Fire In The Hole!

Getting Paid To Watch Stuff Get Blown Up

Today for work I went to a Chemical Industry Outreach Program sponsored by the FBI.  The program is to show folks from beautician supply stores, swimming pool supply stores, school science departments, as well as local law enforcement and fire/rescue what to look for with people buying stuff to build explosives.  As was pointed out early in the day, most of us have things in our homes that can be used to do it, we just don't have the criminal intent.  On a side note, I believe that people should be free to build explosives for recreation on their own property if they want, they just need to be responsible for all injuries and damage themselves... but that is off the topic.

I'm not going to go into how a lot of these were made, it could open me up to civil or criminal action if the information gets misused.  I will say that I have always enjoyed being exposed to explosives throughout my law enforcement and military careers.  Today we saw a wide variety ranging from simple piles of black powder ignited with a hobby fuse to military C4 to stuff mixed up in the FBI labs using recipes and plans available in any number of publications.

There was one in particular that is currently perfectly legal (depending on your local laws) and pretty cool if you have a backyard firing range.  Have you ever heard of Tannerite?  It is a binary compound that is used to make the exploding targets that you see on shows like Top Shot.  You can buy it online or at many gun shops.  Because it is binary, it is completely safe and stable until mixed and can be shipped or mailed.  One of the FBI bomb techs mentioned that our local Gander Mountain is closing and has it on sale.  he also mentioned that he does not expect it to be legal for very much longer.

There are hundreds and hundreds of YouTube videos of people using home-made explosives.  Some are legal, some are not.  Some use good, safe practices, some are lucky to be alive.  Do a search if it interests you.