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FBI Releases File On the Anarchist Cookbook
An anonymous reader noted that the FBI has released its file on The Anarchist Cookbook, the 1971 manual of mayhem. It's a pretty long PDF that isn't actually OCRd but there's some crazy stuff in there. But my personal favorite is the scanned in images of 3.5" floppy disks.
There was a chemistry teacher at my high school who had a copy printed off and bound on his front counter desk.
Of course, he also like to set up those little green plastic army men on that counter during tests, pour flammable liquid over the scene, then light it and play with them, making sound of death and agony as they melted.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
That's how I backed up all my floppy disks, too!
Disturbing to look at letter after letter to the FBI. All these well meaning people thinking that they're doing the right thing by reporting this work to the FBI, suggesting that the FBI stop it's publication. These people are a greater threat to freedom than anyone who has bought this book.
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When my father found me reading a copy he took it and destroyed it, providing me w/ a copy of the TM 31-210 Improvised Munition Handbook instead:
http://www.libertylib.com/improvised-munitions-handbook/improvised-munitions-handbook.shtml
Which if nothing else should be mandatory reading for people who mistakenly believe gun control can be made to work --- I used to make black powder by collecting nitrates from underneath piles of cow manure in local fields, collecting charcoal when emptying the ashes from the fireplace and sulfur by purchasing sulfur candles from the local store (unfortunately there weren't any naturally occurring sulfur deposits w/in bicycling distance).
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The letter from congressman George Mahon (D-TX) is disheartening.
He tells Hoover that "several of my constituents" have expressed alarm about the book. He then says he has not read the book but "the reviews have caused quite a bit of controversy." Finally, he asks for something to tell the constituents.
The process is totally hollow. And isn't that the way things continue to work40 years later? If anything, it's worse. Today's congressperson would scream louder and vilify the opposition (all while willingly ignorant about the issue at hand.)
Then you should have tried the saltpeter and sugar smoke bomb. We smuggled quite a lot of saltpeter out from school. We also decided to throw in some match heads, and naphthalene (why not?). Cooked it on the oven, luckily in a small test quantity. All of a sudden, BAM, the room was full of smoke, from what was about a 50cent piece worth of material.
The smoke was initially red, making me think the match heads got too hot. Scared the shit out of us. A red/white cloud, that races at your face, and quickly fills the entire kitchen. Mum was shocked, and impressed.
I'd highly recommend this recipe to anyone. Given the quantities are small enough (and given we weren't extremely lucky), we had it literally blow up right in our faces, and all we got was a little smoky, and the shock of our lives.
Having a look at ones like this...
saltpeter smoke bombs inside
Smoke bomb (KNO3 + Sugar)
I don't know what we did differently. Perhaps they're using a low grade KNO3, we were using lab grade stuff, and we prepared the mixtures specifically, made sure it was consistent. Also, we did a very thin, but wide mixture. Additionally, maybe the match heads (and naphthalene?) made it react quicker. Also, it reaching some temperature on the oven, might have triggered it to all ignite at once.
Ours was more like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IZX80i4cpU
But in a confined space, with a fraction of the material, and it all went off at once.
BIG BADA BOOM! (Minus boom, just menacing hissing, and fuckloads of smoke)
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Ah the book with the recipe for napalm ...
I simply don't understand the legacy this "book" has gathered over the years. I, in my infinite youth, once read the manual and you know what jumped out at me wasn't all these alleged homemade napalm and pipe bombs ... in fact, that stuff seemed so low quality and stupid to me that I don't even remember much of it. And I've often been told the napalm in the book really isn't the best stuff you can make with homemade items. Apparently there are much better mediums to use with fuel like Vaseline (petroleum jelly) if you can get enough of it.
... oftentimes this trouble is easily traced back to you no matter how well the book tries to convince the reader you're being super careful and are virtually untraceable.
But what really stuck out to my late teenage mind was how the author of it seemed to be obsessed with disruption. I remember it reading like a case study for "common" scenarios whereby you could operate within questionable circumstances to undermine regular corporate and government actions -- specifically in Western nations.
For example, in one of the scenarios the book presupposes that you have a large contractor building some huge building right next door to your home that you refused to sell (like the beginning of the film Up). So it goes about how to put nails through strips of webbing, then lay them across the dig site at night and cover them with a bit of gravel to puncture holes in the tires of machinery. Or get used oil from your car and go spill it next to their machinery and then tip off the EPA. The list went on and on for many pages about how to sabotage several scenarios.
And I wasn't too impressed with it. It was as if everyone thought that until this point in time no one had ever engaged in determined guerrilla warfare or an unfriendly neighborly spat. This book exhibits somewhat of an active imagination in causing trouble
It simply blew my mind that someone could be arrested for possession of this book because after all the notoriety it's really not that useful. Sure, if your given scenario matches any in the books, you've got some cheap tricks at your disposal but anyone with an imagination would be far better equipped than anyone with that book. I found nothing permanently useful in that book and would recommend any of the US Army Field Manuals for reading before that since the information is more generalized and interesting like the one on Counterinsurgency. FM 21-76 served me well in Boy Scouts -- probably better than the boy scout's manual. Why do we flip out that The Anarchist's Cookbook is available to terrorists when the Army is releasing far more useful books to anybody and everybody?
My work here is dung.
I always found Anarchists a bit gamey, no matter how they're cooked.
rewriting history since 2109
I wanted to learn how to make Napalm from human fat
Napalm is a mix of gasoline with soap. To make soap from human fat, get (by weight) 7 parts fat, 2 parts water, and 1 part sodium hydroxide. Mix thoroughly in a blender until it starts thickening. Pour in a mold and let stand for a few days. To make napalm, grind the soap and mix 2 parts gasoline with 1 part soap.
From the PDF under "enclosure" from someone reviewing the book:
"The formulas and procedures presented concerning the production of high and low explosives cannot be called incorrect but they are not always complete and therefore present a hazard to anyone using the information"
No kidding. Darwin Awards waiting to be handed out.
As a BBSer with my own copy back in the day, we didn't dare try any of that shit because it even looked like it was missing steps.
The Amateur Astronomer's Handbook has recipes for silvering mirrors, and there are warnings to not keep the mixture (sugar recipe) standing around too long because it creates silver fulminate. The complete lack of similar safety warnings in the Anarchists' Cookbook is a red flag not to try this stuff. Consult a real explosives manual instead.
--
BMO
The true power of The Anarchist Cookbook has almost nothing to do with its contents. Matter of fact, if it were Mexican Cuisine, the Anarchist Cookbook would be day-old Taco Bell. The thing that William Powell (the original author) managed to do was accidentally come up with one of the underground's most powerful BRAND NAMES, one that could single-handedly ignite the imaginations of a typical teenager so much that it got out of his control. Once the publisher saw that it was such a money-maker, they refused to let it die. Eventually, the early crop of computer underground "anarchists" on the BBS scene took the book concept and created digital extensions of the information in the form of "G-Files" and early 8-bit graphics. By the time the Anarchist Cookbook made it to the Internet, it was no longer a book. It was a movement, one without direction or guidance or measurable intent, all loosely bound together by a set of files that had been slapped with the same Anarchist Cookbook brand name. Most of the people who downloaded the Cookbook, in whatever form, probably never tried much beyond a smoke bomb or two. The thrill was in the power of the potential of the information itself, even if it was incorrect. For the FBI to dedicate this much time studying it makes me sit back and scratch my head. Truth be told, the Central Library in any given city is far more dangerous... it just doesn't sound anywhere near as appealing to the typical kid.
Max Nomad . Bohemian Griot Publishing, LLC . http://www.bgpublishing.com
Are you kidding? The right thing to do is to read it with your kid, and explain each and every way that following the book would get him blown up. Then you take him out and build some model rockets or smoke bombs so he has a non-destructive way to deal with the urge. This kind of material is a perfect teaching opportunity.
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