Quick question, regarding rules.

[Dak]

look' date=' the problem is NOT discussing them, the problem is "teaching" how to make them.

and by "them" I include Drug synths [b']bacterial[/b], radioactive blah blah blah if it`s Hazardous.

umm, we have one whole forum dedicated entirely to discussing microbiology, and the subject of how to grow bacteria, so you might have trouble enforsing that one . or did u mean, 'no discussing where to get/how to grow the plague, anthrax, botulina etc'?

 

anyways, all chemicals are dangerouse. table salt can kill you. hell, water can kill you if you drink too much of it, (LD50 = 180g/kg). whats the cut-off point between too dangerouse to talk about and acceptably hazardouse?

 

back to explosives, i was planing to start learning pyrotechnichs after i finish my degree. fair enough, i cant ask people on this site for advice on how to make explosions, but would it be ok to post my proposed safety protocol to get it checked, and ask if there are any special hazards that i should be aware of with reguards to the specific explosive/ask advice for some (relatively) safe ones to make to start with/which ones to avoid making till im more experienced etc, as long as the manufacture itself is not described?

 

just want to clarify. i dont want to break the rules, but i also dont want to blow my own testicles off

[Silencer]

There are plenty of other boards for pyrotechnics.

 

Bud, I can't believe you don't see how NI3 is less dangerous than many other explosives. Jdurg said it fine.

[budullewraagh]

wet NI3 isnt particularly bad. dry NI3 is very sensitive; comparable to TCAP and armstrong's. it explodes with less force than TCAP and armstrong's.

[Dak]

There are plenty of other boards for pyrotechnics.

yes, but i trust the people her to be sencible and not just go "yeah, microwave ammonium nitrate - ittl be funny' (dont do it kids, youll die)

[blike]

tsk! if some moron blows his testicles off whilst making what he knows to be an explosive without having obtained adequate training beforehand, then i dont see why blike should be held accountable.

I completely agree, but don't forget that I live in the land where personal responsibility means absolutely nothing.

[Silencer]

wet NI3 isnt particularly bad. dry NI3 is very sensitive; comparable to TCAP and armstrong's. it explodes with less force than TCAP and armstrong's.

 

Yes, but you can't transport dry NI3, or time it to go off with any precision. Thus it is far less effective than other explosives.

[budullewraagh]

you cant exactly transport armstrong's or tcap either

[jdurg]

Also, NI3 won't go off while you're in the process of making it. The others may indeed go off right while it's being made. Therefore, in an ironic sort of way, the very high sensitivity of nitrogen triiodide makes it a relatively safer high explosive. (Again, I emphasize 'relative'. A red-hot tungsten filament is relatively cooler than molten iron, but I wouldn't want to touch either of them).

[Silencer]

Sorry, bud. I keep confusing HMTD and TCAP.

 

The production of TCAP is more involved than NI3, and you could easily send shards of glass through your body during it.

[akcapr]

dont get me wrong, but is it possibly for a person say on like this forum, relitive knowldge in radioactive stuff to make a nuke wit like uranium., I have no knowledge in radiation dont worry, but people say that you can make a atom bomb if you have uranium, i dont beleive it. Ive seen sites claiming they know how. Just trying to bust this myth. And i dont get mne wrong i definately dont want to make a bomb. Should i be worrying about some terrorist buyinh Some U and making one and blowing up the US?

[Silencer]

Nuclear bombs need enriched unranium, or uranium-235. The most common isotope is U-238.

 

So a terrorist could buy uranium, but he'd need to purify it first, which is not easy. That's why they are worried about terrorists stealing the uranium from places like Russia.

[jdurg]

You can still make one with depleted uranium, but you would need a LOT of it, and I mean a LOT. Plus, you would need a bunch of other things and equipment, and frankly the radiation poisoning you'd receive trying to transmute the uranium into other fissile materials would kill you pretty damned quick. For a government institution it can be done, but you can't inconspicuously setup a fully functional breeder reactor with high yeild and ability to reprocess the materials afterwards and then convert it into a working fission device. If anyone tried doing that, they'd quickly be found out.

 

Most of these 'stories' you hear are just that;stories. People get a little bit of information and fail to do any further research on it. Suddenly, they think they know everything and go spouting off stories claiming to be knowledgeable in the subject. Is it possible to create a nuclear weapon if you just have depleted uranium metal? Yes. Is it economically, physically, and safely feasible? God no. Not even remotely close.

[budullewraagh]

tcap is very easy to synthesize and all the reagents are cheaper and otc

 

btw, U-233 is fissionable as well.

 

and U-238 is used to produce plutonium...

[Dak]

dont get me wrong, but is it possibly for a person say on like this forum, relitive knowldge in radioactive stuff to make a nuke wit like uranium., I have no knowledge in radiation dont worry, but people say that you can make a atom bomb if you have uranium, i dont beleive it. Ive seen sites claiming they know how. Just trying to bust this myth. And i dont get mne wrong i definately dont want to make a bomb. Should i be worrying about some terrorist buyinh Some U and making one and blowing up the US?

 

radioactive material + explosive = radioactive bomb.

 

yes, i know it wont undergo nuclear fission/fusion and yield loads of energy (or however nukes work), but it will spread radioactive material over a large area, making that area uninhabitable. imagine the effects if large enough detonated at the top of a building in a city center of a large city like london, new york etc. that might be what the stories are about?

 

they are referred to as 'dirty bombs', and i believe the govoutnment is quite worried about them

[jdurg]

Yeah, but uranium is barely radioactive. There's just as big a threat of someone putting a toxin inside a bomb and detonating that. It's just that radioactivity makes people panic more because such a small percentage of the general population really knows a lot about the subject. (People hear the word 'radioactive' and freak out, when in reality, there are very few radioactive things that could easily be made into a bomb without killing the people who came even remotely close to the making of it).

 

(U-233 is fissile, but it's so vanishingly rare that it would be akin to saying that you could make an atomic bomb out of francium. (U-233 is not a naturally occuring isotope of uranium))

[Dak]

(People hear the word 'radioactive' and freak out, when in reality, there are very few radioactive things that could easily be made into a bomb without killing the people who came even remotely close to the making of it).

suicide bombers, equipped by suicide bomb-makers?

[The Thing]

Alternatively, Pu-249 can be used as material for atomic bombs like they did with the Fat Man. Uranium 233 come from the transmutation of Thorium-232 via irridiating Th fuel in a reactor. It is fissile but I don't think the "terrorists" or suicide bombers can get their hand on such a thing.

And they can't make H-bombs by themselves. Can't create the condition for fusion without labs (or maybe on a star) unless cold fusion breaks thru, then we need to thank the "terrorists". The only way they can do it is to attach an atomic bomb to the H-bomb and when the A-bomb goes the ground zero temperature and pressure will be sufficient for a fusion.

[budullewraagh]

U233 is fissile, and not as difficult to produce as one may think (david hahn) although it is difficult to isolate various isotopes

[akcapr]

myth busted. "thank god...im safe!"

[budullewraagh]

thorium is actually available, but im not going to get into that.

 

myth: terrorists are everywhere

[jdurg]

U-233 is fissile, but you still need quite a few kilograms to become critical. That's just not going to happen unless you have a massively large quantity of thorium to start out with, a massively large amount of americium for the neutron sources, a very large amount of moderating material to slow down those neutrons, and a large amount of space+time+money to isolate the newly created isotope. Trying to isolate any isotope is not something that people can easily do in their backyards. You need a great deal of equipment to do that. (One more thing, the 'reactor' that David Hahn created was not a self-sustained reactor. If he took away the neutron source, the reactor stopped working. This is because he wasn't even close to getting to the point of criticality).

 

Thorium is available, but not very easy to find. Companies have phased out the use of thorium in the products that used to contain it since people freak out about radioactive stuff.