“Anarchist Cookbook” author William Powell has died | Hacker News Reader

“Anarchist Cookbook” author William Powell has died

theguardian.com

92 pointsmiobrien85 comments

Papa state said it first- those are dangerous thoughts, better not thought. Read something valuable, like Jules Verne, who would never educate you too make Nitro Glycerin. Or read a good comp-science book, instead of learning how to craft a virus. S/he who can engineer a building, can tear it down- deal with it. And by virtue of reading, anyone can do that- and this is only going to get worser. Any teenager tomorrow will be able to crisper up a plastic eating bacteria, turning any journalists notebook to black goo under there fingertips. If only those teenagers had some perspective, something to loose, some dream to be held hostage- you could actually prevent this. But doctoring at the symptoms- its so much easier. The other thing- that is almost work. To teach everyone how to craft a china masterpiece of art- that is a nightmare, to declare playing soccer illegal, that is doable. I wish there was a refund on wasted time on propaganda.

This is a far more profound comment than I expected to find. Teaching knowledge is important, but teaching ethics and morals is even more so.

I read the Jolly Roger's Cookbook (and many other BBS text files) as a teenager and used it to make thermite with my chemistry teacher in the 10th grade. And reading Phrack and old virus magazines like 40HEX did more to engender intellectual curiosity than any of my teachers and provided a solid foundation of low-level programming skills. I'm not sure how you'd weigh the net impact on the world of this kind of information being available, but my hunch is that it's overwhelmingly positive. I'm automatically suspicious of this deeply cynical view of human nature where everyone is so easily tempted to evil deeds if presented with forbidden knowledge and the merest opportunity.

I'm with you. TAC was one of the first books I encountered that described out-of-the-box thinking, tool-building, and the hacker ethos of using a thing beyond its intended purpose (not to mention a healthy distrust of authority).

I managed somehow to get through my teenage years without ever throwing a molotov cocktail at a LEO.

It's a numbers game. Let's say 99.9% are good people who would only use the knowledge for wholesome purposes. That still leaves 0.1% to do bad stuff. So if all kids knew how to make viruses, 0.1% of all of those kids would be a lot of virus writers.

I'm not saying we should lock the knowledge up. More that your anecdote doesn't really change things.

But you made those numbers up.

It doesn't really matter. The important point is that there is a percentage, not the exact value of it.

> Jules Verne […] who would never educate you too make Nitro Glycerin. /S

Haha also fulmicoton between other things. Love these books and the pragmatic approach to solve the problem at hand.

> those are dangerous thoughts, better not thought...

I disagree completely. America's government has been unable to evolve with a changing country. Partisanship is at its worst ever at a time when the quality of life for most people is declining. Now more than ever, people need to be learning how to resist an oppressive government, because like it or not, our government seems to be becoming an authoritative corporate oligarchy.

Just to be clear, this was in July.

"The writer suffered a fatal heart attack while on holiday with his family in Nova Scotia on 11 July, at the age of 66."

I wonder if this book gave people a skewed view of what anarchism is, or if it stemmed from the colloquial usage of 'anarchy', i.e mindless violence and chaotic lawlessness.

Bakunin, Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bookchin have nicer books on anarchism in my opinion.

Reading recipes that don't work for things that go boom is always going to get more attention than dry, academic 19th century political philosophy.

His foreword to the book makes clear that he doesn't mean anarchist in the left-wing sense. If anything he sounds more like aspects of contemporary militia culture, a kind of patriotic American restorationism. An excerpt:

If the real people of America, the silent majority, are going to survive, they must educate themselves. That is the purpose of this book. [...] If the people of the United States do not protect themselves against the fascists, capitalists, and communists, they will not be around much longer. [...] I do not particularly like any form of government but, if the majority of the people seem to think that they are incapable of governing themselves and want a government, then I think the principles the United States was born with are about the best there are. So now revolution comes to mean revitalization, bringing America back to where she was two hundred years ago. [...] I hope that, by the time the two hundredth anniversary of The First American Revolution rolls around, we will be able to look back at the sixties and early seventies as a dark era in the great history of a free nation.

That's what anarchy really devolves into.

I would argue that it likely devolves into statism, if "devolve" is the correct term.

Not even most anarchists want "mindless violence and chaotic lawlessness," rather they simply want to opt out of certain laws and legal responsibilities.

I don't think that's true; social anarchists generally regard hierarchy and unjust authority as inherently something to oppose. It is the abolishment of law and legal responsibilities, not just opting out. It's rejecting the entire concept of them.

I'm not sure it's given people a skewed view per se; it's just a product of its time: late 60s, early 70s. This kind of pseudo-academic grassroots stuff was en vogue.

I am surprised nobody has mentioned roguesci.org - the site from the days when the internet was relatively Wild West. That place was like Anarchist Cookbook x 100 - extensive detailed discussions, explanations, tutorials. People running the site got into some serious trouble, it was shut down in 2009, rumor has it by DOD. Some static mirrors still exist like https://parazite.nn.fi/roguesci although authenticity is unclear.

Kepler's Books in Menlo Park CA used to have a sign that they'd order any book you wanted, except one, "The Anarchists' Cookbook". On the other hand, I've seen copies of the book in the '60s nostalgia section of a bookstore near Ghirardelli Square.

If you want that kind of info today, right-wing "prepper" and gun nut sites will have it. Amazon sells The U.S. Army Improvised Munitions Handbook, TM 31-210. It's not like this info is hard to get any more.

I don't really understand the usage of the term "prepper" in relation to Anarchist Cookbook. I think of prepper as someone with an underground bunker with a large cache of vacuum-sealed stew and pickled eggs. If anything related to weapons, it's just the inventory and tools necessary to make reloads.

Similar with "gun nut" sites - these usually have content covering the latest innovation in trigger mechanisms, what the right carbon content of the steel is, etc.

Caricaturing people in the wrong way cannot serve any useful purpose.

Why would anyone publish this article, in the current state of things...? Those two words in conjunction completely circumvent any filtering Google does to discourage stumbling on that sort of thing, and it replaces the required familiarity with terminology needed to seek out such information, and minimizes the extensive active pursuit otherwise needed to come upon a collection of such nature; 6 months after his death.... Rediculous!!!

I think you meant ridiculous.

Ha, indeed! 'Redic' is my default auto-correct :p

Prepper sites on improvised munitions: [1][2] Pinterest version.[3] (That reflects more of what Pinterest's algorithms think go together.)

[1] http://www.prepperdome.com/make-gunpowder-old-fashioned-way/ [2] http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=733&t... [3] https://www.pinterest.com/pin/418905202815123011/

Preppers do a lot more than just store pickled eggs. The kind of person who tends to be a prepper also tends to distrust the federal government, be paranoid of centralized power, and is often prepping for civil war, or at very least civil unrest. It wouldn't surprise me if most people in militias are also preppers of some sort.

To be honest, after reading a bit about it, prepping looks like a very nice hobby.

The biggest downside is that moving becomes impossible after a while and whoever has to handle your estate after you die will curse you into the seventh circle.

Even if they are doing all of those things, it does not mean that their actual activities are anything other than I stated (which, by the way included activities beyond pickling eggs, you cherry-picker).

You seem to be claiming that if someone is a prepper, then they are also planning to blow up buildings, poison populations, etc. Seems a bit of a stretch.

If some militia members are also computer programmers, can I go off and make a bunch of assumptions about computer programmers based solely on this?

No, I said there's a tendency for the two to occur in the same kinds of people. There's a big difference there.

And yeah, I cherry-picked the pickled eggs line. You've gotta admit it was a good one. Neither of the main points of our posts were altered by me saying that, it was just for flavoring.

It's because of one of the most influential "prepper"s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Saxon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Poor_Man%27s_James_Bond

Growing up, the local bookstore had it -- in the cooking section next to Julia Child.

Crown Books in my town had it "in the back."

Is that the milspec code? edit: part of the milspec code or what?

You mean "TM 31-210"? That just means it's a US Army technical manual. The Army has one for almost every piece of equipment they use.[1] There are also Field Manuals, which are how-to guides for the things the Army does. Most of them are available to the public.

[1] http://www.armytechnicalmanuals.com/tm-11-militarytechnicalm...

You can get much higher quality information now. There are tons of mistakes and inaccuracies in TAC. These days there are HD YouTube videos with detailed instructions on how to do that kind of stuff.

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