Mr Beefy wrote:Mythical Creature wrote:Wedgie wrote:Ammonium Nitrate is stored at 170 places in Australia!
Geezus, if I was a terrorist I know where I'd be heading.
Isn't it Urea?
Would be in just about every farm shed in Australia.
Urea=CH₄N₂O
Ammonium Nitrate=NH4NO3
Way back in my early teens we always had Ammonium Nitrate in a bag in the garage.
Great for greening up the lawns!
It is probably a good thing I didn't know then how explosive it became when mixed with Pool Chlorine - I'd already made trinitro-cellulose (Guncotton) and tested it in the back yard when I was about 14. I could have made nitroglycerine then, too, but I was aware of how unstable that could be and drew the line there.
I also experimented with variants on common gunpowder and found that substituting potassium permanganate for potassium nitrate produced something a little like napalm - it sort of shimmied in liquid form and gave off sparks while burning holes in the base I'd lit it on. I didn't try enclosing it in a standard firecracker structure - about then my parents caught on that I had been forging my father's signature on notes authorising me to buy products from chemical suppliers for him.