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Plutonium, if ignoring its radioactivity, is only about as toxic as fluride. Ie, not as toxic as mercury.

Let me point out that fluoride is far more dangerous (the subtitle of that link is "Fluorine - the gas of Lucifer.") than mercury. It also has a host of compounds that can killed you in a variety of horribly painful ways.

The longer the half-life, the WORSE it is, because it means the parts of the earth that get contaminated will not be liveable for not just hours, or days, or years, but tens of thousands of years!!!

Did you know that dihydrogen monoxide has an infinite half-life? That's how bad-assed it is radioactively! It's not just unlivable for tens of thousands of years, but forever!!! Huh, what's that wooshing sound I keep hearing?

I had a few glasses of wine, but let me remind you that we are a long way off from freedom over safety, unless we indulge in the academic spirit our ancestors had so much off:

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/Fluorine/Fluorine.html

Check out this part at the end,

"My own experience with fluorine has been solely with its compounds. In particular, natural calcium fluoride crystals (fluorite or fluorspar). Also hydrofluoric acid, during a highly ill-advised "experiment" conducted in the clean room of a semiconductor manufacturer unwise enough to employ me.... "

Pretty contermporary I must say.

So are you going to scold me when I wonder which rocketry amateur is ever going to use Flourine as a part of rocket fuel?

Well maybe there is a middle ground somewhere we all can enjoy in relative safety, like how about ozone as an oxidizer?

Still pretty explosive I would say.

I for one am glad for all of us just having ammonium perchlorate for now. I suppose that is why you put safety in apostrophes. Maybe you should have put freedom in apostrophes instead?

Don't try this at home kids:

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/ymboa/ymboa.html

I badly would like to have this, too sad that I'll have to wait until March. Wait! Which year would that be?

Why can't I have this? I would even pay! This can't possibly be considered dangerous, it was printed in 1854 and mankind didn't kill itself off yet.

Oh well - can't have everything I guess ...

to this: http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/ymboa/ymboa.html my childhood was bland even though it was not so much spoiled by clueless journalists and other sissies.

It says on the page:

"Warning! - Many subjects outlined within this site are extremely dangerous and are provided here for information only. Please don`t experiment with high voltages or chemicals unless you are fully conversant with safe laboratory practices. No liability will be accepted for death, injury or damage arising from experimentation using any information or materials supplied."

Sounds like fun, but please be kind to animals and dead bodies of criminals, and don't kill yourself or others.

Check out this this interesting link, which -- as usual -- I found while looking for something else.

As an aside, you can get most of the ingredients you need for making simple explosives from sources beneath the authorities' radar. Even sulphuric and nitric acids can be obtained by reacting sulphates and nitrates with hydrochloric acid. And if you don't know where to get that, I'm not going to tell you.

Watch out- the road studs may not be the real thing but....Road Spiders!!!

This part is especially fascinating:

Hodges sheepishly appeared from behind the cinder cone of the south pasture extinct volcano. Maud followed, carrying the bottle of horse linament she had been vigourously applying to his injuries.
...
The ether effects, the stress, and the enthusiastic liniment application had taken their toll on his assistant. "Hodges! Wake up you lazy dog and drink this. Immediately!"

From this page on his website-
My own experience with fluorine has been solely with its compounds. In particular, natural calcium fluoride crystals (fluorite or fluorspar). Also hydrofluoric acid, during a highly ill-advised "experiment" conducted in the clean room of a semiconductor manufacturer unwise enough to employ me.... The glass and quartz-ware used in diffusion furnaces must be kept scrupulously clean to avoid contamination of the silicon wafers being processed. Consequently it is periodically bathed in a mixture of hydrofluoric and nitric acids. Full protection clothing was donned over normal clean room eyes-only-exposed garb, and a large silicon wafer (complete with defective 4Mb DRAMs) was "carefully" thrown into the acid bath. Nothing happened for about twenty seconds, as the HF attacked the silicon, heating up the wafer until a runaway reaction started. The acid bath then erupted into a frightening boiling maelstrom, with the violent evolution of copious amounts of red and brown fumes of nitrogen oxides. The complete destruction of high technology by the tiger of chemistry.
Splendid.
Now we know why they're shunning away geeks

When the prime started sparking over, Hodges emitted a scream the like of which I hadn`t heard since his scrotum was burned off during my experiment with fluorine gas last year.

He writes:

Later that day, Hodges arrived in my lab with Maud the maid. Both were in a dreadful funk. Hodges exclaiming that a volcano was erupting in the south pasture, Maud maintaining that the devil himself had arrived. My first thought was that the pair of them had been at my Indian hemp plantation again, however this would not have accounted for Maud`s clothing, which appeared to have large monoclinic sulphur crystals attached to the posterior regions.

Indian hemp? Become a scientist NOW! :-)

"Faraday, this is even when the top plates are connected by the long anal wire."

For someone writing letters in the 19th century, his signature Looks disturbingly like typeface....