Monday Morning Stories With Mookie - Episode 13

The Time Mookie Learned How To Make Chemical Bombs

(Disclaimer:  The following activities are not condoned by anyone, and should not be copied, re-created, or tried.  Breathtaking and Inappropriate, Mookie5150, and Tiffani-Amber Thiessen are not responsible for any injuries or damage caused by someone reading and copying the following activities.  These activities were conducted by professionals.  Do not try this at home.)

As I have said before, my hometown was pretty boring growing up.  Sadly, the activities we did get into sometimes could be considered borderline-illegal or criminal mischief.  It wasn't like we set out to be delinquents when we did things, but sometimes ...it happened.  As I like to say, "We don't choose these things.  They choose us."

One weekend, my friend "Rick" (*) had a friend/cousin come visit for the weekend.  His name was "Neil."  Now Neil seemed OK but I think he was bored with our small town and wanted to liven things up a bit.  So he goes:

"You guys ever make "Works Bombs?"

Needless to say, he had me at "bombs."  Rick and I were avid fans of fire and explosive fireworks, but we had not yet graduated to homemade explosives.  Neil decided we needed an education in the matter and we were of course ready and willing participants.

It is G.D scary how easy it is to make these things.  It requires the THREE following ingredients:
1). A drain cleaner called "The Works." (I'm told other drain cleaners may also work, but once we learned to use The Works, we stuck with what we knew.)
2). Aluminum foil.
and
3).  A plastic bottle with a screw top lid.  A 2-liter soda bottle works best.

We procured the said ingredients and a bunch of us met up at a local pizza place.  Our friend "Devin" worked at said eatery and pretty much ran it for his uncle who owned it. Due to this, we often hung out there and planned our weekend mischief.  So we ended up in the back room of the pizza place and Neil begins showing us how to build this thing.  Several pieces of aluminum tinfoil are put into the bottle, and then an approximate amount of The Works is poured into the bottle.  Then (quickly) you screw the lid on the bottle as tight as you can.

We stepped out the back door into the alley and placed the bottle up the alley a bit, and then retreated to the doorway.  Please note that this isn't a wide open alley - It is a service alley between all the businesses in the downtown area.  It is essentially a concrete hallway.  As we stood and waited a few minutes waiting to see what is going to happen,  Neil assured us that there was no fire in the explosion.  It was purely a chemical reaction between the aluminum and the acid in the drain cleaner.  This reaction created a great amount of heat, chlorine gas and huge pressure - all of which would then cause the bottle to explode.  Finally we started see smoke or something going on in the bottle.  Then the bottle started expanding at a rapid rate, and suddenly became twice as tall and big as it was a second ago.  All of a sudden"  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!

Hot acidic drain cleaner sprays everywhere, green plastic Mountain Dew bottle pieces fly, and a chlorine gas smoke ball dissipates into the air.  The fact it was in the alley made it 10X louder than it probably was. We all flew back into the pizza place laughing and screaming our enjoyment at what we had just seen. Needless to say it was awesome, and we needed to do this again.

We met up later that evening along a gravel road in the country, and prepared to set off another one of these gadgets.  Neil seemed to enjoy being the "center of attention" that he was, and began to  tell stories about he had once taped an M-80 to a can of WD-40.  He claimed that they taped the can to a road sign, lit it and ran away.  The result was a fireball beyond belief and a destroyed road sign.  While I'm sure it would be cool, I found the story to be a bit extreme and Neil was obviously telling stories to satisfy his crowd of onlookers.  It got a bit douchey.

Anyway...back to the bomb.  Neil mixed up the goods, set it a good distance from all of our cars as we stood and waited for the explosion.  "What is that noise behind us?" I wonder.  Oh...here comes a car!  Great. The last thing we need is to get caught setting off bombs.  We all hopped into our cars and peeled out while the not-yet exploded bottle was still sitting there.  Based on our previous experience, we determined the bottle probably blew up before the car got there, but we were never sure.  We never saw or heard of any complaint about it - so that was good.  It didn't stop us from setting off more though.

Neil went on his way after that weekend, and I never saw him again.  Rick and I continued to set these things off, and we oddly did it fairly often in the driveway of his parents house in the country.  In fact, Rick's Dad was so mildly amused by our "chemistry demonstrations" going on outside that he would occasionally watch in excitement along with us.  I find it damn funny now that Rick's parents never questioned us or showed any concern about us making explosive devices.  Neither did my parents for that matter.  Good times.

If we did that now and got caught, they'd slap a terrorism charge on us.  Thanks a lot bin Laden.

(*) - Names changed to protect the guilty/innocent.