OT dynamite

I thought there would be just a big hole in the ground...

"Opps!"

John ;-#)#

Dynamite factory destroyed by dynamite makes more sense than dynamite factory destroyed by termites

I don't know what it would be like to be near a small nuclear weapon detonation in an urban area but maybe a good reference point:

China just does everything huge-er

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** However, a Dynamite factory could easily be destroyed by thermite.

..... Phil ;-)

Glen Canyon is a big hole in the ground.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

As is common knowledge in the US, jet fuel is unable to melt steel beams. Therefore large quantities of so-called "nano-thermite" were smuggled into the World Trade Center towers, presumably over months or years.

At which point remotely-controlled aircraft were then crashed into the towers to create the impression of a terrorist attack, the passengers being either all executed in secret or perhaps having never existed in the first place.

100s of square miles of pristine canyonland, unlike anywhere else in the world, flooded and trashed. Talk about a "big government project"...

Chinese New Year?

I watched as JP4 burnt an entire tanker truck. The only parts left was part of the rear axle, and the rear bell of the tank that separated and rolled away from the flames. It also burnt the tar out of the highway, leaving onl y crumbling gravel. I was at the scene with our base photographer, who was sent to take photos for Ft. Rucker to use in court. A drunk ran a stop sign , and hit the fuel company's truck. The drunk had apparently used the entra nce to Carin Airfield to turn around. He had a broken leg. They could find nothing of the driver's remains. This happened in 1973.

It's lucky these terrorists are lousy chemists, because if they knew what they were doing and what to look for, they could cause an awful lot more carnage simply from 'manipulating' the products freely available to anyone right off the shelf in your local Home Depot type store.

Cursitor Doom wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Strike anywhere matches USED TO HAVE a little droplet of a very high explosive on their tip. Now, they simply thin the mix to thin paint runniness, and dip the match heads in a couple mm, to result in a much more abated strike anywhere tip.

The old ones were explosive as it gets. I had two 1" dia. by 12" long bolts which I placed the nut on the end of one, only threaded down a few threads, leaving two thirds of the remaining threads exposed on the end of the bolt. Then, I carefully cut the heads off of about 25 to 35 Ohio Blue Tip Strike Anywhere Matches and place them in the nut and screw the other bolt down on top of that and very gingerly stopping after applying a dangerous compression to the match head tip pile inside. Then, believe it or not, I would go out into the middle of MY STREET, and throw it end over end up the street about 25 feet or so (I was about 13), and *get the f*ck out* of the plane of its rotation...

B A N G ! ! !, It would hit, and blow the other bolt off and send it a hundreds yards up the street. We are talking about a few pounds of steel here travelling at who knows how fast like a punted football only harder. I am lucky I didn't kill someone. I thought it was fun. That was in the early seventies. About ten years ago was when I found out they changed the way they are made now. Can't find the good stuff any more, ans scraping off the film on modern strike anywhere would take you a year to gather enough to make a puffsplosion.

So many things from the seventies that are gone that I wish were back. Panama Red for one!

Potassium chlorate, I believe. Still used in regular matches, but as you say, not very much of it. Mixed with dextrose and powdered glass and bound with gum. Red phosphorus on the side of the box. P+KCl03 is classified as a low velocity high explosive, but trying to buy KClO3 will get you denial and on a close watch list instantly. Schoolboys use to be able to buy it by the kg jar - and red phosphorus too.

Clifford Heath.

Some of my friends and I made black powder in the mid '60s, while in Jr. Hi gh school. We would carefully pack into empty glass two ounce bottles with metal lids. Even with a one minute fuse, you could feel the explosion. They were great for cleaning out that spiraled galvanized culvert pipe that is used under driveways. :)

We found a shopping bag full of shotgun shells in a vacant house. That was a summertime supply of black powder.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.  
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

u

High school. We would carefully pack into empty glass two ounce bottles wit h metal lids. Even with a one minute fuse, you could feel the explosion. Th ey were great for cleaning out that spiraled galvanized culvert pipe that i s used under driveways. :)

Some of my friends at high school made some nitroglycerine. I didn't know a bout it at the time. They seem to have done a good job - it was pure enough that they couldn't get it to go off after they'd made it.

So they left the small bottle on the window-sill for about a week, then de cided they ought to throw it out - literally. When it dropped into the garb age heap it did go off. Made something of a mess of the heap of rubbish, wh ich was far enough down the yard that the blast didn't damage anything else .

Apparently optical photons photodegrade nitroglycine to less stable compoun ds, which are rather more shock-sensitive.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Sunday, February 23, 2020 at 8:27:58 PM UTC-5, highlandsniptechnology wr ote:

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High school. We would carefully pack into empty glass two ounce bottles wi th metal lids. Even with a one minute fuse, you could feel the explosion. T hey were great for cleaning out that spiraled galvanized culvert pipe that is used under driveways. :)

We made about 90 pounds that summer. A lot of small firecrackers rolled up in old newspaper, and held together with a piece of Scotch tape. The har dest part was the Mortar and Pestal to grind up the nitrates. That was tiri ng!

When automatic weapons were rare and expensive but high explosives were cheap and readily available, bombings were the mass murder tool of choice in the US:

And many others...