There are several websites that tell you how you can make nitroglycerine (nope, won’t list 'em). Be warned, though, several of them are wrong.
Wrong in the measurements, that is. If you followed some of their recipes, and paid close attention to the chemical reaction, you could go from “It’s starting to look waxy,” to “My face is missing, and I’m covered with acid” before you knew it.
Should any of you terrorists decide to concoct some home-brewed explosives…start with small amounts.
Rysdad, it seems the FOAF was successful in his endeavors. (I think it helped that he was a chemistry major.) If one feels the need to “try this at home”, it might be an excellent application of the Darwin Principle.
Actually if you want to blow stuff up, join the army.
Hi I’m an idiot. Well, actually I’m someone born after all the really nasty wars and I’ve never seen the movie “Platoon.” Could someone explain to me how exactly napalm works? Like in what circumstances did they use it in wars?
let me say my OP was a scientific question, and not one to elicit advice on homemade weapons. I read about gasoline and Draino in a George Hayduke book, but all he described it as was “quite a reaction”. I know about napalm, but I bet some vets could explain it better than I, so…
To burn stuff. The gasoline/soap flakes part burns forever (and waterdoesn’t do anything to dampen it), the aluminum or magnesium filings make it burn really hot, and the sawdust keeps the fire going after all the gas is gone.
Disclaimer: Do not try this at home. The materials and methods mentioned above are as taught in US Army Green Beret training, and are intended for use only in extreme situations (i.e. the jungles of Southeast Asia), and are presented here for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY! (and besides, it’s not like you couldn’t find it on the web in 15 seconds or so)
Heh yeah ok I gathered that. What i’m askin is how did they apply it, just drop the stuff outta planes? Is it the consistency of slurry? How did they ignite it? etc. Like I said my knowledge of war and all things explosive is limited.
OK, here’s my best guess without sitting down and going throught each compound in both substances (which I don’t really have time to do):
Gasoline is mostly mid-sized branched hydrocarbons. NaOH is not really soluble in these type of molecules. Moreover, they’re very unreactive (but do burn very well). My first reaction was that you’d just have NaOH on the bottom of a tank of gasoline. Then something occured to me:
Gasoline has a lot of additives in it. First off, one of them might act as a phase-transfer agent, making any reaction happen more quickly.
So here’s the reaction that I believe actually happens:
Most likely, one of the additives (or perhaps a substituted hydrocarbon) has an acidic proton. Now, if you ever take solid NaOH and dissolve it in water, you get quite an effective handwarmer–the proton exchange is very exothermic. Same thing for adding water to strong acid (remember how they told you, add acid to water, not vice versa–this is why). So now imagine acid-base reactions–very exothermic; most likely more than enough to ignite gasoline. Burning gas in a closed container = BOOM. Moreover, gasoline vapor is very explosive in and of itself, not to mention within the confines of a gas tank (this is one of the theories on TWA 800, I think). The thing is, because NaOH is not too soluble in gas, well, it gives you some time to run.
So that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it (unless somebody has a better one).
Hope this helps.
Napalm is carried as dropped ordnance. That is, it’s a “bomb”. I’m not sure about how it’s fused, but what basically happens is you have a couple hundred gallons of gas-flavoured Jell-O that’s coming down in a tank at about 300 miles an hour. It makes quite a splash.
They drop it in something very closely resembling a streamlined fuel tank (aka “drop tank”). I don’t know how it’s ignited; a simple contact fuse would work nicely. When it hits, the burning goo splatters nicely.
Now if you wanna really burn something, my dad (this was part of a Special Forces/Grren Beret training course, BTW) once made an incendiary device that burned so hot it sucked all the air out of the corrugated-tin shed it was in, causing the shed to crush like an eggshell (remember Mr. Wizard’s boiling-can-in-cold-water-trick?)…I won’t go into the methods & materials, but there was a lot of jellied gasoline and magnesium involved.
First off, you say you read “The Anarchist Cookbook” and found this recipe? No… this recipe was never in the ACB. It was orginally published in “Don’t Get Mad, Get Even” by George Hayduke… It does not work… for Crystal Drano to activate it has to be exposed in COLD water… unless someone has a car running on water or you add water to gas then it just won’t work (and yes, I have tried it). The ORIGINAL recipe said “Take a Spalding Ping Pong Ball (IT MUST BE A SPALDING PING PONG BALL TO WORK) and fill it with Crystal Drano (NOT LIQUID), wrap the Ping Pong ball in black electrical tape (THE TAPE IS A FUSE, THE MORE YOU USE, THE LONGER YOU WAIT FOR END RESULTS), insert in gas tank and RUN.” That is taking right out of the book… First it calls for a Spalding Pingpong ball… they are 30 mm and even the biggest hole ever in a gas port (the hole for filling) was only 25 mm. Spalding treated there ball with something when this was first published to withstand petrolum products (must be tons of ping pong playing in oil fields) so the balls did not dissolve… if you could find a way other then the ping pong ball to SAFELY get the Crystal Drano to the gas then there is no reaction… (in my youth, I was sucidal and poured a bottle into a 5 gallon can of LEADED GAS)… Water floats on gas so once the heavy crystals are in the gas, they are protected from any water… that is assuming you weren’t dumb enough to add water first… It is and always has been a bull crap rumor… and please, don’t get these stupid books and try this stuff at home! Most where written in the 60’s by Feds to hurt “Anarchists”… yes… we were that much of a threat… LSD in the Chicago water supply (google it) and all that… Peace and by safe fellow anarchists.
Gasoline is mostly aliphatic hydrocarbons, parafins, mostly unreactive except for burning once ignited. Draino is mostly sodium hydroxide. I can’t write an equation for a likely reaction at room temperature for them. Now, there is all the other stuff, aluminum, magnesium, aromatics, and these days, ethanol. Since I don’t know what all may be in either, It is hard to say what might happen. I see no likely source for any chlorine. I don’t know if there would be enough moisture to start the hydrogen evolution.
There was a time before restrictor plates to keep out leaded gas that you could have filled a tank with golf balls. Cutting a hole in a ping pong ball to add the drano would have allowed the gasoline into the ping pong ball.
Until somebody posts some equations showing a plausible reaction, I am buying your story.
Perhaps after coconuts go in the fire, somebody can try Draino in gasoline. Arrange with a reliable non witness to report results if needed.
Is there anybody who doesn’t like to blow up stuff (especially in this crowd)?
The way it was explained to me (by a nutcase) is this: you take an empty gelatin capsule and fill half of it with elemental sodium and the other half with a suitably-sized piece of lead. The lead just acts as weight. Then you throw it in the gent’s gas tank. No need to scurry away at this point. There’s water at the bottom of every gas tank. Needless to say, the capsule will dissolve. This is the Dope, so I don’t need to school anybody on the products of the reaction between sodium and water. Supposedly, the car won’t blow until the ignition is activated. I was also told that “this is how all professionals do it.” ( :dubious:. )
As do I. The only thing I can pull out of my ass at the moment is that carburetors are designed to combust gas fumes, not hydrogen, so the introduction of H into the mix makes the whole thing go kablooey.
