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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Or the '80s, when you could just order the Anarchist Cookbook from a willing bookstore (some would refuse).

At the time I recall that there were definitely kids into this stuff. Not literal anarchy or violence, they just liked making bombs and setting them off out in the woods somewhere. Homemade fireworks really. They got into the chemistry of it, just nerdy stuff. No harm intended.

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To be honest, the Anarchist Cookbook had some really dodgy recipes. It was arguably a collection of future Darwin Awards.

The tennisball bomb definitely didn't work as advertised.

Just saying * looks around innocently *

so you also made a tennis ball rocket?

The bookstore clerk told us that, and suggested that we purchase an army improvised munitions field manual. Lol

In the 90's almost all of us played with fireworks and m80's in the fields. We used to rig up long fuses with our estes rocket kits for remote detonation. Everyone turned out fine.

The pre No Child Left Behind / Zero Tolerance era of school, was a great time. I feel bad for kids today.

>Everyone turned out fine.

The mother of all survivorship biases. We have ample statistics demonstrating that no, plenty of people died.

Christ, can't believe I even have to point this out.

I think most of us, at least most males, can recall things we did as teens that could have killed us if things went wrong. Some people are also more reckless than others, and will find ways to get their thrills no matter what rules you try to lay down. Some people get unlucky, which is sad but always has been and always will be that way.

In the 90's, Tower Records sold The Anarchist Cookbook no questions asked. Its recipes didn't appear very well researched and some seemed outright lethal or impossible.

On the bulletin boards there used to be all these horrible phone phreaking plans that were clearly not functional, like the blotto box that would electrocute someone across the phone lines.

We also had all those weekly world news tabloids.. i think some of it just made for weird entertainment.

I've heard the two gateways into becoming interested in chemistry are getting high and blowing shit up.

A friend and I want to make a small amount of nitroglycerin in chemistry class in HS. The teacher was all for it, but it got bumped all the way to the superintendent who shot it down.

Boo.

Anything fun in life is illegal, immoral, fattening, or dangerous.

In high school chemistry, I once superheated magnesium in a covered crucible and then blew on. That was fun.

All chemists are pyros, by definition and by requirement.

I was also around then, and even then it had a reputation of being trash, not really anarchist, and probably dangerously poorly put together.

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