlier.
Well, when the military police busted him, and saw what chemicals he had already bought to make the drugs, the prosecutors decided it was easier to prosecute him for explosives than for drugs. So he got sentenced to a decade in prison for bomb making, when all he wanted to do was sell drugs.
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Even better, know your chemistry well before playing with them.
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Actually black powder and gunpowder are very sticky legal subjects in the US.
If you think black powder is bad, you should see how the police react when they see you playing with white powder.
Re:Offended or not? (Score:4, Insightful)
He went to a Christian college. I bet God was telling him to knock it off and he didn't listen so God turned up the volume.
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Nah, he blew himself up for Jesus.
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The Bible says worldly goods aren't important.
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Homemade guns and gunpowder are totally legal in the US. Manufacturing explosives in an apartment building is not.
Well, technically gunpowder is an explosive. That's kind of how it works.
Re:Offended or not? (Score:5, Funny)
Manufacturing explosives in an apartment building is not.
Because there is a risk of losing arms, and that would violate people's right to keep their arms, right?
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Because there is a risk of losing arms, and that would violate people's right to keep their arms, right?
No, the US Constitution grants us the right to "bear arms". It's easy enough to remove your original arms in various and sundry painful ways, although I'm not exactly sure how you're supposed to connect a bear's arms to your body afterward... even if the bear were cooperative.
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Uhh, who here hasn't made explosives before? Are you going to accuse half of Slashdot of being terrorists by making random, ugly guesses to confirm your own biases?
We made NI3 in chemistry class. The stupid part of this is that he made the explosives in his home. I mean, really, WTF man. I wonder if he was reading the Anarchist's Cookbook? That doc is an utter piece of trash that is a great way to get yourself killed. At least work off the Army field manual on improvised explosives, it was at least wri
No shit... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Uhh, who here hasn't made explosives before?"
I was going to say the same thing. As a kid, we would make black powder from its base three ingredients - took awhile to learn the right proportions. Used extension cords to detonate out in the backyard. Today what was once considered a hands-on chemistry lesson would today get you thrown in jail.
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Part of being an adult is learning to take appropriate precautio
I wonder if authorities are being stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to wonder if certain authorities aren't severely over-reacting. In general, amateurs will use fairly readily available components, many available at your local hardware store or Walmart. They aren't sensitive or all that dangerous until they are combined and processed to make an explosive. The dangerous chemicals are of course harder to get, and not at all necessary to make explosives.
The report doesn't say what was in the apartment, but odds of are the components aren't really the dangerous at all. After being combined and processed, you of course end up with an explosive, which is dangerous. I wouldn't expect that to be made into a powder and sprinkled around, though - the more dangerous explosives would be contained. The explosion that killed him would also be expected to set off any nearby high explosives. That's how high explosives are set off - by a smaller explosion, not by burning. Generally only low explosives such as black powder are set off by burning. Low explosives have to be in a container to explode, so residue isn't really a problem. (A LOT of residue built up somewhere is a fire hazard, though.) Black powder isn't quite as safe as something like table salt, but a little residue isn't really dangerous and even humidity will render it non-flammable.
In short, a good cleaning with soap and water probably would have rendered it perfectly safe as far as explosive residue. If the explosion did structural damage to the building that's another issue entirely.
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And now we may never know, because the chances of the authorities ever telling the public what these mysterious super-toxins may be is pretty slim.
When the story mentions 'DIY explosives' and 'blows self up' though, smart money is on hydrogen peroxide and acetone. Good old TAP - high explosive you can make in your kitchen from readily available chemicals. Also tends to explode if you just stir it a little too fast.
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And now we may never know, because the chances of the authorities ever telling the public what these mysterious super-toxins may be is pretty slim.
There's going to be lawsuits, since the other residents of the building aren't being allowed to remove personal belongings and the whole building is being burned. The authorities will almost certainly have to divulge what these mysterious super-toxins are in the process. However, odds are that you will have to be directly tracking the cases and court documents to learn, because I doubt those who'd be reporting on the cases would opt to mention the chemical names because that might (somehow) enable people
TAP is the main thing I thought of (Score:3)
>. 'blows self up' though, smart money is on hydrogen peroxide and acetone. Good old TAP - high explosive you can make in your kitchen from readily available chemicals. Also tends to explode if you just stir it a little too fast.
I thought of the same. Low explosives such as black powder don't tend to kill the maker in an accident. (Unless it's industrial scale). Losing a finger is entirely possible. Acetone peroxide, as you said, attracts idiots because the components are readily available, AND it's v
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Depends on what kinds of explosives he was playing with. If he was making mercury fulminate, yeah, you could well turn your whole building into a superfund site.
However if that were case, they wouldn't be able to just burn the building down. So I'm guessing he was messing some kind of unstable organic compound. The kinds of monitoring equipment they put out (there was a press release so people wouldn't be alarmed by the strange bits of equipment lying around) indicates they were looking for vocs.
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If he were in the South, I'd assume he was cooking meth. Not sure about Wisconsin. Either way, that seems to be the usual cause of random buildings exploding these days.
Don't forget... (Score:2)
Explosives should be kept in schools to protect from potential grizzlies. [youtube.com]
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You can only be modded 5 times. ...
And no one cares about you anyway
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You can only be modded 5 times. And no one cares about you anyway ...
I too was worried no one would take me seriously. But then, you took the time and effort to reply assuring me all is well, and people will not rest till they correct everything that disagrees with them on the internet.
Thanks, for restoring faith in humanity, buddy.
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My pleasure :)