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Notes -
One of the comments in the Quality Contributions Roundup was @Dean's comment about domestic surveillance and bomb-making/terrorism. Assuming we're all already on three-letter-agency watch-lists (i.e., damage done), can anyone elaborate and/or provide sources on what bomb-making materials are surveilled or controlled? (The US Army's TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook (pdf) is probably a good reference for what materials were available to a motivated person in 1969.) My understanding was that the biggest technical challenges of bomb-making were that:
Ordnance experts are delighted to tell their fellow chemistry enthusiasts everything they want to know about explosives... except the practicalities of triggering them.
Many of the low explosives (Tom Scott video on the difference between high and low explosives) that can be made with minimal chemistry knowledge and experience are more volatile than the application demands, thus are liable to decompose or be unintentionally triggered before they can be deployed, e.g., TATP.
But, so far as low explosives go, I never learned what technical or operational barrier there is to a black powder enthusiast buying x, y, and z from their local home and garden center and assembling such-and-such or this-and-that.
(Have any of you given the agents who monitor you names?)
Making your own black powder is entirely legal. IIRC, the manufacture and storage limits are something like 25 pounds before the law requires licensing, though I'd imagine your home insurance might have some objections in the event of a house fire claim. Tutorials on making high-quality powder are available on you tube.
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The obvious question is then how good is 25 pounds of black powder compared to just driving a car into a group of people?
It's not like you can easily pack it very tightly against a building etc since it's, well, 25 pounds, so just slightly smaller than 2 gallons of water.
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