Well, we never managed to get it to work. 😁
Rumours are there is an annotated version where someone who actually understood chemistry fixed a lot of the recipes 😀
I never could nail the thermalite recipie, thanks for the tips!
possession of materials that could be of use to a terrorist”,
Yeah, but that could include pretty much anything!
John wick once killed a guy with a pencil. A ****ing pencil.
I remember making (single) nitro toluene in a level chemistry. Iirc, The ice Bath kept the NO2 lump added to just the one, do the same reaction at room temp and 2 get added (di nitro toluene), reflux at 60C ish I think was tnt. Our teacher was decidedly nervous they lesson.
I used to have a climbing buddy that said he'd worked his way through that PIHKAL book when he'd worked in a lab with access to the necessary starter chemical. I believed him.
An awful lot of chemicals from hard drugs, to explosives, to chemical weapons, aren't that hard to make. It's making them safely that is tricky. Remember Hitler chose not to use nerve gas like Sarin etc because it was so easy he was sure the allies had it all too.
I was watching some youtubes recently and considering making some sugar rockets with the kids..... until I realised its illegal, as sugar rocket fuel is classed as explosives.
Spycatcher?
There was a copy of the said publication doing the rounds at school (when I was a pupil). If we had gone all If, it would probably have been evidence.
I have demonstrated thermites. Usually copper/zinc but also the aluminium/iron famous one. It is rather tricky to actually get started. One of those high risk of failure demos.
See Spycatcher turned up as well. I remember going to a Meadowbank away game and there were readings on the bus. Think they were doing us a favour.
Like, there are strict laws on carrying knives. But I’d like to think that if I had a chef’s knife wrapped in a towel in the boot of the car along with big pans and a whisk whilst driving to a meeting with friends where I was going to be cooking for a dozen people, it might be handled slightly differently from if it was duct taped to my back under a hoodie at 1am
I stopped carrying a leatherman with a locking blade in my MTB kit, and bought a non locking blade multi tool.
Should be fine carrying it, but I do not want to deal with the consequences of someone deciding I didn't need a fixed/locking blade.
Easier to stick to the law than rely on opinions about the law
Easier to stick to the law than rely on opinions about the law
Yep, keep your future in your own hands, i stopped carrying a leatherman for the same reason, yes you can argue it was for MTB where you needed to maybe cut a wire, bend something back, or cut grass and stuff out the wheel/cassette, reality is, they'll just charge you and get you to explain that to a magistrate, not worth it!
As for explosives, they are not hard to make, but most items are monitored, there's a reason why you can't get decent fertilizer anymore, any book that provides instructions on making this stuff should be criminalised, just as much for daft folk who will lose a limb, all for making something to blow a stump in the garden or the likes, people aren't all bad, some are just inquisitive, and daft.
any book that provides instructions on making this stuff should be criminalised
That would have made my standard grade chemistry class illegal, let alone higher levels of learning. This way leads to the end of education in the UK!
Blair tried that - it was proposed that giving instructions in the safe handling of hazardous substances become a terrorist offence. I was training to be a Chemistry teacher at the time.
That would have made my standard grade chemistry class illegal, let alone higher levels of learning. This way leads to the end of education in the UK!
I'm on about step by step instructions for this type of activity, not banning thermochemistry, i have a fair few books on the subject, such as the chemistry of explosives, but these don't offer step by step instructions on how to manufacture an end product!
See Spycatcher turned up as well. I remember going to a Meadowbank away game and there were readings on the bus. Think they were doing us a favour.<br /><br />
when it was in the news, a friend went to visit family in New York so had orders to buy copies for folks in the UK. We read some of it - load of tosh. If it had been published without fuss in the UK it would have sunk without trace and 99% of the population would have been unaware of it!
Afaik, a lot of the ‘holocaust denial’ books were pulled off Amazon.
Dont know why Marx and Engels ‘Communist Manufesto’ would be shortlisted for any chop.
Their scope seemed to be meta-accounting, lifting the bonnet of the economy and seeing how it ‘works’, Haynes style.
Easier to stick to the law than rely on opinions about the law
This is what I was discussing with Ben just now.
Common sense should apply, but the problem is that it's low-hanging fruit if they want to collar you for "something." I think you're up to something, I can't prove anything, but oh look what's all this then? A locking knife is it then sir? Oh dear. Al Copone famously finally got caught and sent down due to income tax evasion, remember.
Which reminds me, I've seen this first-hand. Back in, wow, what, the mid-90s we were setting off in the small hours to get to a job halfway across the country. We were almost immediately pulled for the crime of being in a sporty-looking car at a silly time of the morning. We'd done nothing wrong but the driver had a smart mouth and the copper clearly thought "right, I'm having you." They had the three of us out by the kerbside whilst they went through the car. They went to the point of putting a tread gauge on the tyres (which was kind of amusing cos he'd bought four new ones like three days ago, prior to that he was driving round with Right Said Fred on two of them). Then they got to the boot, each of our toolboxes. Jackpot. "And you've got receipts for all these tools have you, sir?" Well, that screwdriver belonged to my grandfather, but he's been dead for maybe fifteen years so he'll be difficult to ask. I think by that point they knew they were reaching and sent us on our way with some passive-aggressive send-off or other.
It shouldn't happen, and that was half a lifetime ago now, but if they want to pin something on you because they don't like your face then , well...
I would think that if you've got one of these books that's banned because; criminal/terrorism whatever, and otherwise you're just Mr Normal, then nothing terrible's going to happen. If you're busted because of who your friends are, or the websites you're visiting, or the meetings you're going to or otherwise you seem like Mr Suspicious, and you've got this shit tucked under the mattress, then I reckon the cops are probably going to add possession as part of the charges.
Would ‘materials that could be of use to a terrorist’ include a toyota pickup?
Seems that a new ‘how to’ document been released https://www.wired.com/story/dxe-animal-agriculture-investigation-guide/
as for criminalising books or documents ‘on making this stuff’’ 🤣 this is not reasonable. I won’t suggest it is a slippery slope to banning anything you don’t like but … it is even less reasonable when the folks organising the legislation have a weak grasp on the intended consequences, let alone any thoughts on the unintended ones.
Would ‘materials that could be of use to a terrorist’ include a toyota pickup?<br /><br />
depends who you want to label as a terrorist that day.
Dont know why Marx and Engels ‘Communist Manufesto’ would be shortlisted for any chop
I'm fairly certain that I've got my grandfather's copies on the shelves somewhere. I have no plan to read them, it's just a link to a man I never knew.
We have 2 copies of MK in our teaching base, probably donated by PE teachers who see it as a teaching tool. It is a dogs dinner of a book and extremely difficult to see any coherent thread in it.
I would say the definition of a book is it has an ISBN
I've got loads of books without one...
I've also got Mein Kampf (it's not very good) and The Communist Manifesto, Mum has an early german language version that she inherited from an aunt, 1860's IIRC (though she can't read german). There's a load of other historical/political publications she got at the same time, most are in various museum and library collections around the southwest and a few went to auction. It was quite an eye opening collection, piles of 50s and 60's pulp scifi novels (pretty much rotted to point of disintegration) with a bagged 17th century copy of the st james bible on the top. Then some random documents from some 18th century court proceedings... Took months to get everything appraised.
I’m on about step by step instructions for this type of activity, not banning thermochemistry, i have a fair few books on the subject, such as the chemistry of explosives, but these don’t offer step by step instructions on how to manufacture an end product!
GCSE and/or A level Chemistry will give you enough knowledge to make some quite nasty explosives. And access to most of the ingredients. It's not rocket science.
A mate back in my first job used to make his own solid rocket fuel and explosives in his (large and remote) back garden.
He's a pilot now, so obviously never got caught!
Is Spycatcher still banned?
In my school when I was about 13 (early 90s) two floppy discs went around - one was the anarchist cookbook, and the other had JPGs of topless women. No-one got arrested as far as I know.
I also found PIHKAL (online) around the same time I discovered mdma (in clubs). I loved reading it, although I skipped all the hardcore chemistry bits!
Is Spycatcher still banned?
No, as of 1988. Weirdly, it was always available in Scotland anyway.
John wick once killed a guy with a pencil. A **** pencil.<br /><br />
Or a Bic Crystal. The head and neck have quite a few vulnerable spots where a thin, stiff, pointy object held in a fist, and applied with sufficient force could really spoil someone’s day. The pen, as they say, is mightier than the sword. John Wicks’s was probably a 9H…
Don’t forget, plenty of people have been killed by a single punch to the head.
as for criminalising books or documents ‘on making this stuff’’ 🤣 this is not reasonable. I won’t suggest it is a slippery slope to banning anything you don’t like but … it is even less reasonable when the folks organising the legislation have a weak grasp on the intended consequences, let alone any thoughts on the unintended ones.
In the court case I mentioned above, some of the documents were instruction manuals on making guns.
They were PDFs with actual size templates for sheet metal, and detailed lists of materials to purchase from any hardware store, so that a completely uneducated reader could make a gun at home with extremely basic metalworking tools.
These guns ranged from handguns to fully automatic rifles. Our expert witness actually made and fired one to prove that the instructions were viable.
I can think of no good reason why such documents shouldn’t be banned in the UK, when the end result of using said manual is also, for the most part, banned in the UK.
These documents are not present on the internet for amusement or scientific/engineering curiosity. They were published and actively circulated in Extreme Right Wing groups to people intent on doing serious harm to others.
You're going to shit yourself when you discover some of the scabbier parts of the 'dark web.'
Thanks to US law defining the receiver as the gun in law and allowing (broadly) anyone to make a gun there are very high quality descriptions of how to make them online. If you're in the US you can even buy a cheap, single purpose CNC mills to make a lower.
If you've ever seen a video of a Sten gun being disassembled on YouTube (see Forgotten Weapons or Royal Armouries for instance) you have enough info to make a 9mm submachine gun. It's about the simplest automatic weapon possible, optimised for production with minimal knowledge and tooling. You won't have dimensions but you've probably got leeway on e.g. the mass of the bolt. Ironically, the magazine would probably the hardest thing to get right.
Of course you then need to get ammo which is not as easy as popping down to your local Walmart in the UK.
I can think of no good reason why such documents shouldn’t be banned in the UK, when the end result of using said manual is also, for the most part, banned in the <br /><br />
Of a similar ilk. There’s a desire to ban 3d printer plans for firearms circulating atm;
