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Comment by andrewaylett | Hacker News Reader

I'm hopeful we'll be able to look back in 30 years time and see this development as pivotal in helping to curb the use of explosives where diplomacy would be more suitable.

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If you're functioning on a level where diplomacy is a viable option, you're capable of building explosives without abuse of mundane fertilizer. Nobody serious about killing a lot of people for political gain is going to go "gosh darn it, we can't get IED-suitable fertilizer from the local gardening store, guess we'll actually have to talk to our enemies."

Explosives are some of the easiest things to make, you can't put that genie back in the bottle. Attempts to do so that come at a high incidental cost should be regarded with extreme skepticism.

The Boston bombers apparently disassembled fireworks to make their bombs, for example. But even if you take all the obvious choices off the table (gunpowder, anfo, etc.) it's still so very easy to make your own explosives. We live in an industrial age, and one consequence of that is easy access to processes and materials that can be used to do seriously dangerous things. An ordinary drug or hardware store is like a candy shop to someone with sufficient knowledge and motivation to make bombs. You can't just take one thing off the shelf, or ten things, or a hundred things to change that.

You can easily but saltpetre and sulfur in a pharmacy then go to a hardware store to get charcoal. I made some bad fireworks as a stupid kid, I'm lucky I didn't lose my fingers.

"... where diplomacy would be more suitable."

What do you mean by that?

I think he means that this development would encourage the use of diplomacy over explosives. I initially read it the other way (diplomacy being more useful than this development).

People organised enough to address their grievances through the political system are capable of building vastly more powerful explosives, ammonium nitrate doesn't compose a critical part of their supply chain. For those who it's not an option, or for those who find the option unpalatable, it's highly questionable whether not being able to get the right kind of fertiliser's going to stop them - especially when you consider how easy ammonium nitrate, and other precursors to more significant explosives, is to make.

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