I know we live in the country, but....

Flatiowa said:
Decades ago the the USDA field offices had pamphlets on how to make a very similar but much stronger mixture for farmers to use to deal with beaver damns, rocks and stumps when dynamite became more regulated and it stopped being available at the local hardware stores.
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I need a copy…
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I need a copy…
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ANFO. Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil. Used in the Oklahoma City bomb and in other nefarious acts. Also, in legitimate blasting operations.

The ATF has had all (most?) ammonium nitrate fertilizer diluted to the point the pellets are only 32% (IIRC) ammonium nitrate, which minimizes the threat of someone buying bags of it at Home Depot, mixing it with diesel fuel (or fuel oil), and causing something to go boom.
 
kyleb said:
ANFO. Ammonium Nitrate and Fuel Oil. Used in the Oklahoma City bomb and in other nefarious acts. Also, in legitimate blasting operations.

The ATF has had all (most?) ammonium nitrate fertilizer diluted to the point the pellets are only 32% (IIRC) ammonium nitrate, which minimizes the threat of someone buying bags of it at Home Depot, mixing it with diesel fuel (or fuel oil), and causing something to go boom.
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We have a bingo. The information and availability of the materials was restricted after the Oklahoma City incident

:edit while ammonium nitrate was an extremely common fertalizer before that granular nitrogen fertilizers are now almost exclusively in the form of urea.
 
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rwellner98 said:
The vast majority of gun violence is cartel related. Both bad on bad, and murder of reporters, people unwilling to pay protection and other bad on good. There are tons of good cops, good military (the military does more policing than in the US and is viewed more favorably) and good government officials, but unfortunately the system is broken. It makes it hard for the many good people to gain ground against the bad people.
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I think everyone can agree that Mexico is in a sad shape. And that it would be more correct to state that "The vast majority of violence is cartel related." Because specifying that a firearm was used by the cartels only tries to imply that the problem is with the firearm, not the cartel, where actually the general lack of firearm access by the general public only serves to make the problem worse. It's also unfortunate that "protection", the criminal's euphemism for extortion, is sometimes used by non-criminals.

Back to the original post, here in the country parts on NY we sometimes have fireworks, but I've never heard of a loud bang that was related to extortion. Here in the country, even NY, euphemism or not, the threat of extortion just doesn't come up...go figure. Now out of season deer hunting? That does happen...but if it's out of season, from what I understand it's mostly 22's. Not so much the loud bang.
 
Flatiowa said:
We have a bingo. The information and availability of the materials was restricted after the Oklahoma City incident

:edit while ammonium nitrate was an extremely common fertalizer before that granular nitrogen fertilizers are now almost exclusively in the form of urea.
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Don't forget that AN has micro tagging in every lot, for traceability.
 
Wait… lil old bombs wake you up? Need sleeping practice!

Tools, who grew up on aircraft carriers…
 
Wagondriver said:
Houses 75 to 100 yards apart? That’s not in the “country”, that’s suburbia
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The distances vary. My little "neighborhood" is unusually crowded. It's better than suburbia, though. I know. I grew up in suburbia.
 
kyleb said:
Here, the local ordinance allows late evening fireworks on NYE and the 4th of July. I think the local gendarme and politicians gave up on policing those days, so they just wrote themselves a law so they aren't required to deal with it.
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I suspect that's the case here, although we didn't try to call the sheriff. If it had been summer, I might have, as we live in a fire-prone area and fireworks are illegal, although this winter has been so dry, I was actually a bit worried about that even this time. Yeah, I know it's only 2 nights/year. But it was so freakin' LOUD! Kind of unnecessary. I admit I don't understand the compulsion to blow things up/make loud noises, but then again, I do realize this is one of those gender-specific compulsions.;)
 
Once you've blown stuff up for real, it takes away the compulsion to pretend.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Once you've blown stuff up for real, it takes away the compulsion to pretend.
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I got to pretend to blow stuff up a while back when I volunteered on the pyro crew at the wings over Houston airshow. It was a ton of fun. I suppose it would be bad form to blow up actual warbirds in order to test your assertion...
 
Ed Haywood said:
Once you've blown stuff up for real, it takes away the compulsion to pretend.
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I'm sure you're right, but even range testing can be fun. (JAGM flight tests)

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Funny story about the top photo (truck target) - The shot was planned for an impact fuze detonation, but the warhead blew a few feet above the truck bed and the range initially called it a failure, thinking the JAGM inadvertently prox fuzed. When we recovered the wreckage, we found that a piece of the tall pole seen in the photo (which was attached to the trailer hitch and mounted a camera) was bowed into a U shape that perfectly fit the nose of the missile. The shot was such a perfect center punch that it hit that skinny pipe and detonated.
 
Y'all living in those "fireworks are illegal" cities are so cute.

My daughter sold fireworks in high school as a fundraiser for the week leading up to July 4th. So did most other clubs and teams. Manned a fireworks booth on the side of the road. We're not just talking sparklers here. Lots of people are very serious about their fireworks.

Then on the fourth of July, the local city park is open for anybody to light off pretty much whatever they want. Fire department is there as well. Very loud, very smoky, very fun, and probably very dangerous. Good times.
 
Fireworks are nominally illegal around here, but there's always somebody who passed through a legal state and stocked up.

One of my flying buddies (he flies a gyrocopter) owned a blasting business. He had some hair raising stories about the ones that went wrong. He retired when the legal requirements and licensing got too onerous; besides, most of the "blasting" nowadays is slow expanding compounds.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
I’m working. The town where I slept last night put on a big fireworks display that woke me up at 11:30. I had a 03:45 AM alarm today.

This is me not complaining. It’s two nights a year…
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did you call fatigued? don't answer that I'm being rhetorical. ;)
 
Ed Haywood said:
Once you've blown stuff up for real, it takes away the compulsion to pretend.
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Us amateurs don't pretend. We DO blow stuff up. Sometimes an old paint can, maybe an anvil. The occasional hand...

Thing is, no kid who grew up in semi-rural Georgia graduated to adulthood without blowing something up with a dangerous mixture of things from the basement.
 
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kyleb said:
Thing is, no kid who grew up in semi-rural Georgia graduated to adulthood without blowing something up with a dangerous mixture of things from the basement
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Heck - I grew up in categorically not rural Anaheim and we did our share of blowing up stuff with M-80’s, throwing firecrackers at passing cars while driving, putting skyrockets on balsa gliders, and making our own zinc-and-sulfur rockets.

Suburbia isn’t (well, wasn’t) totally dull…
 
Ed Haywood said:
Once you've blown stuff up for real, it takes away the compulsion to pretend.
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Yeah, but pretending with real stuff is fun too. Family days at Bravo 17 at the end of the fiscal year were a hoot when I was at Fallon.
 
rwellner98 said:
Lived in Mexico for 12 years, plus extensive travels outside that time. Never once heard gun fire. Fireworks daily in all but the tiniest of villages. And even the tiny ones had fireworks on all holidays. We still own this house on the coast in Oaxaca and, despite it being in a town of only about 300 people and about 50% off grid, the major holidays all get fireworks there.

The US has approximately ten times the number of guns per capita as Mexico. They just aren't very common there. OTOH, I hear gunfire at my farm in Wisconsin a few times a month since moving here a couple years ago.
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We were in Oaxaca about 10 years ago. The firecrackers at dawn throw you for a loop until you get used to it. Did enjoy the ad hoc parades setting off firecrackers and passing out shots of mezcal.
 
Small town Southern Illinois. Every boy at age 6 had a cap gun, firing paper roll caps. Every kid figured out hitting the entire roll with a hammer would set it all off. Who didn’t cut open a shot gun shell to get the powder? Who didn’t experiment and mix up their own black powder? You bought the salt peter and sulfur from the drug store, ground up a charcoal bricket. I used too much sulfur, dad had to help light it with a propane torch.
 
WDD said:
Small town Southern Illinois. Every boy at age 6 had a cap gun, firing paper roll caps. Every kid figured out hitting the entire roll with a hammer would set it all off. Who didn’t cut open a shot gun shell to get the powder? Who didn’t experiment and mix up their own black powder? You bought the salt peter and sulfur from the drug store, ground up a charcoal bricket. I used too much sulfur, dad had to help light it with a propane torch.
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And match head rockets, and small pipe bombs. Suburban NY, an old sand pit nearby was the perfect testing ground. I wanted to make nitroglycerin based on an 1800s book but never managed to let my hands on the concentrated nitric acid, which is probably a good thing.
 
WDD said:
Small town Southern Illinois. Every boy at age 6 had a cap gun, firing paper roll caps. Every kid figured out hitting the entire roll with a hammer would set it all off. Who didn’t cut open a shot gun shell to get the powder? Who didn’t experiment and mix up their own black powder? You bought the salt peter and sulfur from the drug store, ground up a charcoal bricket. I used too much sulfur, dad had to help light it with a propane torch.
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Guilty as described.

Except I used too much black powder and lost my eyebrows...
 
Zeldman said:
Guilty as described.

Except I used too much black powder and lost my eyebrows...
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I had my stuff in a small tin can. Hard to light with all the sulfur, but it did burn long and hot. Melted / burned through the can.

And.... had a muzzle loading percussion cap gun that I restored. Built in 1896. I used regular black powder, shot, wads. Took it to school - they needed it as a prop in a play they were doing. Make a nice flash and smoke for good stage affects. NOTE: When used as a prop, and pretending to shoot at the rear end of another actor bent over, use 1/2 the normal load. Black powder flames will singe blue jeans. Thus the wisdom of the theater/speech teacher to have it tested on him first.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
and making our own zinc-and-sulfur rockets
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Amateurs...
We figured out that red lead oxide mixed with powdered aluminum would go boom in a confined space when presented with a suitable source of ignition.

We then got our hands on perchloric acid and concentrated ammonia and made our own ammonium perchlorate, which we used with aluminum powder and a binder to make solid rocket fuel.

WDD said:
Who didn’t experiment and mix up their own black powder?
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Went straight to nitrocellulose, and we had enough mercury in the chemistry lab to give mercury fulminate a try.

Dana said:
I wanted to make nitroglycerin based on an 1800s book
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Our chemistry teacher had enough when he caught us trying to make nitrogen triiodide. It would've been enough to give a severe case of tinnitus to the whole class.

Good ol' times. Today that stuff would get you expelled and placed on an FBI watchlist.
And somehow I still have all my fingers. Dumb luck, I guess.
 
@judypilot , see what you started? Soon we'll have posts with detailed instructions for an H-bomb, and then the feds will shut down POA.
 
Judy, dont go to Germany for New Year's. I've never seen so many fireworks for so long a time. The entire country sets off fireworks for 45 minutes straight. It is insane.
 
If I remember my PPL study well enough, it's actually not against the rules to drop things from planes..........
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Judy, dont go to Germany for New Year's. I've never seen so many fireworks for so long a time. The entire country sets off fireworks for 45 minutes straight. It is insane.
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Insanely awesome. I'm in!
 
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