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The Anarchist Cookbook

I think most people would, for example, think of better things to do than snap of the heads of non-safety matches and filling a slit open tennis ball with them - thats a lot of dedication to duty for not an awful lot of effect.
You can get a much bigger bang with fewer match-heads and a few large bolts. Allegedly.
 
Don't know if I mentioned it elsewhere, but when I was at school the chemistry lab had a very interesting library of old books. I, being the curious young scientist, often browsed them and found one containing the recipes for such delights as TNT and nitroglycerine. Curious though I was, I wasn't daft - I gave the book to some other, more reckless students who did indeed try the nitro recipe. Didn't work too well - apparently just went "wumph!" in the fume cupboard with a cloud of white smoke.
 
I remember from my choool days that we never had access to any chemicals or ingredients. Everything was under lock and key but we never did any experiements with anything remotely damgerous or exciting. I'm not sure why they even had the stuff. I wanted to see violent reactions, expanding globs of foam and loud bangs etc.

I remember once all of us children were ushered to the back of the classroom. At the front, a Science teacher wearing white coat, rubber wellies, rubber apron, rubber gloves, a facemask and goggles stood in a semi-circle of ballistic screens and dropped a 1/4 teaspoons worth of Potassium into a large glass jar of water. It fizzed around and lit up for 3 seconds. And that was that. We were all waiting ot see what happened. Maybe after 5 more seconds of so it would erupt in a funtain of water? Or a loud bang? Nothing.

It would have been more violent or exciting if she had dropped in a packet of Alka Seltzer or a Body Shop Bath bomb.
 
My cousin got hold of a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook in college and promptly tried to make drugs out of banana peels. Since the recipe called for a huge number of peels, she and her roommate started hitting up the back rooms of every produce section in town, collecting their over-ripe bananas for free.

Problem was, the girls only had so much space in their small apartment to dry all these banana peels, so they had them everywhere - the furniture, the doorframes, the curtain rods....

One day the roommate's mother comes to visit unexpectedly, sees the banana peels covering every available surface and is decidedly suspicious. The girls had quite a time convincing her that it was a "chemistry experiment" for one of their classes. :rofl:

They did eventually complete the process, but said the drug didn't do much. They figured their unorthodox drying method had affected the final product.
 
My cousin got hold of a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook in college and promptly tried to make drugs out of banana peels. Since the recipe called for a huge number of peels, she and her roommate started hitting up the back rooms of every produce section in town, collecting their over-ripe bananas for free.

Problem was, the girls only had so much space in their small apartment to dry all these banana peels, so they had them everywhere - the furniture, the doorframes, the curtain rods....

One day the roommate's mother comes to visit unexpectedly, sees the banana peels covering every available surface and is decidedly suspicious. The girls had quite a time convincing her that it was a "chemistry experiment" for one of their classes. :rofl:

They did eventually complete the process, but said the drug didn't do much. They figured their unorthodox drying method had affected the final product.

I studied for a while at a Hungarian university.We were told on arrival that there were NO drugs in the city, which was full of higher education students eager to try whatever illicit combinations of chemicals could be churned out by the students of the nearby medical school and agricultural college.

Talk about supply and demand! :D
 
I remember from my choool days that we never had access to any chemicals or ingredients. Everything was under lock and key but we never did any experiements with anything remotely damgerous or exciting. I'm not sure why they even had the stuff. I wanted to see violent reactions, expanding globs of foam and loud bangs etc.

I remember once all of us children were ushered to the back of the classroom. At the front, a Science teacher wearing white coat, rubber wellies, rubber apron, rubber gloves, a facemask and goggles stood in a semi-circle of ballistic screens and dropped a 1/4 teaspoons worth of Potassium into a large glass jar of water. It fizzed around and lit up for 3 seconds. And that was that. We were all waiting ot see what happened. Maybe after 5 more seconds of so it would erupt in a funtain of water? Or a loud bang? Nothing.

It would have been more violent or exciting if she had dropped in a packet of Alka Seltzer or a Body Shop Bath bomb.
When my teacher did a similar experiment with sodium, it exploded. The large glass container of water shattered and deluged the desk and the floor. Teacher was gobsmacked - he said 'I've done that loads of times and that has never happened before'.
 
An acquaintance of mine (who's now in his 70s) was an anarchist in the early 1970's and lived with a commune at that time in Orkney (or Shetland). He once showed me his copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook that he still had from those days (a thick bundle of A4 pages in that purple ink that used to be used in early copiers) and I don't remember it being much like what's been described here.

I didn't read it cover to cover, but I remember entries about how to disable an electrical substation, tap telephone lines, set up an ambush on the curve of a road (with diagrams showing optimum fields of fire depending upon weapons available and how many people were wielding them, etc.), and so on.


It sounds as though someone has adopted the name of this earlier publication and used it for a book of assorted pranks.
 
Did the anarchists ever use those round bombs you see in drawings and cartoons? Why were they round?
 
Thank you, I was worried about doing a google search on bombs.
 
Erm, clicking on that may be a crime in the UK. Mr Justice Otter will confirm this or not.
Mike Harding's "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" is far safer and includes the punchline "So am I, so am I, so am I, so am I, so am I, so am I, so am I." said the seven dwarfs.* :)


* A ladder is involved.
 
Erm, clicking on that may be a crime in the UK. Mr Justice Otter will confirm this or not.

“58 Collection of information.

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism

(b) he possesses a document or record containing information of that kind

(c) the person views, or otherwise accesses, by means of the internet a document or record containing information of that kind.”

s.58 Terrorism Act 2000

"You pays your money and you takes your chance."

maximus otter
 
“58 Collection of information.

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism

(b) he possesses a document or record containing information of that kind

(c) the person views, or otherwise accesses, by means of the internet a document or record containing information of that kind.”

s.58 Terrorism Act 2000

"You pays your money and you takes your chance."

maximus otter
Oh, thats unhelpfully vague, isnt it?
It could be argued that any information helpful to people in general violates this law, since terrorists are people.

The idea, of course, is to find a crime in activity that's not actually provable as acts of terrorism, but you know, this guy's guilty of something. In some U.S. states, things like baseball bats, lock picks, etc. are not illegal to possess per se, but become illegal tools of crime if used in attempting/commiting a crime.
 
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