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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   26622 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 30, 2024

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If you have a bunch of legitimate businesses that need it you would be ok, but you also probably aren't suicide bombing anyone. If you just stagger your purchases you are just extending your lead time on the cops - you won't get picked up in the "let's check out everyone who bought massive quantities of fertiliser at once" sweep, but you will get picked up in the "let's check out everyone who bought massive quantities of fertiliser period" sweep.

You could rob a legitimate business that needs lots of ammonium nitrate instead. Or rob an ammonium nitrate wholesaler.

Lol I stuck to just addressing the scenarios he brought up because I'm not sure it's a good move for us to knuckle down and figure out the best way to uncle ted in the modern world. But ehh we're probably already on a list somewhere. Stealing it in the states would be a bad move, HS has a team who clocks in every day to pray someone steals chemicals so they can do something productive for a change. You'd be better off getting a job at an AN wholesaler and skimming I think.

Getting a legitimate business needing ammonium nitrate was exactly what Breivik did though and that strategy worked just fine. You don't need to be rich or a genius to do this, but not being a moron seems like an almost impossible bar to clear for terrorists.

My pet theory is that Bin Laden was successful mainly because he managed to convince non-retards to do a suicide attack, and the only reason we're not seeing more such attacks isn't because of NSA / TSA / DHS and the rest of the alphabet soup that was rolled out in the aftermath of 9/11, but because most non-retards usually don't want to die (or kill, for that matter).

but not being a moron seems like an almost impossible bar to clear for terrorists

Most of these type of (seemingly) lone wolf events are more mental illness driven than anything else, which decreases the quality of the planning.

Not sure about the US situation, but in Canada it's actually pretty hard for anyone to buy AN fertilizer in decent quantities regardless of legitimacy -- AIUI the supply chain regulations are so strict now that not many companies are interested in producing/shipping/storing the stuff, so it's simply not available.

It sucks because it's a way more practical nitrogen fertilizer for moderate-sized cropland than the urea-based ones that you can still get (which happen not to be good for bombs) -- this may be regional though, I think some producers might still exist in the Southern US.

You still need a pretty active primer charge to set of ANFO however (a blasting cap for instance), which probably discourages run-of-the-mill terrorists from going this route -- one imagines that something like this would not be an impossible hurdle in the particular case of an active Army special-ops guy, but IWK anything about that.

urea-based ones that you can still get (which happen not to be good for bombs) -

False. Trust me on that. Making something with TNT strength from them is pretty straightforward. As in kids in highschool having 9th grade chemistry in Eastern Europe easy.

I thought to pull that off you'd still need ammonium nitrate?

Just nitric acid.

Oh yeah lol. I was fixated on Macguyvering it.

OK, you can make a bomb with pretty much anything having nitrogen + some chemistry -- but if you want to do it at scale it's pretty helpful to be able to just buy 100lb sacks and dump them in some diesel.

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