From: Alan Olsen <alano@teleport.com>
Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 09:20:25 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Bombs & bomb threats in LA
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960802202248.00b23440@mail.teleport.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 12:13 PM 8/2/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote:

>I also got my copy of "The Anarchist Cookbook" back around then. It was in
>the news locally when the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's office attempted
>to have it removed from the local bookstores....this removed it all right,
>as the stacks of copies sold out as quickly as they could be received and
>unpacked.
>
>(As others have noted over the years, much of the advice is probably bogus
>and even dangerous. Not being an explosives dabbler, I wouldn't know.)

There are a great number of errors in the book.  (Details of many can be
found at http://www.wam.umd.edu/~ctmunson/aol_cookbook_faq.html .)  

The one error I found in the book when I was in High School was the recipe
for Nitrogen Triodide. (sp?)  The Anarchist's Cookbook lists four steps for
making it.  The first two are correct.  The second two (running alchhol and
ether, if I remember correctly) dry the mixture out and probibly detonate it
in the process.  (The ether would make things much worse, as ether is pretty
volitile in and of itself.)

I found better formulas for simple explosives in "Lee's Priceless Recipes".
(Which was published in 1912.  Long before the Internet.)

Ah, memories of High School chemistry classes...
---
Alan Olsen -- alano@teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction
        `finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key 
                http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ 
  "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon
                "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."