Now there’s a story! 
Lifetime?
Because one of the things about most of the focus of current terror threats (in Europe, I mean) is the terrorists do not spend ages worrying about RC model or mobile phone detonators, escape routes, avoiding surveillance and all the stuff that made it so much easier for security services and harder for terrorists in the 1980s.
They frequently blow up with their bomb - and with that mind set are quite happy to use insanity sauce recipes for TATP - which you really need a death wish to mess around with.
The latest batch of terrorists are very far from sophisticated or even security aware and Amazon is exactly the kind of place they’d look for parts… The PIRA would have run a mile from any of the recent European attackers - especially the ones who kinda gave up and hired cars and bought knives.
Unless you are talking about all the Silk Road clones on TOR
Customers who bought The Dummies’ Guide to Bludgeoning People to Death also bought Anatomical Skull Model and How to Get Away With Murder Season 1.
2 Likes
You can watch the Anachronists Cookbook on Youtube.
1 Like
Wouldn’t it have to be the Dummies Guide to Bludgeoning People to Death With This Book?
2 Likes
Hydrogen and electricity. Delivered to every home, 24 hours per day. And dirt cheap, too.
3 Likes
I arrived to fun amateur chemistry just a year too late – the chemistry sets were basically very, very safe. No oxidizers, no finely milled metal powders. And I was probably 9 and I went to the local pharmacy and the pharmacist basically said they no longer compound their own stuff, and he’d just sold off his remaining chemicals the year prior.
Thing is, if you’ve got enough black powder ingredients, you can in fact make a fairly sizable bang. I’m not sure if you could get it to detonate.
From what I’ve heard they haven’t been all that successful really. But before Silk Road went down a number of people buying the drugs from them had ended up arrested due to the exact dynamic I described. Having to have shit delivered to you creates an unavoidable chance to identify and find you. After that? Silk Road didn’t turn out to be nearly as impenetrable or anonymous as claimed.
Even if Amazon were selling/recommending bomb making components (which is the subject of this panic). I don’t think anyone would have to be concerned about anyone ordering secret untraceable bomb making components on Amazon.
While this started in the UK, the thrust of the article is how the UK press spurred off a press panic on the subject. Its been all over the US news for a couple of days.
And if you’re making a bomb, really? Like, you’re not going to use amazon.Someplace blows up and the cops are like “Well Foo Barington put in an amazon order for aluminum powder, blasting caps, detcord, and rusty nails last week, but damn, if only amazon kept track of the man’s address and credit card information!”
3 Likes
If all of the people buying this stuff were making bombs, would there not be a few more bombings by now?
1 Like
I was looking for a back pack on Amazon a month ago and did a double take when it said that pressure cookers were frequently purchased with the backpack.
2 Likes
If you don’t already have a copy of the Anarchist’s Cookbook that was downloaded from a BBS over a POTS modem connection, then you young’uns need to get off my lawn.
6 Likes
Yes, faking those things would be the idea. I’ll supply a name and address, but not my own, and use one of those pre-paid cards. (Do you have a citation for the claim that Amazon doesn’t always accept them? Never mind; it’s enough that they sometimes accept them.)
What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t need a bank account to buy something from Amazon with a credit card.
Amazon locker doesn’t require proof of identity. (Haven’t you ever used it? You walk into a public location, type a code, and get your stuff.)
Look, I’m not disputing the basic idea of this article. It’s valid. But here’s the thing: it’s valid even in a world where people can buy things from Amazon under a false name. And that’s the world we live in (though you, for some reason, pretend otherwise).
The fact that I’ve had several not work on Amazon? Those things are weird as are the gift cards from the credit companies. Even within the individual cards where and how they’re accepted is inconsistent.
An Amazon Gift Card purchased with cash is the better bet.
For a debit card or linking a bank account to a payment method. Context clues chuckles.
My slim experience with picking Amazon shit up at other locations involved showing id to a clerk or doorman to gain access. That was a while back though.
Problem remains that your still going to a fixed. Predictable. Public location where at or from which you can be recognized or identified. After there is a record of you doing something potentially illegal (in the case of buying shit for bombs) but before you actually physically get the stuff. You can anonymize an Amazon purchase to to a certain extent. But not sufficiently for the press scare mongering to be any more valid. Not enough to prevent getting caught if it were a real concern (which it doesn’t seem to be). Attempting to make it so. Is a fair bit more difficult than acquiring your explosives without online purchases.
ETA: Beyond that have you purchased chemicals on Amazon before? I buy saltpeter for curing and a few other kitchen chemicals. Saltpeter is a gun powder component. And can be used as the fertilizer component in those fertilizer/diesel fuel bombs we hear about. In the US when you buy it. You’re supposed to provide a valid drivers license or passport (in the form of the ID number), name and address. And your name goes on a list of people who’ve bough saltpeter (its basically the same as buying psuedo-ephedrine). The package is marked as containing potentially hazardous materials as well. Now I’ve bought from Amazon sellers who didn’t do that, though I’m reasonably sure they were supposed to. And most of the chemicals involved in the article wouldn’t be the sort of thing that gets that treatment. I imagine sulfur might qualify as its quite flammable.
True, the studio ‘debates’ are on average pretty awful.
When they invite someone to represent the “opposite view” they have a nasty habit of giving a platform to the most extreme bogeymen. Plenty of Anjum Chaudry, Rees-Mogg, and various weirdo Kremlin-apologists I can’t remember the names of.
2 Likes
You’d be able to detonate it fine. But as a low velocity explosive, the effects would be very localized and comparatively weak.
The film “October Sky” has an excellent scene where they attempt to use black powder as a propellant and accidentally demolish part of a fence. Other explosives would produce (from a bomb that size" a much more dangerous result.
I got my terminology confused once again – black powder relies on a combustion reaction, high explosives a detonation reaction. But both can produce hypersonic shockwaves?
And I’m going to end discussion here, because I’m sure this thread has already been flagged.
