Chemistry of Powder and Explosives

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1. sciencemadnessMay 2020
   It's always a pleasure to see Sciencemadness linked here. The link is usually to this book, and with good reason. It's a classic. You don't have to be a chemist to enjoy it (though that helps). I have a main account here but I never comment on Sciencemadness submissions through it because the site so easily reveals my real-life identity.

   I first discovered Ignition! on the shelves of the Medford, Oregon public library when I was 10 years old. I was hooked on my first reading and would go on to read it several more times before I entered my teens. It was tied with Tenney L. Davis's The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives as my favorite non-fiction book.

   I started the Sciencemadness library [1] a long time ago, before the big book-scanning initiatives like Google Books started. The library still contains a large number of books that are unremarkable except for the fact that they were among the first digitized books covering certain facets of chemistry to be made available online.

   The library does contain a couple of books less famous than Ignition! but also potentially interesting to non-chemist readers:

   Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide?

   This is an anecdotal, autobiographical sketch of Max Gergel and his adventures as a young (then older) mad scientist building the business Columbia Organic Chemicals.

   Columbia Organic Chemicals and its founder, Max Gergel, had the unusual honor of mention and praise by name in Kary Mullis's Nobel lecture [2]:

   "I never tired of tinkering in labs. During the summer breaks from Georgia Tech, Al Montgomery and I built an organic synthesis lab in an old chicken house on the edge of town where we made research chemicals to sell. Most of them were noxious or either explosive. No one else wanted to make them, somebody wanted them, and so their production became our domain. We suffered no boredom and no boss. We made enough money to buy new equipment. Max Gergel, who ran Columbia Organic Chemicals Company, and who was an unusually nice man, encouraged us and bought most of our products, which he resold. There were no government regulators to stifle our fledgling efforts, and it was a golden age, but we didn't notice it. We learned a lot of organic chemistry."

   The chicken coop lab full of noxious chemicals isn't far removed from how Max Gergel got his start in the chemistry business either.

   In this humorous, anecdotal chronicle of Max's life from high school mad scientist to successful operator of a chemical supply business, you'll learn where metallic potassium should NOT be stored, how to prepare perfectly alcohol-free n-dodecyl bromide, and why one man would be crazy enough to want a preparative scale procedure for methyl isocyanide. You'll also learn, humorously but quite clearly, how the golden age of "no government regulators" contained the seeds of its own destruction, as horrendous odors, accidental poisonings, dumpings, fires, and miscellaneous accidents and occupational hazards take their toll on Gergel and his employees, neighbors, and surrounding environs.

   http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/gergel_isopr...

   The Scientific Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and in Peace

   Famed Harvard chemistry professor Louis Fieser's personal history of development of incendiary weapons during WW II, including the infamous Bat Bomb, plus development of cortisone, antimalarial drugs, and educational material for students.

   Louis Fieser joined the American war effort before America had even officially entered World War II, as one of 20 professor invited to the house of Roger Adams in October 1940 to join the National Defense Research Committee. He was instructed early on to work on chemical vesicants but, considering them inhumane, quickly made a lateral move to begin development of gelled gasoline incendiary weapons. He led the research effort behind napalm, several other components of large-scale incendiary ordnance, and smaller special purpose incendiary devices for use by spies and saboteurs.

   Fieser's strangest project was development of the Bat Bomb: a cluster-bomb arrangement of hibernating bats carrying time-delayed incendiaries. As the bats fell from bombers over enemy cities, they would rouse from hibernation mid-air and seek shelter in attics of the city below. Their incendiaries would then start concealed, hard-to-fight fires. The project was surprisingly successful for one never deployed, and included the own-goal immolation of an administrative building during testing.

   When Fieser was not working on setting fires he also had time to begin work on the first edition of his organic chemistry textbook, research cortisone chemistry, and work on antimalarial drugs. The information given late in the book about getting cats to pose for photographs with chemical apparatus is invaluable because it comes from real experience.

   http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/the_scientif...

   [1] http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/

   [2]

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2. philipkglassApr 2019
   The world's libraries and archive.org have already curated the classic texts on the production of explosives and fireworks, from benchtop scale all the way up to industrial. No casual internet commentator need fear that they're exposing dangerous secrets. It is all out in the open already.

   The Chemistry Of Powder And Explosives by Tenney L. Davis

   https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.206012

   Pyrotechnics by George Weingart

   https://archive.org/details/Pyrotechnics_by_G._Weingart_2nd_...

   Military and Civilian Pyrotechnics by Herbert Ellern

   https://archive.org/details/Military_And_Civilian_Pyrotechni...

   Chemistry and Technology of Explosives by Tadeusz Urbanski

   Volume 1: https://archive.org/details/Chemistry_and_Technology_of_Expl...

   Volume 2: https://archive.org/details/Chemistry_and_Technology_of_Expl...

   Volume 3: https://archive.org/details/Chemistry_and_Technology_of_Expl...

   Volume 4: https://archive.org/details/ChemistryAndTechnologyOfExplosiv...

   I'm not going to link all 10 volumes of Fedoroff's Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items, but they're online too. They are sitting on the shelves of university libraries around the world and have been for decades. So are books about the production and use of chemical warfare agents! These books are also much higher quality than information circulating in text files or printed "cookbooks" selling the allure of forbidden knowledge.

   Generally speaking, people don't abuse this knowledge to violent ends because

   1) Most people never seriously intend to commit violence in the first place.

   2) Of the few people with premeditated intent to commit violent crime, most will not or even can not manage to make effective poisons and explosives from accessible materials, even given a curated reading list of relevant books. Technical aptitude and diligent study do not intersect with violent criminality very often.

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3. philipkglassMar 2019
   Yes. In fact you'll find the better ones on the shelves of technical libraries [1], both in the US and in other English-speaking countries.

   Introductory:

   The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives by Tenney L. Davis.

   Advanced:

   Chemistry and Technology of Explosives by Tadeusz Urbanski (English translation by M. Jurecki).

   Encyclopedic:

   Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items by Basil T. Federoff.

   Advanced applications of explosives, toward the destruction of materiel and human beings:

   Tactical Missile Warheads by Joseph Carleone.

   When I was an undergraduate I even found a book about nerve gas on the shelves -- Some aspects of the chemistry and toxic action of organic compounds containing phosphorus and fluorine by Bernard Charles Saunders. Dig into the citations and you find a further wealth of detail, papers now universally accessible through sci-hub.

   The main obstacle to making effective bombs isn't restrictions on information. It's that most people inclined to violence [2] can't or won't teach themselves something new even if given a wealth of high quality literature to do it with.

   [1] And on Amazon and Library Genesis.

   [2] Most non-violent people too have trouble with learning on their own. People who keep learning new things may overestimate how common that ability is in general.

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4. philipkglassApr 2019
   My father demonstrated the combustion of a mixture of potassium nitrate and sugar to me when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I was instantly hooked. The effect is spectacular: thick white smoke, hissing pink flames, a huge charred mass of fluffy carbon, and the smell of burnt sugar in the air. My interest in chemistry up to that point had centered around growing crystals. After that first smoky demonstration I wanted to make fireworks.

   It's still possible to have that bonding experience today if you have some open space where there is nothing flammable. I see that Amazon has multiple sellers of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient. As recently as last year I have also seen it sold as stump remover in the gardening section of Fred Meyer (Kroger).

   Potassium nitrate plus various fuels like charcoal and/or dusting sulfur, sugar, and iron filings is great fun and relatively benign. Do any grinding by hand in a porcelain mortar and pestle and there's really no risk of mechanical ignition. The mixtures don't burn fast enough to risk explosive effects unless ground very finely or strongly confined [1]. I had to photocopy the black powder and pyrotechnics sections of The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives from the library, but today you can find a full scan of that book (and much more) online.

   [1] You can also make more vigorous mixtures with potassium nitrate by using powdered metal fuels, but you're not going to find those fuels just sitting on the shelves of ordinary retailers.

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