Maybe this is a hot take, but I watch and read all kinds of crazy stuff. Learning how to make a bomb should be accessable to everyone, although not necessarily the tools to do so. I’m a firm believer in freedom of information, and I find the idea of preventing people from learning whatever they want to be no different from book banning.
Besides, if they’re willing to learn how to make a bomb for malicious reasons, then they are dedicated and clever enough to research. As such, there are countless, far more destructive paths they could pursue. If you want to disrupt an entire town, you don’t bomb city hall. You plant thermite(not a bomb and incredibly easy to make) on the water tower. If you want to disrupt a city, you isolate viruses contagious bacteria using a $15 home crispr starting kit and use random uv mutations to move it towards being more deadly and infectious, because you presumably don’t know how to gene edit using that $15 kit(which is also incredibly easy, but very tedious. If you can pipette, you have all the physical skills required).
My point being that the idea that this information isn’t safe to be made public falls flat, because the internet enables significantly more destructive information to be available to everyone. The best way to conquer your fears is by understanding them. Now instead of an irrational fear of bombs, you understand the exact mechanics of the bombs and have the knowledge of when to have a rational fear of them.
I fear I did a poor job explaining, so let me give you an example: what do you think would happen if a nuclear missile was ACCIDENTLY DROPPED onto your house? What do you think would happen to your neighbors? The wording here is very important.
All of the information is easily available in the academic literature. From explosive synthesis, to charge shaping, to triggering mechanisms and much much more. You just need to have the background to both read the science and put it into practice, which is difficult to do. There isn’t a “simple” bomb making manual, because bomb making is difficult and application specific.
I agree, and I actually see that as a reason FOR making the info easily accessable(I know you aren’t arguing against that)
Making a pipe bomb, I think you can agree, is significantly easier, cheaper, and more accessable than making something with a safety mechanism, a much smaller secondary charge in case the first fails and you don’t want get near a bomb, and having the force go exactly where you want it to. It’s so much easier to use these skills for destruction, but it’s not hard to figure that information out on your own without the internet. Therefore, by keeping “dangerous” information restricted or censored, you are ONLY raising the bar for entry into the legitimate uses for those technologies.
You can’t learn to do cool things without learning how to do bad things along the way. That’s life.
Many people want to do good things, and a much majority of people want to be perceived as doing good things, which is how we get the good parts of civilization.
what do you think would happen if a nuclear missile was ACCIDENTLY DROPPED onto your house? What do you think would happen to your neighbors? The wording here is very important.
since you didn’t say armed nuclear missile, i’m picturing donnie darko. i’m sitting in bed. i get smushed by a nuclear missile that does not go boom because it was not told to go boom. then the air force comes over, police tapes my house, steals my weed and my collection of vintage lacy underthings, also knocks over my spoon collection for fun, then leaves. my widow has a puddle of me, the splinters of a bed, a hole in the roof and a spoon collection to clean up and doesn’t even get to keep a nuclear weapon. what a country.
Jesus that was an enjoyable read. And yeah, the lack of it being armed was the idea that I was trying to get across. Do you write short stories by any chance? I used to read a ton of r/writing_prompts
Ever thought about doing short stories? I think they’d suit you. Especially a macabre horror comedy. No pressure though, just figured I’d suggest it if you’re interested :)
Perhaps you’ve watched too much crazy stuff because there is no way you’re going to make a deadly and infectious virus with “a $15 CRISPR starting kit”.
You right, I misspoke. I would be making a deadly DISEASE, not virus. CRISPR is a bacterial editing process, I haven’t heard of any way to use crispr on viruses. Also, I just googled it, the kits have gone up to $50 now.
Even then, you won’t be able to do that. CRISPR is a precision technique and you need exactly the right sequence and enzyme to make the alterations you want. You can’t get that in a starter kit.
You also can’t random bullshit go! your way with UV cause it will straight up kill bacteria and the ones that don’t die will just be more resistant to UV damage.
I was being very general and oversimplifying, but I think you may have misunderstood my post. I did a poor job explaining, so that’s not on you, but I did make it fairly explicit that for most people I had assumed they WERENT using crispr, just the kit.
As for the UV resistance, disclaimer: I haven’t ever done this. I am not speaking from experience, nor do I have the prerequisite information to confidently argue I am correct here, but I do believe you are slightly mistaken. I would love for you to correct me, especially if you actually do know what you’re talking about, unlike me.
this seems to suggest that UVC can induce mutations so long as you include a repair agent. From what I can gather, the UV damages the cell in such a way that would kill it normally, but by repairing the cell wall you can increase the chances the cell will heal with mutated DNA.
this seems to suggest that you can use UV to enhance or diminish existing traits in a bacteria, which is pretty much exactly what I was referring to.
this even seems to suggest that UV radiation induces a faster mutation rate than bacteria that naturally mutate quickly. This effectively eliminates the possibility of something similar to a placebo, showing that UV is more effective than otherwise naturally waiting for mutations.
Again, I could be mistaken, and there’s a bunch of specifics in those studies I didn’t quite understand. But I’m confident I got the general idea, and as such it seems a fairly difficult task to show that my original assessment was incorrect. This is going to sound facetious but I promise it’s not, I just value my word choice: I genuinely appreciate your attempt to correct me, and if you have any other information you feel would be beneficial to the discussion please don’t hesitate to share it with me.
Yes, you’re mistaken. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.
None of these studies are done with a DIY set, they’re done at million-dollar laboratories by professionals. Two of these studies found exactly what I told you in the previous comment, that the bacteria became better equipped to deal with UV damage.
The second study is interesting, as they found a way to select the bacteria to produce the chemical of interest. But you won’t be able to do this with a DIY kit either.
And lastly, how are you going to determine whether you’re even on the right track? Do you have a whole bunch of rhesus monkeys that you can inoculate to see whether they die and infect each other?
Oh, all the tools and materials for “bomb making” are extremely common. The only uncommon piece is the know-how, though it’s not at all complicated. Intent is the other mystery ingredient. There’s more than one reason to wish to cause an explosion some distance from oneself.
Yep, as long as you own the land and are not causing massive environmental impact, I find it odd that you can’t handle explosives on your own property. Tannerite is legal here, and every redneck with a gun can set off massive explosions that blow out car windows for miles, but if I want to blow out a tunnel for any reason that’s deemed insane. For the more powerful bombs like fertilizer bombs, it’s slightly more difficult to get all the ingredients, but yeah most of the time it’s pretty easy.
Also the whole idea of not being allowed to booby trap your property is wild as well
That last I have to believe is to prevent us from effectively defending ourselves from the state. They know we can only send so many bullets, no matter how well armed we are. Booby traps give us better odds to fight or flee from them, should they decide they have a reason to come after us.
That said I can get a permit for blasting if I, in my very rural area, were to find a “legitimate” need to do so. TNT isn’t quite unobtainium, but not easy to get, so it should also be within my rights to fashion my own explosives if I possess the knowledge, skills and tools.
And yeah, tannerite. I don’t have any, but academy sports does. It’s not even expensive, all things considered.
Maybe this is a hot take, but I watch and read all kinds of crazy stuff. Learning how to make a bomb should be accessable to everyone, although not necessarily the tools to do so. I’m a firm believer in freedom of information, and I find the idea of preventing people from learning whatever they want to be no different from book banning.
Besides, if they’re willing to learn how to make a bomb for malicious reasons, then they are dedicated and clever enough to research. As such, there are countless, far more destructive paths they could pursue. If you want to disrupt an entire town, you don’t bomb city hall. You plant thermite(not a bomb and incredibly easy to make) on the water tower. If you want to disrupt a city, you isolate
virusescontagious bacteria using a $15 home crispr starting kit and use random uv mutations to move it towards being more deadly and infectious, because you presumably don’t know how to gene edit using that $15 kit(which is also incredibly easy, but very tedious. If you can pipette, you have all the physical skills required).My point being that the idea that this information isn’t safe to be made public falls flat, because the internet enables significantly more destructive information to be available to everyone. The best way to conquer your fears is by understanding them. Now instead of an irrational fear of bombs, you understand the exact mechanics of the bombs and have the knowledge of when to have a rational fear of them.
I fear I did a poor job explaining, so let me give you an example: what do you think would happen if a nuclear missile was ACCIDENTLY DROPPED onto your house? What do you think would happen to your neighbors? The wording here is very important.
All of the information is easily available in the academic literature. From explosive synthesis, to charge shaping, to triggering mechanisms and much much more. You just need to have the background to both read the science and put it into practice, which is difficult to do. There isn’t a “simple” bomb making manual, because bomb making is difficult and application specific.
I agree, and I actually see that as a reason FOR making the info easily accessable(I know you aren’t arguing against that)
Making a pipe bomb, I think you can agree, is significantly easier, cheaper, and more accessable than making something with a safety mechanism, a much smaller secondary charge in case the first fails and you don’t want get near a bomb, and having the force go exactly where you want it to. It’s so much easier to use these skills for destruction, but it’s not hard to figure that information out on your own without the internet. Therefore, by keeping “dangerous” information restricted or censored, you are ONLY raising the bar for entry into the legitimate uses for those technologies.
Agreed. Information is harmless, if not beneficial. Malicious intentions and actions are different.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jun/24/usa.science
And by half the stuff I’ve seen on YouTube anything is possible
You can’t learn to do cool things without learning how to do bad things along the way. That’s life.
Many people want to do good things, and a much majority of people want to be perceived as doing good things, which is how we get the good parts of civilization.
since you didn’t say armed nuclear missile, i’m picturing donnie darko. i’m sitting in bed. i get smushed by a nuclear missile that does not go boom because it was not told to go boom. then the air force comes over, police tapes my house, steals my weed and my collection of vintage lacy underthings, also knocks over my spoon collection for fun, then leaves. my widow has a puddle of me, the splinters of a bed, a hole in the roof and a spoon collection to clean up and doesn’t even get to keep a nuclear weapon. what a country.
Jesus that was an enjoyable read. And yeah, the lack of it being armed was the idea that I was trying to get across. Do you write short stories by any chance? I used to read a ton of r/writing_prompts
i wish i could. i’m an oral storyteller. i’ve tried to get into the written word and die around 50 pages every time. nah, my legacy will be my music.
i can recommend good authors (i love Jasper Fforde) if you need a good enjoyable read to lift your heart but my efforts, uh, i struggle.
Ever thought about doing short stories? I think they’d suit you. Especially a macabre horror comedy. No pressure though, just figured I’d suggest it if you’re interested :)
Perhaps you’ve watched too much crazy stuff because there is no way you’re going to make a deadly and infectious virus with “a $15 CRISPR starting kit”.
You right, I misspoke. I would be making a deadly DISEASE, not virus. CRISPR is a bacterial editing process, I haven’t heard of any way to use crispr on viruses. Also, I just googled it, the kits have gone up to $50 now.
Even then, you won’t be able to do that. CRISPR is a precision technique and you need exactly the right sequence and enzyme to make the alterations you want. You can’t get that in a starter kit.
You also can’t random bullshit go! your way with UV cause it will straight up kill bacteria and the ones that don’t die will just be more resistant to UV damage.
Stop watching the crazy stuff :)
I was being very general and oversimplifying, but I think you may have misunderstood my post. I did a poor job explaining, so that’s not on you, but I did make it fairly explicit that for most people I had assumed they WERENT using crispr, just the kit.
As for the UV resistance, disclaimer: I haven’t ever done this. I am not speaking from experience, nor do I have the prerequisite information to confidently argue I am correct here, but I do believe you are slightly mistaken. I would love for you to correct me, especially if you actually do know what you’re talking about, unlike me.
this seems to suggest that UVC can induce mutations so long as you include a repair agent. From what I can gather, the UV damages the cell in such a way that would kill it normally, but by repairing the cell wall you can increase the chances the cell will heal with mutated DNA.
this seems to suggest that you can use UV to enhance or diminish existing traits in a bacteria, which is pretty much exactly what I was referring to.
this even seems to suggest that UV radiation induces a faster mutation rate than bacteria that naturally mutate quickly. This effectively eliminates the possibility of something similar to a placebo, showing that UV is more effective than otherwise naturally waiting for mutations.
Again, I could be mistaken, and there’s a bunch of specifics in those studies I didn’t quite understand. But I’m confident I got the general idea, and as such it seems a fairly difficult task to show that my original assessment was incorrect. This is going to sound facetious but I promise it’s not, I just value my word choice: I genuinely appreciate your attempt to correct me, and if you have any other information you feel would be beneficial to the discussion please don’t hesitate to share it with me.
Yes, you’re mistaken. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.
None of these studies are done with a DIY set, they’re done at million-dollar laboratories by professionals. Two of these studies found exactly what I told you in the previous comment, that the bacteria became better equipped to deal with UV damage.
The second study is interesting, as they found a way to select the bacteria to produce the chemical of interest. But you won’t be able to do this with a DIY kit either.
And lastly, how are you going to determine whether you’re even on the right track? Do you have a whole bunch of rhesus monkeys that you can inoculate to see whether they die and infect each other?
Oh, all the tools and materials for “bomb making” are extremely common. The only uncommon piece is the know-how, though it’s not at all complicated. Intent is the other mystery ingredient. There’s more than one reason to wish to cause an explosion some distance from oneself.
Yep, as long as you own the land and are not causing massive environmental impact, I find it odd that you can’t handle explosives on your own property. Tannerite is legal here, and every redneck with a gun can set off massive explosions that blow out car windows for miles, but if I want to blow out a tunnel for any reason that’s deemed insane. For the more powerful bombs like fertilizer bombs, it’s slightly more difficult to get all the ingredients, but yeah most of the time it’s pretty easy.
Also the whole idea of not being allowed to booby trap your property is wild as well
That last I have to believe is to prevent us from effectively defending ourselves from the state. They know we can only send so many bullets, no matter how well armed we are. Booby traps give us better odds to fight or flee from them, should they decide they have a reason to come after us.
That said I can get a permit for blasting if I, in my very rural area, were to find a “legitimate” need to do so. TNT isn’t quite unobtainium, but not easy to get, so it should also be within my rights to fashion my own explosives if I possess the knowledge, skills and tools.
And yeah, tannerite. I don’t have any, but academy sports does. It’s not even expensive, all things considered.
“I watch and read all kinds crazy stuff”. No mention of mayonnaise slapping?
I don’t watch or read that, I role play
I’m hoping that’s a euphansim and not some new Nazi shit
Oh god that hadn’t even crossed my mind…