Lucky to be alive.
this goes back a few years. It must have been 1986 or 87. My mate had been doing private experiments with sugar and fertilizer, presumably after having read about its effects somewhere. The experiments hadn't amounted to much really, just igniting piles of the mixture on the floor, or maybe filling coke cans and cutting off one end so as to make a cheap and cheerful spinning firework. It was when he told our small group about it that the situation escalated.

After a couple of attempts at using aluminium tubing to make fireworks (believe me, the realisation that we were bomb making had not entered our dimwitted brains) another mate managed to get hold of an old motorbike exhaust pipe. After filling it with the mixture and using a sparkler as a fuse, we set out into the New Forest to admire our ingenuity. After half burying it in the ground and lighting the fuse, we retreated to a safe distance (approx 10ft) and awaited the pyrotechnic display we ad lovingly crafted.

Looking back now, I suppose it wasn't that long a time before we got bored and left it, although at the time it seemed we had waited an eternity. We never attempted to get closer and inspect it, as we had at least been born with a single brain cell between us, but we were bitterly disappointed as we walked away. We had only walked about 30 seconds when it went. I can honestly say that I had to completely redefine my understanding of terror. Not just the blast, but the sound of small pieces of molten death whistling past our ears on their way into the distant trees. Quite how anybody avoided having to explain the tattered corpse to their friends mum is still a mystery to me now.

After all that though, it was only the next morning speaking to my parents that the magnitude of our stupidity slammed home. My mum said in conversation that she had heard a bang the night before. The horrifying part is that we lived about 7 miles from the blast site.
(Ovon Bort Wondering why he chose this username, since 1999, Thu 9 Aug 2012, 20:24, 5 replies)

seems it's not just me then :-)
www.b3ta.com/questions/terrified/post1580774
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 9 Aug 2012, 21:05, closed)

Or me
Just posted a nearly identical story myself then read this.

Bugger!
(OTT, Thu 9 Aug 2012, 23:17, closed)

If I was a better chemist
I would have suggested we club together to make a rocketry association. But I'm not.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 9 Aug 2012, 23:28, closed)

There is this thing, isn't there
where you remember looking at your mates, your eyes lock for a moment and you share the same unspoken thought:

"There is no fucking way we are the only people who heard that. We should run. Now."
(gordonjcp, Fri 10 Aug 2012, 0:59, closed)

I'm not surprised, sugar & fertilizer is a well recognised recipe.

I used to know a lad who lost a hand and 1/3rd of his scalp playing with the stuff. Went on to be a modestly successful amateur DJ but probably didn't know we called him Matty Plastic Hand.
(J H Christ began in Afrika ka ka ka ka, Fri 10 Aug 2012, 4:37, closed)