Energetic Materials

Woo, boy, there are very few subjects so misunderstood. I'm going to talk about some major misconceptions.

The first misconception is that it is illegal to discuss them. There have been bills drafted to make it such, but they've been shot down. In fact it is perfectly legal to discuss how to synthesize explosive compounds, and even how to employ them. Otherwise Uncle Fester, Ragnar Benson, and all the other crapbook authors would be in jail (I think they should be for different reasons, but I'll talk about that later).

The illegal part comes with actually synthesizing them. Under federal (and often state) law, the production of high explosives is illegal. You will note that the production of low explosives (black powder, fuel-oxidizer mixtures, etc.) is far less cut-and-dry. However, the manufacture of a "destructive device" (landmine, claymore, pipe bomb, etc.) with any sort of energetic material is illegal, no matter where you are.

Also, if you actually plan the synthesis or employment of an energetic compound, you can be found to be breaking laws (specifically those regarding conspiracy).

However, the discussion of the chemistry of explosive materials remains legal.

The second misconception is that it's easy to make improvised explosives.

D'oh!

No, it isn't. Every recipe you've ever heard about in a Paladin Press book, or a Desert Press book, or a Loompanics book, forget about it, wipe it from your mind, burn the god damn book. Seriously, these books are of extremely dubious quality.

Specifically, I'll talk about Ragnar Benson and Uncle Fester.

Ragnar, firstly, very often does not understand the science behind what he's talking about. But so long as it works, that's not a big deal.

What is a big deal is, most of his crap won't work. Let's take, for just a second, "Homemade C-4."

Firstly it ain't C-4. Totally, 100%, completely different compound, with different properties entirely. That's like calling a Toyota a Porsche.

Secondly, agricultural-grade ammonium nitrate has, over the past two years, become extremely hard to obtain. Not Ragnar's fault, obviously, he couldn't foresee how things would change over the coming years, but the effect is still a rendering obsolete of the information.

On the other hand, ammonium nitrate is easily synthesized with nitric acid and ammonium hydroxide. Only problem is - nitric acid isn't exactly sold at the drug store any more, either.

Plus, the only AN compound that would suffice as a survivalist explosive - the only one with any appreciable brisance - is ANNM. That's ammonium nitrate, nitromethane.

Nitromethane is a strongly watched chemical, as well, and expensive to boot. Unless you piss racing fuel, you aren't going to be able to get your hands on a decent amount of this stuff.

So, Uncle Ragnar, thanks for trying but see ya later.

And speaking of creepy uncles, how about Uncle Fester?

He's a bit better than Ragnar when it comes to chemistry - I'd hope so, he's a chemist - but frankly he should stick to dope recipes.

Parsing his books would be a bigger pain, because of actually having to detail why this aspect of his procedure is wrong or this formula is bullshit. Instead I'll point out that he gets a lot of his information from patents.

Anyone who holds a patent will tell you how much information is often missing from them. More than enough to get you turned into strawberry jam or dissolved from the inside out thanks to nitrogen dioxide fumes, that's for sure.

So, in summary - this shit ain't easy. That's why I want to discuss it - to find a method that actually may work.