"Hold my beer and watch this" (The Darwin Thread)

Very sad for his family and friends.
 
Sunset said:
Can you imagine being the neighbor across the street, and looking forward to this every year from these folks, launching things towards your property.
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At our previous home, we had a next door neighbor whose adult children went crazy with fireworks every July 4th - terrorizing our dogs BTW. They bought tons of powerful fireworks, even staging them on plywood boards - it was a two day preparation. After listening to it for hours after dark every July 4th, we'd find shrapnel all over our roof and yard the next day. We really liked them 364 days/year, and their adult children didn't live at home, for whatever reason it was a tradition for them to shoot off fireworks at our neighbors (their parents) house. One year I found something smoldering in our front yard and went out with a hose to douse it, and they could see I wasn't happy. The next morning they were out picking up their debris from our yard. Again, we liked them all, just hated their July 4th fireworks tradition.
 
Aerides said:
Ok I have another one for you, watch till the end...

(sorry i only found it on twitter).

What gets me, is this is their own video from their own security cam, so they not only created this debacle, but decided to share it somewhere public.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1544490105636671488
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Yes, but it was photographed by a SimpliSafe security camera. No doubt that saved them. Right?
 
Midpack said:
At our previous home, we had a next door neighbor whose adult children went crazy with fireworks every July 4th - terrorizing our dogs BTW. They bought tons of powerful fireworks, even staging them on plywood boards - it was a two day preparation. After listening to it for hours after dark every July 4th, we'd find shrapnel all over our roof and yard the next day. We really liked them 364 days/year, and their adult children didn't live at home, for whatever reason it was a tradition for them to shoot off fireworks at our neighbors (their parents) house. One year I found something smoldering in our front yard and went out with a hose to douse it, and they could see I wasn't happy. The next morning they were out picking up their debris from our yard. Again, we liked them all, just hated their July 4th fireworks tradition.
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I have a friend (old co-worker), that was burned out of his house on the 4th of July. It started on their deck in the back of the house and by the time they understood what was going on (late at night), they literally ran out of the house with the clothes on their back and lost EVERYTHING. The good news was that the rest of the family that was there that day (kids and grandkids) decided to end the night and go to one of the kids house so none of them were in the house when that happened.
 
For a couple of years, as teenagers who mostly paid attention in school, we tried making our own gunpowder.

Fortunately it's not as easy in real life as suggested from the recipe. At the time we didn't really understand the danger from accidental ignition had we done a better job.

We would build little rafts and put our various homemade fireworks on them and set them adrift with a long fuse. Mostly they burned and glowed and failed to explode.
 
Fireworks are assembled as cheaply as possible in China using unpredictable black powder.

I've heard a mortar like that in Aerides' video simply detonate on the beach.

Fortunately no one was near it given the small crater it created.

I've seen Roman candles explode when being handheld...burns, but no permanent injuries.

I'm happy to go to professional fireworks shows but have nothing to do with them up close and personal anymore.

As for making your own, when I was a kid our family was out walking in our neighborhood when we heard what we thought was a transformer explosion.

Turned out several blocks away a group of teenagers was packing black powder into the body of a cut-open fire extinguisher in someone's basement...one walked downstairs, lit a cigarette, and boom!

The teen leaning over the extinguisher at the time was killed & IIRC the explosion was powerful enough to cause foundation damage to the point that the home was condemned.
 
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ncbill said:
As for making your own, when I was a kid our family was out walking in our neighborhood when we heard what we thought was a transformer explosion.

Turned out several blocks away a group of teenagers was packing black powder into the body of a cut-open fire extinguisher in someone's basement...one walked downstairs, lit a cigarette, and boom!

The teen leaning over the extinguisher at the time was killed & IIRC the explosion was powerful enough to cause foundation damage to the point that the home was condemned.
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Wow. We used to pack CO2 cartridges with match tips and they went off like M80s. I can't imagine a fire extinguisher.
 
How awful for everyone involved.
Alcohol does not mix with making good choices.
 
The stupid shall be punished.

I should be on the Darwin list but somehow managed to live through all my stupid.
 
corn18 said:
The stupid shall be punished.

I should be on the Darwin list but somehow managed to live through all my stupid.
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I reflect on some of the things I did when I was much younger and just cringe too...
 
Chuckanut said:
Yes, but it was photographed by a SimpliSafe security camera. No doubt that saved them. Right?
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By save you do mean, made them internet stars, right? I had no problem finding it on my phone to show at breakfast this morning. It is on many web sights.
 
The pro's wear bomb suits...and that is not a coincidence. Fireworks are bombs that are supposed to elevate... but there are always exceptions.

I sometimes light off some bigger mortars and rockets. I place a 4' x 8' piece of plywood in front of the launch zone, that way the only person that can get hurt is the guy crazy enough to light them (Me). And I usually light a few at a time and run...if I miss the fust on one, oh well...it's just a show. Bailing out is the key. If you stick around it increases your chance of getting hurt or death. One time I had a rocket fuse sever the rocket's tail, so the rocket fell onto the ground, lit off into the blast shield, ricocheted across the street up the neighbors driveway, off his garage door and into his bush. The bush started on fire, and if I hadn't had a bucket of water handy I could have easily burnt down his house. Fireworks are no joke.
 
When I was about 5 yrs old I found a 22 cal shell on the ground at a small farm. It seemed to me the thing to do was put the shell on the sidewalk and hit it with a hammer. BANG! it blew two holes in the smashed casing and the lead bullet stayed intact. No harm done.
 
homestead said:
When I was about 5 yrs old I found a 22 cal shell on the ground at a small farm. It seemed to me the thing to do was put the shell on the sidewalk and hit it with a hammer. BANG! it blew two holes in the smashed casing and the lead bullet stayed intact. No harm done.
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Try that with a round that uses a primer and you’ll get a very different experience.
 
One of my favorite charities is the EOD Warriors Foundation, helping and honoring active, retired, and veteran Explosives Ordinance Disposal technicians and their families. A lot of stressed out folks that could use a helping hand. Explosives are useful tools but as many have mentioned, can be dangerous and deadly, even the fun kind. I hope I'm not breaking any rules.


https://eodwarriorfoundation.org/
 
When I was about 12 I learned from a family friend (adult) that you could cut the ends off of strike-anywhere matches and use them as "explosives."

We took a couple of long iron bolts (maybe 6" long by 3/4") and screwed a nut down on one of the bolts. That left a gap we would partially fill with match tips. We then screwed a similar bolt to the other side of the nut. Snugging the two bolts/nut combo over the match tips created a "hand grenade." We would throw the device and upon landing it would explode - typically detaching one of the bolts from the nut. Nice report and a flying bolt.

One time, upon throwing, I must have left too much slack in the bolt/nut and apparently created enough friction to set it off. I was fortunate that all I got out of it was several (difficult to explain to mom) burn holes in my shirt. YMMV
 
It happens every 4th of July and New Years that a few people around the country are injured because of their bad choices. And it will happen again when the New Year rolls around. This year in south Fl someone lost their hand while celebrating with fireworks. I imagine there are many other stories from other states that we don't hear about.

Cheers!
 
When I was at the Naval Academy, I had a roommate who was as weird as me. Our room was called the weird room. We tried a lot of stupid things, any of which could have earned us a Darwin Award.

We found dry silver paint mix in the Midshipmen store that was made up of mostly fine aluminum powder. We were supposed to use it to make spirit banners. We put it in a toaster oven at 200 deg F to bake off the paint binder and leave a beautiful 400 mesh aluminum powder. Added some potassium chlorate we picked up at the drug store. Used our chemistry to get the ratio correct. We filled up an empty Donald Duck orange juice can with the mixture and taped over the hole and added a fuse. We were on the 6th floor of Bancroft Hall overlooking the lacrosse practice field, so we lit the fuse and tossed it onto the field (it was about 2200, so no one was out).

Well, that went a lot better and worse than we expected. The report was magnificent. The over pressure rattled all the windows in that wing. We quickly cleaned up all the evidence and went about studying. Got a visit from the Company Commander who was my friend and later my best man at my wedding. He stuck his head in the door and asked if that was us. We just smiled and went back to pretending to study.

Later in life, I decided I wanted to make some more of those so I ordered the ingredients off the interweb. I ordered enough to blow up my house. This was in 2014. No way they should ship that stuff to anyone, especially that much of it. At least I was a little smart and ordered potassium perchlorate instead of potassium chlorate. A lot more stable. I made a few golf ball sized bombs each year on the 4th of July. Always got a lot of attention. Nothing you could buy had a report like those bombs. I stopped after a few years because they just got too much attention.

We also tried to make C4 in our room and ended up having to evacuate the whole floor because the wind shifted and the chlorine gas we were using to bubble through the potash was coming into the building. This was on a weekend so there weren't a lot of mids there.

We also used a car battery to power a hydrolosis rig in our shower to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. We collected the gasses in garbage bags over a few days. When we thought we had enough, we decided to tape the garbage bags to a long metal pole and stick them out the window and light them. We used toilet paper as a fuse. The oxygen one was a dud. The hydrogen one was quite enrgetic. Luckily we were smart and put the large, heavy glass windows down before we lit them. Damn near broke the windows right in front of our faces.

Anyway, how I didn't end up with a Darwin award out of all of that, I have no idea.
 
corn18 said:
When I was at the Naval Academy, I had a roommate who was as weird as me. Our room was called the weird room. We tried a lot of stupid things, any of which could have earned us a Darwin Award.
Click to expand...

Umm, wow!

We also used a car battery to power a hydrolosis rig in our shower to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. We collected the gasses in garbage bags over a few days. When we thought we had enough, we decided to tape the garbage bags to a long metal pole and stick them out the window and light them. We used toilet paper as a fuse. The oxygen one was a dud. The hydrogen one was quite enrgetic.
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Interestingly, it was at the USNA that I once saw a demonstration (i.e., by a professional!) of exploding a weather balloon full of H2. It made quite an impression on me. The pressure wave felt like you got absolutely smacked in the face.
 
Sunset said:
My favorite thing as a kid was to take those and put about 12 wrapped in aluminum foil very tightly. Then smash them between 2 rocks. A large amount of smoke was generated.
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We used to stick match heads into the hollow cup shaped pellets for our Crossman pellet guns. When the pellet hit a hard object like a piece of wood, it exploded on impact.
 
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