Things you could once buy easily: Dennis note.

[denniswrenn]

Your dad got hydrofluoric acid for you when you were 10?

I've been around several things that aren't exactly safe, H2SO4, HCl, H2O2(Not the weak 3% stuff, I'm talking about 30% - 50%), but I woudn't even want to be near HF, I heard if you spill it on yourself it sucks the calcium out of your bones, and if not treated in time you will probably have to have a limb amputated.

[nabeels786]

i heard that some guy spilled HF on himself here a few years ago. he didn't loose his hand though. it goes through your skin and eats ur hand inside out. ouchie.

[filburt1]

I read a book called Virtual Destruction which involved a crime with HF. If what they said is true (I asked my chem teacher and she said it was), that is some scary s***. :eek:

[sail3005]

you can still get things easily, you just have to work for it. for example: my friend extracts potassium nitrate from some type of stump remover. :D

[Guv]

My father had a theory about child rearing that drove my mother crazy.

He believed that teenagers had no fear and tended to live dangerously, but that children 5-10 years old had a healthy fear of their environment because everything was strange and new to them.

He believed in teaching young children to deal with dangerous objects while they still had that healthy fear, claiming that if you waited too long the teenage fearless know-it-all attitude could not be successfully fought.

I still remember when I was 6 or 7 and my father started teaching me how to use the power tools in our basement. The first thing he did was quickly saw a two by four into several pieces, first with a bench saw and then with a radial arm saw. He told me that the piece of lumber could easily be my wrist or a finger and that I should be careful when using his equipment. He taught me various safety measures, including always being on firm footing when using the equipment, so that I could not accidently stumble.

When I proudly showed my mother the wood I sawed up and the items I turned on a lathe, she almost fainted and did not speak to my father for the rest of that day and most of the next day. It was the first time I witnessed an argument between them. because I had not been injured, she withheld the ultimate penalty. My mother was an excellent cook and my father loved to eat. If she really got mad at him, she burnt his food or otherwise messed up in the kitchen for a day or so.

[barrk]

Sail.............Why????:confused:

[sail3005]

BIG explosions :D

[parksie]

I'm permanently paranoid and VERY careful about things that could potentially hurt me :)

For example, you DON'T want to get Oleum on yourself :eek:

[kedaman]

I'm a paranoid programmer :p

[CiberTHuG]

I've heard the HF/bones thing before, too. That if the exposure is severe enough you will die from that reaction.

But yes, you used to be able to do a lot of things you can't do now. Taking a knife to school was no biggie. Having a hunting gun in your car was no biggie. Now you are expelled for a box cutter.

But I read this great little bit about toys being too safe. The guy was saying that when he was little he had a toy hammer that he could beat little wooden pegs through little holes, and that parents hate that sort of toy now. It is a simply way to teach danger. You whack your thumb a few times and you learn to respect the hammer.

Kids use play to learn. Having a toy hammer is a good thing. Getting them to respect tools, especially power tools, early is a good thing.

In my house my dad had several guns. None of them were ever locked away (with one exception I'll go into later). But there was only one that was ever loaded. But at a very early age (6-8?) I was taught how to shoot a gun. I wasn't any good at it. It was a Ruger .357 Blackhawk, and I weigh less than 100 lbs. Yeah... like I can be acurate with that. But, I understood it. And now dad could keep that gun loaded under his bed and we knew to never ever even think about touching that gun. Don't play with it, don't even look at it. And our friends were not to ever go in our parents bedroom because there is a gun in there and we don't want them playing with it, either.

The answer is not hide people from danger, but educate them.

The guns that were locked up? Well, there is a pretty cabinet with a few hunting rifles and a shotgun in the front room, which also has a picture window. The cabinet has a pretty etched glass front which my brother made. Since anyone can look in the front window and see the guns, and then break that window and the cabinet window, those guns have been chained. The chain is in turn padlocked to an iron bar in the back of the cabinet. That iron bar goes through the hardwood floor of the house into a block of concrete in the ground.

Besides which, rifles aren't good for home defense. :)

[denniswrenn]

sail: They can't be too big, potassium nitrate is a fairly weak oxidizer. It is used to make Black powder(not gunpowder, which is made by adding cotton to a mixture of HNO3 & H2SO4), and fireworks(I'm not talking about firecrackers, which are composed of a mixture of KClO3 or KClO4, [optional] S, and a metal powder such as Al). If the explosions were really BIG... Well, I don't know how to respond, but they just aren't.


Guv: I agree that showing kids how dangerous something is before they get hurt is a very good idea. Once a few years ago, I was out in the garage with my dad, and I wanted to do something with the grinder(the handheld kind, this was equipped with a cutting wheel), I can't remember what, but he didn't want me to use it because it was dangerous. I didn't beleive him until he cut a 3" piece of metal in half in about 4 seconds. After that I didn't really want to even touch it. Although now that I'm older,and I would use it if I needed to, after that demonstration I would never lose respect for it.

Mike: That sounds like a challenge to me ;)

Travis: I've got two of those pretty glass cabinets... But we don't really use them because my dad built a large umm closet to store all of our guns in(It wouldn't be necesary, but we've got over 120 rifles, 30 handguns, and besides, the BATF requires a secure storage place if you want to own a submachine gun). It's usually not locked(*) because we keep other stuff in there like emergency flashlights, computer software(I don't want my collection stolen), etc... (*) - We lock it whenever we go out somewhere

[aknisely]

Dennis comes from a family of gun nuts.... :)

[Guv]

DennisWren: You are right about potassium nitrate (and sulpher & charcoal) being used to make black powder, which is fairly tame. Also, I do not remember it being called black gun powder, merely black powder.

I did not think that gun powder was made from cotton. I thought that nitrocellulose was called gun cotton and was made by soaking cotton in a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acids. At least that is what we called it when my friends and I made it so many years ago.

I was also under the impression that it stopped being used well over one hundred years ago. I thought that gun cotton was used with muzzle loaders, where you put an explosive packet in the barrel of a cannon and put the ball in afterwards. I thought they stopped using it with the advent of more modern ammunition which had explosive and projectile in a self contained unit.

I have no idea what ingredients are used for so called gun powder. Could it be ground up or otherwise processed gun cotton? It is TNT?

[parksie]

Guv - I have some info on this but I'd rather not post it publicly, if you get my point. Once I find it I'll PM you with the details.

[denniswrenn]

Guv - TNT(Trinitrotoluene)is a mixture of the nitrating acids(Nitric and Sulfuric) dripped into toluene. It is a three stage process which is very picky(Different concentrations of the same acid are required for different steps), not to mention dangerous, and extremely toxic.

Gun powder is made from nitrating cellulose(I'm not sure if it's commercially made using cotton or not). After the process is finished, you dissolve the product in acetone and turn it into grains. Black powder (PN, S, and Charcoal) is what is used in muzzle loaders, and canons, gun powder(nitrocellulose) is too quick.

Nitrocellulose-based gun powders now have several things added to give them a kick, such as small amounts of nitroglycerin.


I can give you more details if you want, but I would rather not discuss it publicly for obvious reasons.

[parksie]

I've sent that PM. Be worried :eek:

It doesn't say about gunpowder, but it does give detailed instructions on a lot of things that shouldn't really be in the public domain.

[CiberTHuG]

Okay, I'm confused on this, "rather not discuss it publicly". Is it because it upsets John, or because it upsets the left wing?

[parksie]

Because this is a public forum and you never know who's reading it.

[CiberTHuG]

Originally posted by parksie
Because this is a public forum and you never know who's reading it.

You sound paranoid. Who are you worried about? Gunpowder is a technology that is how old? It is no longer patented, it is not secret. Formulas are available in several texts. I'm not even sure the government considers gunpowder a munition (in other words I would imagine you could export it).

So why the fear? Are you trying to be somebody else's child's parent?

[denniswrenn]

but it does give detailed instructions on a lot of things that shouldn't really be in the public domain.

[parksie]

CiberTHuG - the document I sent to Guv contains a lot of things that ARE dangerous. Would you want a maniac to have easy access to instructions for making TNT? Thermite?

[CiberTHuG]

Are you saying he doesn't already, or are you saying we should ban certain books from the library and regulate free speach?

[parksie]

*sigh*

I have nothing against things like this being available. It's just that I would much rather the information stay in official, controllable places (for example certain documents are flagged when you try and get them), rather than being distributed to anyone with internet access.

[denniswrenn]

That's already happened.


Paladin Press was sued for releasing a book called Hitman, a guy used it to kill somebody and the family sued. Following this, several books on different subjects including those mentioned here were banned.


Read more(not much more) here: http://www.paladinpress.com/explosives.html

That's surely a kick in the mouth for free speach :(

[CiberTHuG]

Well, you know where I stand. This isn't new advanced technology, and I don't think flagging the articles is good either. That makes the government into big brother, and removes your presumption of innocence.

In a tech related note (and check Slashdot for more on this).

There was a company that had a digital watermarking technology that dared the public to crack. They had a contest with a cash award. The proffesor who led the team the cracked the mark turned down the award, in favor of keeping his research so he could publish it himself. What he thought was more interesting then the result was the proccess.

The company threatened to sue under the DMCA (Digital Mellinieum Copyright Act). The proffessor was actually scared into delaying the release of his work.

Why is it illegal to reverse engineer something? *shrug*

[kedaman]

Something that might be applied on information technology as well in soon future

[Guv]

Parksie: You are evil and unrepentant! When I say this to my girl friend, her reply is always: "And proud of it!".

Thanx for the information. The FBI, DEA, CIA, and a few others will be contacting you soon. I would have also reported you to the IRS, but they ignore anonymous calls and I do not want them to know who or where I am.

I would not want to see laws passed about what can and cannot be posted on the internet, but I do agree that some voluntary self censorship is in order.

It seems like a bad idea to post dangerous data for use by people too stupid to find it for themselves.

[denniswrenn]

Yeah, he's an evil little bastard http://dewrenn.hypermart.net/images/evil.gif

I don't know why he even has that ummm 'book' that he sent you. I stopped reading that when I was 12, because most of it was pure crap. I managed to grab a few good books from paladin before they quit selling them. I bought them mainly because I'm very interested in Chemistry...

[parksie]

Guv - I didn't post that publicly, and there is no easy way to get it. It was not written by me or anyone connected with me.

At the moment I'm not willing to say where I got it from, but I am planning on removing it just in case there is some way of accessing it (once you've finished with it).

[sail3005]

what could possibly be so bad?

besides, i am sure that if you are capable of getting something of that nature, then anyone that is serious about making that stuff could also easily get it.

[parksie]

That's as maybe, but I still have to cover myself.

Oh, and Guv, I don't fall under the jurisdiction of any of those agencies ;)

[denniswrenn]

No easy way to get it? You can type the title into any search engine, and you will find hundreds, possibly thousands of matches.

[tumblingdown]

Women.





td.

[denniswrenn]

You can still buy them easily, but they'll cost ya a lot more than they used to...

[tumblingdown]

a sad comment on todays society.




td.

[sail3005]

Originally posted by tumblingdown
a sad comment on todays society.




td.

what, the fact that you can buy women, or the fact that they are expensive?