I’ve only seen the thing once, years ago and briefly, and don’t know a darn thing about reading electrical schematics myself. But a long time ago, in a rambling conversation with a former boss who was a Green Beret in Vietnam, he told me that the “how to make a remote-controlled incendiary device” diagram has a small but important error, such that if you follow the instructions, when you get to the end and make the last wire connection, the thing will blow up in your face. He said that’s why every once in a while, you’ll read about someone blowing him/herself up while trying to make a bomb.
So is this true, anarchistically-minded (or at least electronically-minded) Dopers? Or was it yet another Texan tall tale from my old boss?
Someone stole my copy of the book too long ago for me to recall the particular bit you’re asking about. However, I do remember that many of the chemical recipes contained potentially dangerous misinformation. Not enough to look deliberate mind you, just a reflection of carelessness on the part of the authors.
Oh, and I almost forgot the most fun part of my Texan Tall-Tale Telling boss’ story; his theory was that the CIA had infiltrated the publishing company and done it on purpose, so that they could track terrorist techniques. What a wack job he was.
It was even funnier that the discussion arose in the context of me complaining that my security clearance was taking so darn long, which in his mind was because of the time I’d spent outside the U.S. (I could have been undergoing terrorist training). Funny, though, that nobody cared about investigating my time in Spain, which was chock-full of Basque terrorists at the time; they’d even committed kidnappings and bombings within a mile of where I lived. All the questions were about my time in the USSR, because of course there was no reason to want to go there other than to become a double agent. My response turned out to be rather prescient; “what, you don’t think it’s possible to learn how to be a terrorist right here in the U.S.?”
I’ve heard the “CIA/guvmint published their own Anarchist cookbook with faulty schematics that blow up in your face” rumor before too, and it was from someone who was quite reasonable.
I have a copy and I haven’t really looked at it for years. I had a friend who was majoring in chem and confirmed most of the “recipies” would work but like Squink says, it’s rather dangerous.
I never really treated it seriously. Just a gimick for me. Although the “light bulb” bomb is an interesting idea if you used HE instead of black powder.
Because mine is printed from a old text file, all the diagrams didn’t line up very well.
I had a copy, many years ago, and determined that a great deal of the information in it – notably the drug recipes and electronics – range from “wonky” to “inaccurate and possibly dangerous.”
Gotta agree with Master Wang-Ka on his point (except for the getting rid of it, I’m sure it’s still in some box somewhere at my parents), the information is casual as far as facts go - it was not created by experts in anything, but is a conglomeration of info the author put together when he was an angry young man, and some of the stuff is of dubious value. In fact, even as a teenager, I thought some of the stuff was rather crude, speculative, or straight up fantasy (smoking bannana peels, anyone?). IIRC, The Author himself wishes it were out of print - he does not back the book or information in it (he does not have control of the copyright, if it still is copyrighted).
