Rules:

I'm not asking about the time you put a Black Cat in your mama's mailbox and it "spang" sound and barely opened the door, or the time you stomped on a whole roll of caps - I want to know about your creation of a conflagration that wildly exceeded your expectations, causing you to nearly defecate involuntarily.

I don't care if you have to violate your security classifications to tell me about it, or if the ATF will want to hunt you down. If you blew up a bridge or dropped a 500-pounder on some malicious ragheads, or just mixed up 12 pounds of Tannerite at the last Knob Creek shoot and blew a smokin' crater into Mother Earth, I wanna know about it.

We had about half a garbage can's worth of C-4 left at the demo range in Korea once. Filled up the garbage can most of the way and blew it on a hill top. I was quite a ways away, but my insides felt like jelly for a few seconds. I was already damn near deaf because I had given out all my earplugs, but that cinched it. I couldn't hear shit for a few days.

Acetylene tank + Big balloons + 4th of July at the lake = Big time explosions

Where is that fish-headed Star Wars dude?

I used ot put dynamite by gopher holes with grape juice crystals all over it, they woudl come out, sniff, then run over to eat, then I woudl trip the detonator, and see red mist and parts fly into the air, could do it alld ay, it was that fun, sometimes I woudl get a twofer, or more

blew up my share of mailboxes with blockbusters-- 1/4 sticks of TNT

Pipe Bombs


Newly formed holes


Hypothetically speaking.

Never coat a tennis ball with a mixture of Tide and gasoline, light it, and throw it down the street as a cop happens to roll by..............


that was a fun one to explain to my parents.......

It's a trap!

cross posted from a similar thread

Shape charges, det cord and blasting caps at age 13, Oh My!

I'd hollow out the space for the blasting cap in this (cut with a hacksaw, from an 8' length) steel cutting linear shape charge with a knife and screwdriver....    sprinkle the removed powder into the blasting cap with cannon fuse and a few Ohio bluetip matchheads. Crimp blasting cap with pliers, "light fuse, get away".

No beer involved, we were too young to get our hands on that...  

Note: ATF please call my "706" number.

I poured gas into a pop can and taped it shut then shot it with a rifle.  

boom...fire...

Fun with a cutting torch...

Get the torch running good and then snuff it out on a block of soft white pine.  In a foot tub, I would fill a plastic milk jug with water, holding it upside down and displace the water with the gas coming out of the torch.  Perfect mix of acetylene and oxygen.  Once full, I would cap it.

To detonate, I used those "ground bloom" fireworks as they have long fuses and the flame that shoots out will easily melt the polyethylene...

Lets just say a gallon milk jug will denude a 1 foot square patch of dense grass.

Homemade Explosives

=

Badly burned leg

Quoted: Never coat a tennis ball with a mixture of Tide and gasoline, light it, and throw it down the street as a cop happens to roll by.............. that was a fun one to explain to my parents.......

You should have coated the internals of a PVC 6 foot pipe with lighter fluid, buried the end in the ground with a spcae for a wick to run through (7 seconds is good when you run for your life, i've found) and launched that ball from there..

just how did you throw napalm, by the way?

Quoted: Fun with a cutting torch... Get the torch running good and then snuff it out on a block of soft white pine.  In a foot tub, I would fill a plastic milk jug with water, holding it upside down and displace the water with the gas coming out of the torch.  Perfect mix of acetylene and oxygen.  Once full, I would cap it. To detonate, I used those "ground bloom" fireworks as they have long fuses and the flame that shoots out will easily melt the polyethylene... Lets just say a gallon milk jug will denude a 1 foot square patch of dense grass.

Never done that myself, but Dad had told me stories of how they used to do that out at the yard, once they did it with a 5 gallon bucket . He told me it shook the building good and got the sherrif out looking for what the hell just happened.

Try this at home...


Take a small metal box that you might make in metal shop or something... burn some gasoline in it for awhile til it goes OUT. Now, pour some more gasoline into that bright red metal box so the fuel atomizes and creates a low hanging dense cloud (best in a 8' x 8' x 12" sandbox when you are 12, while your parents are gone). Add one lit match from a distance which is far far far away.  Voila! A mushroom cloud and a removal of that pesky, newly aquired facial hair.



It's true

Quoted: Add one lit match from a distance which is far far far away.  Voila! A mushroom cloud and a removal of that pesky, newly aquired facial hair. It's true

I got a version of that with my grandparents hard to light gas grill (which is an abomination before god. Charcoal or nothing!) I believe my dad was holding my beer.

Spade *pushing the button a lot*: Hey, why isn't this damn thing lighting?
Spade's dad: Don't lean over that in case...

*FOOM*

Quoted: *FOOM*

That's the sound alright...! you can add a "ph" as in "FOOMPH", if sometime during or after ignition someone says, "Fuck."    

Ordnance:

Me:             M-80 and a lighter.
My buddy:  Snapple bottle and cap for it.

Me:             Light M-80. Drop in Snapple bottle.
My Buddy:  Put cap on Snapple bottle and throw
Both:          DUCK!

BOOOM!

Rinse, repeat.

ETA: that was 15 years ago.
Now we just discharge firearms at dangerous paper targets, and hostile clays.

Gas grill with a busted ignitor.

I must have tried to get it started for 5 minutes.  Got a match.  Lit it while 10 ft away.  Wanted to throw the match from about 3 feet away.

I got within 3 ft. and was greeted with a *foom* and an orange mushroom cloud.  

Never got a chance to throw the match.

The hair on my arm grew back within 2 weeks.

I don't know if this is exactly stupid since I knew what I was doing, but I once made a certain liquid explosive.  I won't say the name of it, just in case it's illegal.  A few drops on a piece of paper and a hammer made a blast that was as loud as a rifle.

I spent two weeks at Harvey Point SC.  We blew up more shit than I can remember.  It was fun.

Quoted: Quoted: Add one lit match from a distance which is far far far away.  Voila! A mushroom cloud and a removal of that pesky, newly aquired facial hair. It's true I got a version of that with my grandparents hard to light gas grill (which is an abomination before god. Charcoal or nothing!) I believe my dad was holding my beer. Spade *pushing the button a lot*: Hey, why isn't this damn thing lighting? Spade's dad: Don't lean over that in case... *FOOM*

Amateurs.

Get a charcoal grill going pretty good--down to glowing coals but NO open flame.

Pour in about 2 cups of gasoline...see the pretty, billowing white smoke.  Make sure you stay UPWIND.

Stand back--light and toss match into cloud.

Fa-WHOOMP!  

Voila! Fuel-Air Explosive.

Quoted: Won't go into the dumbest other than to say, I've done more than my share. Second year Chemistry in highschool, I built a rocket motor for the final.  Although a superior mixture, it was difficult as hell to ignite and was unable to do so during the outside demonstration.  The teacher tells me best he can do is give me a "C". We move on to other outside experiments and I lay my box of parts off to the side.  Well some dummy decides to fire up a cigarette and the head of his match falls into my box igniting the loose powder which in turn ingnites my rocket.  The rocket takes off not straight up but horizontally at the school.  This wasn't a paper rocket but aluminum tube.  It went through the chem lab window, through the door, crossed hall, went through anatomy class door widow, through the occupied class, and out the window on the other side of the school and blew up in the woods on the other side of the building starting a small fire that the fire department had to be called to put out.  Fire alarms were activated and school evacuated. After the whole fracous settled down, Captain Kinner which is what we called our chem teacher came over and put his hand on my shoulder and wisphered in my ear, "Well I guess that deserves an A." You know all these years later, I still remember that great man that really cared about his students  and his amasing sense of humour.   Tj

Now THAT'S a good story!

Mine involves acetylene, a trash bag, cannon fuse, beer, and the cops. I need not go any further, and it's better that I don't.

My dad, uncle, & I went to a public range here in Texas, & we had 3 of those personal sized oxygen tanks. So we put one out at the 100 yrd line, & my dad aims in the AR I built for him. I should add were not the only ones on the range.  He hits the tank, & there is a huge explosion, & white cloud. Then as almost in a slow motion type film, the tank comes towards us like an aluminum boomerang, It was about 30 feet high & went right over our heads & hit the trees at the back side of the parking lot.

We laughed nervously & packed up & got the heck out of there. My dad let the air out of the two remaining tanks, & threw them away.

I know it wasn't an explosive, but it did explode. Next time I will add distance, & Tannerite to the formula.

I was building pipe bombs using potassium Chlorate, and Red Phosphorus. I was using galvanized pipes and drilling holes for cannon fuse. These were great fun as it would send the water in our front ditch as high as the telephone poles and you could see the shockwave travel down the bank through the weeds. It also generated a LOT of smoke so that made it better as far as explosions go. The pieces could be heard over head as the sound was just like a stray bullet.

So one day in my youth I was mixing a batch of these things up and I used a non galvanized steel pipe. As I was looking down the pipe mixing it with a pencil the chemicals flashed and set my face and house on fire. It also filled the house with smoke. I burned all my hair off and burnt the epithelium layer off of my eyes. I called 911 and told them I had a chemical explosion and they sent an ambulance and a bomb squad truck.

I spent two weeks in the burn unit at the hospital waiting for my eye sight to come back. The chemical explosion blew all the skin to the bone on my thumb and two fingers so I had a skin graph to replace the lost tissue.

The explosion in the home powder coated everything that was steel in my home a perfectly even brown. It was real odd.

Had I mixed the contents of the pipe and managed to get the lid screwed on before it flashed I would have been cut in half by the explosion.

How’s that for stupid...... ?



I don't even like mixing Chocolate in my milk now for fear of explosion.


I also had some mental problems later where I would hear and feel the explosion over again at any time of the day. I could be eating dinner and all of a sudden Boom! Sizzle…. And I would feel the pushing of the explosion on my body. It was by far the oddest thing I have ever experienced in my life.

Quoted: Acetylene tank + Big balloons + 4th of July at the lake = Big time explosions

I saw my cousin immediately after accidentally exploding one of those--he was holding it when it went off.  He would make them in his garage with garbage bags--I saw his kit.  He said he would raise them into the air with a helium filled bag before detonating them--I didn't see that.  The most interesting thing I saw was how the texture of his clothing was perfectly imprinted on his red, bruised skin by the force of the explosion.  Even the stitches were plainly visibly--Amazing.  ...Oh, and the windows of his garage were shattered and he could ahrdly hear.  

No shit, he's crazy.  

Quoted: Quoted: Acetylene tank + Big balloons + 4th of July at the lake = Big time explosions I saw my cousin immediately after accidentally exploding one of those--he was holding it when it went off.  He would make them in his garage with garbage bags--I saw his kit.  He said he would raise them into the air with a helium filled bag before detonating them--I didn't see that.  The most interesting thing I saw was how the texture of his clothing was perfectly imprinted on his red, bruised skin by the force of the explosion.  Even the stitches were plainly visibly--Amazing.  ...Oh, and the windows of his garage were shattered and he could ahrdly hear.   No shit, he's crazy.

It is no joke messing with those, they will kill you if you have a accident. I have never messed with them from that day on, they scare me too much.

<---10 days in the hospital.

Think large soy bean farm in central IL.

Post hole driver - you know the metal tube with heavy weight at one end - buried at a 40 degree angle up from horizon with only 4 inches extending above ground.

M-80 lit, drop in the tube - followed up by a can of condensed milk.  Surprizingly, the milk can fit snugly in the tube and would slowly slide down the tube as the air slipped past it.  Upon detonation of the M-80, the can expanded slightly to a tight fit.  Metal streaks on all sides of tube. Can doesn't break open.  What fun this is.

First round, slow sprial smoke trail for about 150 feet in the air - 2 of us jump on the JDeere and run out 300 yeads.  

Second round we get under tractor at 300 yards - slight whistling sound over our heads.  

Third round - we move out to edge of field, has to 600 plus yards - same sound - we panic as we don't know where these things are going....

Go back to tube - idiot buddy wants to shoot one straight up.  I went home and he chickened out.

As a civilian? Melted styrofoam cups in gasoline, lit it on fire with an M80 in the middle. Flaming sticky goo all over the trees. Burned down 1/2 acre of woods behind a convenience store. Man if that got on someone ther is NO WAY you can wipe it off.

Military? We made the worlds biggest bangalore. We used every engineering stake we had and all the C4 available. It was like 40' long and used around 60+lbs of C4  Ka friggin boom. That was sweet. The main problem was that we put an old hood from a 5ton over part of it. Never saw it again.

Considering I used to work at the demo branch at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri, I have more stupid stories than I can count.
But I can say that all the dumb things I did involved at least 1000 pounds of HE.

Bean buritos earlier in the day..... pain in stomach..... lighter in hand........

Last month.

ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=344170&page=1

Quoted: Won't go into the dumbest other than to say, I've done more than my share. Second year Chemistry in highschool, I built a rocket motor for the final.  Although a superior mixture, it was difficult as hell to ignite and was unable to do so during the outside demonstration.  The teacher tells me best he can do is give me a "C". We move on to other outside experiments and I lay my box of parts off to the side.  Well some dummy decides to fire up a cigarette and the head of his match falls into my box igniting the loose powder which in turn ingnites my rocket.  The rocket takes off not straight up but horizontally at the school.  This wasn't a paper rocket but aluminum tube.  It went through the chem lab window, through the door, crossed hall, went through anatomy class door widow, through the occupied class, and out the window on the other side of the school and blew up in the woods on the other side of the building starting a small fire that the fire department had to be called to put out.  Fire alarms were activated and school evacuated. After the whole fracous settled down, Captain Kinner which is what we called our chem teacher came over and put his hand on my shoulder and wisphered in my ear, "Well I guess that deserves an A." You know all these years later, I still remember that great man that really cared about his students  and his amasing sense of humour.   Tj

www.birch.net/~bkelley/video/crimebucket0.avi
www.birch.net/~bkelley/video/crimebucket1.avi

Quoted: Won't go into the dumbest other than to say, I've done more than my share. Second year Chemistry in highschool, I built a rocket motor for the final.  Although a superior mixture, it was difficult as hell to ignite and was unable to do so during the outside demonstration.  The teacher tells me best he can do is give me a "C". We move on to other outside experiments and I lay my box of parts off to the side.  Well some dummy decides to fire up a cigarette and the head of his match falls into my box igniting the loose powder which in turn ingnites my rocket.  The rocket takes off not straight up but horizontally at the school.  This wasn't a paper rocket but aluminum tube.  It went through the chem lab window, through the door, crossed hall, went through anatomy class door widow, through the occupied class, and out the window on the other side of the school and blew up in the woods on the other side of the building starting a small fire that the fire department had to be called to put out.  Fire alarms were activated and school evacuated. After the whole fracous settled down, Captain Kinner which is what we called our chem teacher came over and put his hand on my shoulder and wisphered in my ear, "Well I guess that deserves an A." You know all these years later, I still remember that great man that really cared about his students  and his amasing sense of humour.   Tj

My dad got a D when nearly the exact same thing happened to him.

I'll not even mention the railgun incident.

Quoted:

A physicist in New Mexico. I really don't want to know about his stupid tricks with things that go boom.

20 lbs of C-4, the M-113 will buff right out.

Quoted: www.birch.net/~bkelley/video/crimebucket0.avi www.birch.net/~bkelley/video/crimebucket1.avi

Jebus!

A friend of the family acquired 2, 5lb sticks of commercial dynamite. He stuck one in a dry creek bed, backed up about 75 yards and shot it with a rifle. I saw flames shoot up about 100 feet. An entire herd of cattle stampeded right through the neighbors fence. We all sat around laughing our asses off then "WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP", large chunks of mud, the size of baketballs, came slamming into the ground all over the place. I never ran so far, so fast in my life.

The explosion opened up a 30 foot hole in the dry creek bed and created a fresh pond.

A much younger making/use of a certain nitric+sulphuric+glycerin mixture......

Almost lost it making it.
Almost lost it bottling it.
Decided it was not a good thing to keep(Even frozen) and a buddy and I put a LARGE quantity under an old Oak stump....retreated to a (We thought) "Safe" distance behind a stone wall, and wound the dynamo.

We felt it a few milliseconds before we heard it.....and when we heard it we knew we were in DEEP SHIT!

Large chunks of oak, dirt, mud, rock rained down for (Seemingly) forever!

The above description of a large crater (Slowly filling with water now) is just about exactly what we were presented with.

Added to the list later were a window to the backhoe, many of the trees next to the old oak that were hit by the debris, and my buddy's VERY pissed off dad.

Funny, no LEO's were ever dispatched to inquire WTF!

I've done many, many other smaller ones....but that is the one I will ALWAYS remember.

It's amazing we were not killed by the explosion or the falling debris!

Tall Shadow

I errrr got rid of a groundhog hole, and replaced it with a great big hole

Not going to get into how I did it.

A year ago, I was burning wastepaper in rural new york at the edge of the hill our house and buildings stood on, overlooking the fields and woods down below. Dumping old newspapers, envelopes, junk mail, and crumpled up pieces of notepad out of the usual empty 20lb catfood bag, shaking them down evenly into the 50 gallon drum carefully mounted on cinderblocks and ventilated with a pattern of 7.62 sized holes in the bottom to allow drainage, and holding a match to a loose paper to get the whole thing going. Watching the fire grow until I had to drop the metal grates on top to prevent stray cinders from starting a grass fire and step backwards with smarting eyes from the rapidly increasing smoke and the acrid smell of plastic lined wood paste pressed 1mm thin, stamped with toxic chemicals to proclaim a lingerie sale at K-mart combusting.

The fire would leap up angry and fierce, burning captive within rusty walls, sending up thick orange tendrils cracking like whips, shimmering in the waves of heat rolling off the flames. And so it would burn caged with a stream of smoke rising through the sky, sometimes angling parallel with the ground if the wind blew. It wasn't pleasant to stand in, so I would avoid the smoke. I don't like smelling like any smoke, even though I hate woodsmoke the most.

I'd stir the embers with a stick as it burned down, checking the burn barrel every half hour or so to make sure it was safe and going smooth until it was over for the day. Eventually the fire would burn out and my work would be done. Sometimes it would be several trips, feeding the fire with boxes and bags of flammable materials. It cost a lot of money to use the dump, doing this was a cost effective way to handle things.

This got boring, over the months, doing the routine every week or so. Eventually I started just dropping in the packed full catfood bag into the barrel and lighting it, fighting the wind to get a solitary paper ignited to spread the flame disease to the rest of the colony of tree byproducts. That could take a long time on a windy or unlucky day, and I took to shortcuts.

Namely, accelerants. Using them to help start fires is very dangerous, and I've experimented with them all. High alcohol content liquors, black powder, gasoline, k-1 kerosene, magnesium fuses, and powdered aluminum fuel-air-explosives. It's a good idea to take these things out on the driveway and find your limits out under controlled circumstances before you try using them for practical purposes. Not all of them at once, smartasses.

I did it without a fire extinguisher, just a leaky hose a few yards away in case disaster struck. I learned that blackpowder is useless as a fuse unless you want to ignite more black powder or a pool of flammable liquid, and the liquid scenario can be iffy. I learned that if you lay down a trail of gasoline and light it, if you stomp it out you must move quickly down the line putting the fire out, or it will reignite the smothered residue. I learned that gasoline travels ten times faster than shown in the movies, and that it is not something to fuck around with. I learned that igniting a cubic yard of FAE can rock and shock you hard even though you are safe behind a large tree a good distance away.

I learned that I'm a cavalier and casual motherfucker when it comes to testing things that could take my life with my almost clinical 'experiment and see' attitude.

My routine became placing an ounce or so of straight gasoline on some of the upper papers in the catfood bag, and touching a lit rolled up paper to them. This made the initial lighting and spreading of the devouring flames quicker and easier, and so I continued this way for a few weeks. Then I had a hard time getting it lit, and I liberally doused the top of the bag with gasoline, letting it run down and soak the entire thing from the inside out. I would estimate the amount at a good cup or five.

I stepped back, pulled out my box of kitchen matches, and slowly stroked the head against the red stippled ignition surface. ShhhhhhhhhccccrrtchFWUP. The match crackled, and I gently tossed it into the burn barrel, spinning perfectly between the bars of the ancient grills stacked on top and down into the top of the bag. Step backwards, step, step, step. Safe zone. I thought.

A second passed. Two. Nothing.

Resisting the temptation to walk up and see what was happening.

Wondering when it was going to catch.

I heard the WHUMMMMP and my body instinctively kicked down and out hard, propelling me backwards through the air like a character in a John Woo film dodging bullets. Time blurred down to a crawl as a massive fireball erupted out the top of the drum, and that was nothing compared to the slamming rip of the shockwave which assaulted my ears and hit my body as I fell backwards, lifting me up and blowing me back twenty feet to a rough landing, one hand protectively covering my precious parts and the other wrapped around my head and eyes. And then, just as quickly as you can snap your fingers twice, it had gone from start to finish and was over.

My first and only thought was 'Whoa. Time compression is real'. The second was 'Holy shit does my ass hurt'. The third was 'No wonder Max Payne has that look on his face constantly. His ass hurts a lot from slamming on it all the time'.

As I sat there with slightly smouldering pants, shaking my dazed head and feeling like I had a sunburn, I realized what had happened. The blast wave from the gasoline violently igniting had had only one option as it tore the bag apart- to roar up and out of the open top of the drum, compressing and causing the heavy impact and blast wave which caught me in mid-jump and hurled me back.

'Well', I thought to myself, 'That was interesting.'

I wonder if there's a way I can experience that again without the dangerous, life insurance voiding parts. Probably not. Some people say I have a guardian angel. I say if I did, he died of an ulcer years ago.

Quoted: 20 lbs of C-4, the M-113 will buff right out. members.cox.net/eodtech2000/EOD/M113-1.JPG

Hot dang!

A friend filled an empty CO2 cartrige with black powder and flushed it down the toilet on the last day of our senior year at HS.  BOOOM!! We went and checked it out later and the whole toilet was blown to pieces.

frogs