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DIY Explosives Experimenter Blows Self Up, Contaminates Building (fdlreporter.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader hey! writes:
Benjamin D. Morrison of Beaver Dam Wisconsin was killed on March 5 while synthesizing explosives in his apartment... The accident has left the apartment building so contaminated that it will be demolished in a controlled burn, and residents are not being allowed in to retrieve any of their belongings.
It was just five years ago that Morrison graduated from Pensacola Christian College in Florida with a degree in pre-pharmacy and minors in chemistry and math. Though a local reverend believes 28-year-old Morrison was "not a bomb maker," USA Today's site FDL Reporter notes that "Officials assume he was making bombs that accidentally exploded and killed him... They have not publicly disclosed what chemicals were in apartment 11 where Morrow lived, only describing them as 'extremely volatile and unstable explosives.'"
It was just five years ago that Morrison graduated from Pensacola Christian College in Florida with a degree in pre-pharmacy and minors in chemistry and math. Though a local reverend believes 28-year-old Morrison was "not a bomb maker," USA Today's site FDL Reporter notes that "Officials assume he was making bombs that accidentally exploded and killed him... They have not publicly disclosed what chemicals were in apartment 11 where Morrow lived, only describing them as 'extremely volatile and unstable explosives.'"
strikes again.
I'm helping by keeping them in my thoughts and prayers.
Everyone should help in this matter by doing this.
This is the most helpful thing that can be done.
The man just blew himself up with explosives he made yet...
local reverend believes 28-year-old Morrison was "not a bomb maker,"
I wonder if the reverend believes anything else that flies in the face of reality
Nullius in verba
PETN is decently easy to make, if the drying is done wrong it is radically sensitized, and the precursors are easy to find.
Given the FBI's records for creating "bombers" and then busting them, I do wonder what the FBI's involvement was beforehand with this guy.
Reminds me of an old part of an old blog: Things I won't work with.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pi...
I'm guessing something with fluoride chemistry:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pi...
It's a really fun read about a shockingly horrible bit of chemistry done by our military science.
Actually black powder and gunpowder are very sticky legal subjects in the US. Know your state and federal laws well before even looking into playing with them.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
He went to a Christian college. I bet God was telling him to knock it off and he didn't listen so God turned up the volume.
...until he blew himself up.
Uhh, who here hasn't made explosives before? Are you going to accuse half of Slashdot of being terrorists by making random, ugly guesses to confirm your own biases?
We made NI3 in chemistry class. The stupid part of this is that he made the explosives in his home. I mean, really, WTF man. I wonder if he was reading the Anarchist's Cookbook? That doc is an utter piece of trash that is a great way to get yourself killed. At least work off the Army field manual on improvised explosives, it was at least written by people who know what they're doing instead of some idiot anarchist who didn't give a crap about safety and just wanted to burn stuff down.
How unstable can the remaining stuff be? I mean it obviously did not detonate when the fist blast went off.
My guess if the FBI is covering something up.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The apartment building was successfully burned down on Thursday morning: Beaver Dam apartment burn a success; some personal items retrieved by bomb squad
While the residents weren't able to get any belongings, the FBI bomb squad did retrieve high value items for them.
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My unbelievably excellent chemistry teacher in high school guaranteed at least one explosion per week in class. Kept our attention grinding through stoichiometry, with the side benefit that most of us went through AP chemistry the next year and got some cheap college credits. The last week he filled a huge balloon with a perfect mixture of oxygen and some exotic relative of pentane, detonated with a remote piezo device he concocted himself. The shockwave blew covers off of the fluorescent lights and rattled windows on the opposite side of the fairly good sized school building.
My AP chemistry teacher was a bit more pedestrian, but as a bonus for attending a study session on Saturday, he demonstrated thermite burning a hole through 1" thick plate steel.
Of course, nowadays this would be completely vorboten, and such activities would end you up on an FBI watchlist.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Homemade guns and gunpowder are totally legal in the US. Manufacturing explosives in an apartment building is not.
Well, technically gunpowder is an explosive. That's kind of how it works.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
"Uhh, who here hasn't made explosives before?"
I was going to say the same thing. As a kid, we would make black powder from its base three ingredients - took awhile to learn the right proportions. Used extension cords to detonate out in the backyard. Today what was once considered a hands-on chemistry lesson would today get you thrown in jail.
I have to wonder if certain authorities aren't severely over-reacting. In general, amateurs will use fairly readily available components, many available at your local hardware store or Walmart. They aren't sensitive or all that dangerous until they are combined and processed to make an explosive. The dangerous chemicals are of course harder to get, and not at all necessary to make explosives.
The report doesn't say what was in the apartment, but odds of are the components aren't really the dangerous at all. After being combined and processed, you of course end up with an explosive, which is dangerous. I wouldn't expect that to be made into a powder and sprinkled around, though - the more dangerous explosives would be contained. The explosion that killed him would also be expected to set off any nearby high explosives. That's how high explosives are set off - by a smaller explosion, not by burning. Generally only low explosives such as black powder are set off by burning. Low explosives have to be in a container to explode, so residue isn't really a problem. (A LOT of residue built up somewhere is a fire hazard, though.) Black powder isn't quite as safe as something like table salt, but a little residue isn't really dangerous and even humidity will render it non-flammable.
In short, a good cleaning with soap and water probably would have rendered it perfectly safe as far as explosive residue. If the explosion did structural damage to the building that's another issue entirely.
It is entirely possible to produce explosive compounds recreationally, without making them into anything that could be considered a bomb. The best candidate I know of is a highly-unstable compound that used to be often used in basic chemistry classes. Immediately after production, it is a wet paste, and can easily be spread in a very thin layer, preferably no more than a few grams covering a 2cm radius circle. Once it dries, that circle will make a lovely pop if disturbed, making it great fun to put on desk surfaces.
Of course, people are dumb. This particular compound grows in destruction exponentially as its quantity increases. A few grams is fun. A few dozen grams is dangerous. A few hundred is lethal. A kilogram in one location is probably a good reason to evacuate the building.
I am part of a group that, among many other things, handles explosives for educational purposes, partly to help chemists who are not "bomb makers" get an intuitive understanding for just how much of an explosive substance is actually safe, and how to treat them with respect. Sure, we do also build bombs, but they're also detonated safely and in a controlled environment, in full compliance with applicable laws.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Manufacturing explosives in an apartment building is not.
Because there is a risk of losing arms, and that would violate people's right to keep their arms, right?
Ezekiel 23:20
It is entirely possible to produce explosive compounds recreationally, without making them into anything that could be considered a bomb.
A lot of people make fireworks, not always professionally, and fireworks both require explosives and a reasonable level of competence in chemistry. They are also typically not considered bombs, and the same goes for any chemically-powered model rockets even though the chemicals involved are most definitely explosives.
Oh, and then there's dust. That explodes too...
The part that should be questioned is how anybody with a college degree in chemistry did not get taught better than to experiment with explosive chemicals in their own living space. This falls pretty firmly under the heading of things you do in a purpose-built building.
This whole situation seems odd and subject to a wide range of interpretation due to the lack of information.
- He could have been just a guy who chose an extremely stupid hobby.
- He could've been cooking meth (although it's hard to see why the police wouldn't just say that).
- He could've been working on some other synthesized and highly volatile drug... has anyone sought out the expert opinion of John McAfee?
- He could have been an anti-government wacko planning an attack on a government building.
- He could've been a radicalized convert to Islam.
- He could've been planning an attack on an abortion clinic.
- He could've just been another dude with a grudge against someone and a psychological disorder.
#DeleteChrome
Depends on what kinds of explosives he was playing with. If he was making mercury fulminate, yeah, you could well turn your whole building into a superfund site.
However if that were case, they wouldn't be able to just burn the building down. So I'm guessing he was messing some kind of unstable organic compound. The kinds of monitoring equipment they put out (there was a press release so people wouldn't be alarmed by the strange bits of equipment lying around) indicates they were looking for vocs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Contamination is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.
Some of these "contaminants" might have no human (or wildlife) health effects, but could simply be watch-list chemicals for terrorism screening sensors, and the authorities simply don't want to have to navigate false positives for years or decades to come.
Now grab your popcorn and watch the fire insurance companies declare this self-interested DHS bonfire an act of God.
>. 'blows self up' though, smart money is on hydrogen peroxide and acetone. Good old TAP - high explosive you can make in your kitchen from readily available chemicals. Also tends to explode if you just stir it a little too fast.
I thought of the same. Low explosives such as black powder don't tend to kill the maker in an accident. (Unless it's industrial scale). Losing a finger is entirely possible. Acetone peroxide, as you said, attracts idiots because the components are readily available, AND it's very unsafe to make - killing yourself is entirely possible.
I heard one guy who lives near me had a lot of experience making pyrotechnics, making black powder and such. He (very carefully) made a few MILLIgrams of acetone peroxide. Seeing what just a few milligrams was like, he swore to never again go near AP.
On explosives: The part that gets by most people is that there's quite a difference between "explosives" (burns quickly) and "high explosives" (burns supersonically, ie the stuff military use). Blackpowder is already "explosive", indeed a nice dust-air mix can explode, and oh hey, what to think of a BLEVE?
The fireballs you see in movies as "explosions" are usually burning gas, not high explosives.
Source: Highschool chemistry. That was 25 years ago, they might not teach it now. On that note, the electrolysis of water demonstration we got included filling soap bubbles with either hydrogen or oxygen, then burn, but also both: Ideal mix, ignite, supersonic boom. Small one, but still.
Tangent: The Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen, but not an ideal mix. Had it been the latter half the town would've needed new glass. Instead the ablaze carcass just floated to the ground and most of the people got off alive. That's a better survival rate than most airplane crashes. Most of the dead, in fact, died from jumping, not burning. Go figure.
The part that should be questioned is how anybody with a college degree in chemistry did not get taught better than to experiment with explosive chemicals in their own living space. This falls pretty firmly under the heading of things you do in a purpose-built building.
Modern edumacasion is so scared that it errs on the side of teaching too little. Just enough to show you where to get the rest of the rope but not enough to do it safely.
OTOH, some people are less than entirely bright on such points. We had some people that required regular slapping on the head to stop them doing anything too stupid. So it just might be that this guy was being eggregiously stupid and nobody stopped him before he turned his appartment into a bomb.
But I don't put it past law enforcement that they're being excessively and destructively cautious. I know I'd be sneaking back in to get my stuff whatever the risk, because fuck them. Yeah, I really would need a specific description of why they'd want to do that "controlled burn" of an entire appartment block including everyone else's stuff also, because that's just fucking excessive. Have they even tried securing the dangerous chemicals by, oh I don't know, stuffing the affected appartment with PUR foam or something?
Actually black powder and gunpowder are very sticky legal subjects in the US.
If you think black powder is bad, you should see how the police react when they see you playing with white powder.
Had a nephew's friend make 1.75L of that shit! Field that call at at 2am! Nephew had a "four wall" conversation with him after (as my instructions included how not to be arrested by the cops).
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
It's all fun and games until a residence hall is condemned.
"Hilarious", indeed.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"Energetic Materials" and "Energetic Materials in Application" are still still offered at a handful of schools in my state, but almost entirely for graduate students. Those used to be elective chemistry and engineering classes for undergrads during early 90's at the university I attended, but a slightly faster paced version was offered to graduate students or with department approval. I can't think of too may schools even then that offered those to undergrads back then, much less now.
School's have really taken the "fun" out of chemistry. I'm not sitting here advocating that we everyone needs to spend a couple semesters doing nothing but say fluorine chemistry (yet another thing they don't really welcome in the lab anymore, and maybe on this one I'll say okay, but someone has still to be trained to do it. Ticking time bombs in the sand bucket in the fume hood. Fun fun fun!), but until I had energetic materials chemistry ceased to be fun.
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