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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36585 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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stinky overweight hacker who can build anything out of scraps

Most of the actual competent techies aren't stinky, aren't overweight (that's a low class thing) and had you paid attention in chemistry you'd know you can't blow up a bridge without explosives that aren't sold in a grocery store. At least not in this century, before 1950 you could probably buy dynamite in rural stores all over the US.

Also, why are you talking about hackers in context of army special forces ? Hackers belong to NSA, CIA and maybe some airforce intel and EW units, not 'special forces' which typically means doorkickers (i.e. assault troops), enemy territory recon forces and such.

You actually could but it would be very difficult/dangerous (you would need several grocery stores worth of acetone and peroxide)

TATP is not going to be practical for taking down a bridge. Skip that and just make nitroglycerin, you'll only probably kill yourself doing it.

IIRC it's nontrivial to buy large amounts of nitrate these days without a documented need, precisely because nitric acid's required to make nearly all the good explosives (not just nitroglycerin; nitric acid + easily-available stuff would also suffice for RDX and TNT). That's part of why crazy shit like TATP gets used; the terrorists know it's ludicrously unsafe, they just can't get dynamite (the other part is that counter-terrorists have scanners for nitrogen - I think it's either NMR or X-ray - and again TATP's one of few options that won't show up).

Most peroxide in stores is hopelessly dilute. Plus, even if you got the good stuff we used in lab in university you'd kill yourself before accomplishing anything.

A home freezer suffices for getting arbitrarily-dilute peroxide to 20% or so (the first eutectic's at around 45%, but I don't think most home freezers get cold enough).

you'd know you can't blow up a bridge without explosives that aren't sold in a grocery store

Pool supply store and sporting goods before we are able to buy from a construction supplier. Not a grocery store but also not controlled.

Being plain looking in much of the world now is also being slightly overweight, would not be surprised if many CIA field people were.

Manufacturing something like a person's weight in high explosives exclusively from 'pool supply store' is .. kinda difficult.

Remember that every normal country locks down nitric acid supply down fairly tight, you have to either do something crazy dangerous like TATP or start with sulphuric acid and work up from there.

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