Various shows–Braniac and Mythbusters come to mind–seem to blow things up for no discernible reason, and they do it on a regular basis. What hoops do they have to jump through to acquire the materials, ensure the safety of all participants and bystanders, and blow the crap out of a garbage truck? Has it gotten harder post-9-11? And what qualifications would I need to make it happen myself?
They have over the years (in the show’s production, and in their respective former professional lives) cultivated relationships with the FBI and local law enforcement agencies.
Adam, in particular, used to be involved with prop-making and special effects, so he’s probably got a whole chapter of Hollywood pyro guys in his rolodex.
ETA: as for qualifications, there are various certifications and licenses involved. I’ve noticed several times where Adam and Jamie are hands-off when it’s time to go boom, and someone else is handling the explosives.
A pyrotechnician’s license.
Let’s say I own a large, suitably remote patch of land somewhere like a farm or a ranch. Is there some reason I can’t just blow stuff up on my own property to my heart’s content?
Using your own land is probably not going to be a problem. The problem will be in obtaining and transporting the explosives. I’m pretty sure you can’t just stroll into Walmart and buy a few sticks of dynamite or a chunk of Semtex. When the Feds ask what you’re planning to do, “wanna blow stuff up!” is probably not going to be an acceptable reason for them to grant a permit.
And before anyone thinks of making their own ANFO on their Back 40, that’s a great way to have ATF and Homeland Security think you’re a terrorist.
An old silo was blown up on my family property this summer, and we had to have guys certified to do it come. We also had to call the sheriff’s department and the fire department so that they’d be aware that we were planning on doing it. We told our neighbors out of courtesy.
Unfortunately, the guys who did got a little carried away with the explosives, and blew all of the windows on one side of the barn out, part of the wall off the milkhouse, a hole through a barn wall, and moved the milk tank about six inches. The milk tank was full, and weighs about a ton when it is. You could feel the earth move. Amazingly, the cow that was standing in the barn at the time was the least upset about the whole thing.
I guess you could say they done blew that silo up real good.
Times have changed, obviously, but back when my dad and I could truck on into a hardware store in rural Kansas, pick up some DuPont Special, and go make gravel out of rocks on the farm with very little paperwork involved. Good times.
Must be a pretty rigorous certification test, eh?
-Joe
I grew up in a rural area with a lot of acreage of our own. My father was a firearms dealer and we always had a couple of dozen regular guns, machine guns, and black powder guns around. The black powder was good for making bombs and I made many with full parental consent over the years. The thing with the biggest boom was the cannon in our front yard. I have it on good authority that people heard it several miles away. We never had any trouble over that stuff and I doubt people in the same area would even today because everyone shoots and blows stuff up. Hell, anyone can buy enough ammonium nitrate fertilizer and some diesel fuel to do damage and have fun at the same time at home improvement and farm supply stores all across the nation with no questions asked.
I hold a Massachusetts license from the state fire marshall’s office to fire cannon. For that, I needed training by a license holder and to take a written exam.
The exam covered firing safety procedures, the making of charges, and the state regs on storage and handling of powder.
Cannon firing is a step below a fireworks license here. Fireworks guys can fire cannon. Cannon guys cannot fire fireworks.
I don’t know about general “blowing things up.”
If you can fire cannon, why would you need to blow things up? With a large enough berm, you’ve the power of kinetic energy to blow things up!
Have you the ability to fire projectiles with said cannon? Or are these demo/noise charges only?
My group does not fire projectiles.
We are a re-enacting group, primarily based at a historic fort, which has working guns. We also have a smaller gun on a field carriage that we can cart around. We fire blank charges for demostrations and for special events, such as Fourth of July celebrations.
I grew up in rural Alberta.
A friend of mine and I have always enjoyed manufacturing our own explosives. I won’t go into details, but sinces then we have since earned various degrees and such. None of them specifically involve explosive certification… (that would be cheating).
For us, a trip to a hardware store, a garden supply shop[, or a welding materials supplier is all we need.
as an example…
When my friend was first going to meet my fiancee, I showed up 3 days early… it was mid June.
We worked like demons, stopping only to get drunk, and hung over (nothing makes you more careful than having shakey hands and blurred vision, when dealing with things that could turn you into fast moving pink vapour).
When wife to be showed up, we sat her down in a nice lawn chair, and requested that she turn her attention to a poatch of trees about 300 meters away.
The charges we had placed in the branches worked quite nicely, the shoick waves turned early summer into autumn as the trees suddenly and noisely shed their leaves…
then the ground charges went off, perfectly, throwing up a heart shaped cloud of dirt.
For some reason, she was less than impressed. Woird like "Maniacs, nut jobs, and you guy’s are dangerous!’ were included in her comments.
Honestly… some people have NO appreciation of art!
regards
FML
Evelyn Waugh, I think, tells a story about his experience with explosives while in training during WWII. His unit was billeted on and training on some vast country estate in Scotland. As a favor to the laird the unit undertook to remove a large dead tree. The engineers made elaborate calculations and requisitioned 75 pounds on TNT for the job. When the charge was set off the whole tree heaved some 200 feet in the air and all the ceiling plaster in the manor house came down. On inquiry it was determined that the calculations were faulty, that a decimal point had slipped and that the appropriate charge was 7.5 pounds.
Demolition blasting in this situation (nearby buildings) is real hard to figure out. To do a proper job, small test shots should be fired to check for charge weights and hole spacings. The concrete needs to be checked for reinforcing steel with most of it being precut and charges placed to cut the remainder. The silo should of been wrapped with ballistic material to prevent fly. Given all this, and I assume the silo was right next to the barn like I see in photos of American farms, it would of been much easier to pull the silo down with machinery.
Where I am:
I’ve got to be re-certified every 5 years. I’m certified for quarry, construction blasting (eg road cuttings), and rural land blasting (eg ponds, post holes, drains)
Sellers of explosives can only sell to those with licenses to use. I need a license to transport, and to tell the road people the route and time.
It’s a good idea to tell neighbours, even better to set up a viewing site for them 
Commercial quarries require various permits/consents to operate or for blasting, the quarries in the links below are private and so don’t need all the paperwork. As all what I do is in a rural area, people don’t tend to ask for guv’ment approval 