I loved this quote from http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_won...

Synthesizing polynitro compounds is no chocolate fondue party, either: if you picture a bunch of guys wheeling around drums of fuming nitric acid while singing the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore, you're not that far off the mark. You really have to beat the crap out of a molecule to get that many nitro groups on it, which means prolonged heating of things that you'd really rather not heat up at all.