I was mowing the lawn this afternoon and spied an ant nest in the section that I'm landscaping next (ie it's still weeds and rubble). On closer inspection it was a massive bull ant nest. Being smart, I thought I'd get rid of them the easy way - with two stroke fuel and a match. That was dumb mistake number one. So, I got the fuel can and poured some on the nest. It's relevant to note that I had filled the can immediately prior to doing the lawns, so it was almost completely full. Then, rather than put the fuel can a safe distance away before lighting the nest, I figured it would be okay if I just held the can as far away as possible. So, that's what I did. Next thing I know, I'm holding on to a fuel can that is on fire. A practically full can of two stroke fuel, on fire, in my hand. On fire. I freak out and drop it. Being on a slope it starts to roll, sloshing flames everywhere. I tap it with my foot, very quickly, to turn it so it stops rolling. Then I bolt and grab the hose as it was the closest thing I could get. I spend the next 15 of so minutes pouring spray over the engulfed can to do a control burn until the flames run out. Every time I think I might be able to leave it for a few seconds to get a shovel and bury it, the flames immediately rear up. So I stand there like an idiot, watering a flaming fuel can and waiting. All the while, my inner pyromaniac is thinking, "wow, haven't done that before... kind of fun." Luckily, this happened in the backyard and not the front... otherwise it would have looked like the world's lamest redneck barbecue. FOCUS: What's the dumbest thing you've done lately, despite knowing better?
Rookie. Call me when you upgrade to a barrel. Of race gas. Yes, that's a barrel of race gas with a lit rag sticking out of it. The resulting explosion was a bit concussive.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you complaining about the price of racing fuel not to long ago? The pictures you posted make it look like you blew that up for shits and giggles. Also, what were the consequences? Can't really be a bad decision if there weren't any consequences...
Really, I wanted to take the barrel and make a new burn barrel out of it (to burn trash and stuff). It only had a couple of inches of gas left in it, it's not like it was a full barrel. (Mind you, I've always thought it would be cool to send a full, leaking barrel adrift into my lake and then lob a flare into the wake, while blasting Johnny Cash's Lake Of Fire.) As you probably know, it's not a good idea to take a torch to a barrel that had contained gas and start cutting it up, so I created a makeshift fuse, lit it, and ran away. Figured this would be a good way to get rid of the fumes inside before I started to cut it up with the oxy. And I did do that after I'd filled it up about 90% full of water to minimize the amount of airspace in the barrel, so that when it did blow, it wasn't going to blow up THAT much, and safely vent through the bung holes rather than blow up the barrel itself. The 2nd picture wasn't related to the fuse/ignition of the barrel, but rather the first time I'd used it to burn garbage. (Proper ventilation makes ALL the difference). I just thought it was a cool pic, is all. Still, even with just a little bit of air space in the barrel, the explosion/venting was pretty impressive.
Next time, use a tracer bullet. They work really well for detonating gas tanks, etc. or just igniting whatever you hit them with. They're awesome no matter what, and it's easy to get stupid with them too. Spoiler This was a 2 second exposure shot a buddy took of me having fun back in high school. Look carefully and you can see the 2L soda bottle turn into a fountain after I shot the cap. Dumbest thing I did recently was pulling the bolt back on a rifle I'm working on with my eyes on the sights after forgetting to install the recoil spring. A little more force and I'd have a great black eye, but luckily it's just a cut and slight bruise just below my aiming eye. Fucking stupid.
When I was in High School, I was working at a scrap yard as a "mechanic". Basically, I was pulling parts off of cars and cataloging them for resale. A big part of our job involved cutting torches. One day, the truck from the gas company showed up with a delivery of Oxygen and Acetylene tanks for us. The guy unloading the truck dropped one of the O2 tanks off of the tailgate and the regulator sheared off. That fucking tank took off like a space shuttle, tore through a fence, bounced off a car and came to rest 80 yards from where it began. If anyone was in the way of this thing it easily would have killed them. This is the kind of shit you see in training videos, not in real life. But it was damn scary.
This past Halloween we bought some dry ice to put under a punch bowl to create the smokey whites brew effect. Well, fast forward to about 3 am and my buddy and I are the only ones awake and are thoroughly wasted. We have leftover dry ice and some empty 2 litter coke bottles, so we do the only logical thing at that point: we made a dry ice bomb. So after sealing it up we toss it out into the backyard and wait for...nothing. Doesn't go off (for some reason I doubt we actually really waited that long). So we decide to go out and check on it, using canvas camp chairs to hold between us and the coke bottle. I get up to about 1-2 feet from the bottle and drop my chair on it, I guess to try to 'prod' it, and it exploded in an extremely loud burst. It tore the plastic bottle to shreads and also tore up the canvas part of the chair pretty well too, as well as fucking up my ear drums for a good while. Of course, I'm lucky it was only my ear drums, I don't want to know what it would have done to me had that chair not been in the way.
Not that recent, but I was still old enough to know better. Before we purchased our own cottage, we used to spend the odd weekend at my grandparents' cottage. On this particular night we'd made a nice roaring campfire and were just sitting outside having a few drinks. I forget exactly what we were drinking, but the bottles were glass and had the aluminum screw-on caps; the kind they used to put on pop-bottles before they all switched over to plastic ones. So we're sitting there, getting a nice buzz going and enjoying the fire. As I finish one of my drinks, without thinking I screw the cap back on and toss the empty bottle into the fire. Maybe a 1/2 hour goes by. We're talking, enjoying this beautiful summer night when suddenly there's a very loud bang. The wife screams. I jerk back so hard that my chair tips over and I fall on my back. I scramble to my feet and my first thought is someone is shooting at us, the bang was so loud. I grab my wife and pull her back to the cottage, half-yelling "Are you ok?!!!". We wait for a minute. Nothing. I'm thinking more and more that the bang really didn't sound like a gunshot; it didn't have that sharp crack and must of been something else. I slowly walk back to the fire and see the severed neck of the bottle, cap still on, and instantly I realize that the bottle I had thrown in earlier had exploded. I'd obviously screwed the cap down tightly enough to form a seal, and as the air inside got hotter and hotter inside the pressure kept increasing until the bottle burst. We check each other out for glass shrapnel and are both thankfully unhurt, have a little chuckle. I haven't gotten to the stupid part yet. The stupid part is that next thought that enters my alcohol impaired brain is: "Christ, if the bottle exploded that hard from just the expansion of the air inside, imagine if we fill it partway with water." I promptly grab another bottle empty, walk to the lake and fill it 1/4 way with water. I then screw the cap back on as tightly as I can and toss it into the fire. Within a minute the bottle starts emitting this high pitched whistle like a kettle boiling. I decide we should probably go observe this from around the corner of the cottage. The pitch of the keeps getting higher and higher and higher, until we can barely hear it, and then.... ...and then a bomb goes off. If the other bottle sounded like a gunshot, this one sounded more like a stick of dynamite. The fire which had been going at a good clip was simply blown out, bang, one shot. There were a few embers left but that was it. I could hear the echo rolling back across the lake a few times. It was 2 am and I thought for sure someone was calling the cops at this point so we decided to quickly retire and go to bed. At least I didn't have to put the fire out.
I was very involved with boy scouts when I was a kid (it was the only way this city kid got to go camping and look at nature shit) and my troop did a lot of jamborees and other scouting things in the New England woods.. One popular even was what was called a "Freeze Out" when 500 kids would go and camp for the weekend in February. The best part was that due to the cold we were allowed to make many mostly unsupervised campfires. We were making dinner one eve and all of a sudden there was an explosion of fire in the camp next door and the fly we had been using had a large rip in it. Some jackhole had placed a sealed dinty moore can in the fire and luckily for him, at the right time went to the portapottie. The shrapnel from the can shredded the tents in their camp and would have def maimed anyone standing near it. They tell you to never leave a campfire unattended but in this case it was for the best.
When I was about 9, and my brother about 15, Dad brought us home a shit ton of dry ice to play with. It was awesome, and we had endless fun with it. Then my folks left my brother to babysit me. He has the genius idea to put some dry ice in a glass coke bottle, and then stand there holding it under running hot water in the kitchen sink. It promptly explodes, although miraculously neither of was seriously hurt, just minor cuts. The kitchen, though, had tiny glass shards everywhere, and we couldn't clean them all up before the folks got home. That was the last time we ever got to play with dry ice. Of course, I still have a scar less than 1cm from my eye from a piece of a plastic bottle which we had filled with citric acid and bi-carb soda, added water, and attempted to throw. Obligatory PSA: DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU LIKE YOUR EYESIGHT. Recently though, a friend from highschool that I keep in occasional contact with gathered up all the old crew to go camping and take advantage of the hot, dry, Aussie summer. We found a beautiful spot in a forest, and spent many happy hours around our campfire, loving being away from the city and enjoying nature. And we drank. Oh god, did we drink. About 2am, one of my friends brings out this... thing. It's constructed from a bunch of nitrous oxide canisters, the sort that go in whipped cream chargers (or balloons, if you are that way inclined), surrounded with gun powder and something he had brought back from his job blowing shit up on the mines. At this point, the girls wisely retreat into their tents, and the boys go for a stroll, looking for a place where we can detonate this and not be arrested. The campsite is very popular this time of year, and we have to walk for maybe half an hour to find a private spot. We come to a tiny clearing, hidden from view by all the foliage around us, set this thing down and prepare to light it. At this point, though, I have a moment of clarity, and realize that we are about to set off an incendiary device in the middle of thousands of acres of what amounts to firewood, with no contingency plan. Chaos is perhaps my first love, but accidentally roasting campers isn't the outcome I'm chasing. After I reiterate my heterosexuality and insist I don't just need to change my tampon, we end up wading to a rock in the middle of a river, putting the thing down, lighting it and returning to wait on the riverbank. Then Thor drops his hammer on us. Night becomes day. The noise is immense. This wasn't a gunshot, this was a goddamn Mayan apocalypse dropped into what had previously been a totally silent night. The echoes must have lasted 5 seconds, although I'm not sure how trustworthy my ears were at that point. We all just stand there for a second, and then we fucking bolt. We run as if everyone in 50km has just been violently notified that people are setting off bombs, and are coming to investigate. Friend 1 falls trying to jump a log in pitch darkness, and fucks up his legs. Friend 2 falls off a felled tree which acted as a bridge, and 2 of us go back to help him, basically trying to pull him up this escarpment (?) with raw strength, awaiting the cops at any moment. We end up getting lost, but finally make it back to the campsite, bruised, battered, but thrilled with that primal exhilaration which only seems to come with illegally blowing shit up. Turns out that the girls had heard the explosion, from a distance of however far drunks can walk in a half hour. (Weirdly, they seemed impressed by this - or at least, that's how my bourbon-soaked brain remembers it). TL;DR version: young drunk guys blow shit up, narrowly avoiding torching a shit ton of land through sheer stupidity.
Tequila. I also stock up on fireworks when the sell them and blow them up when they don't. You know those balls you drop down a tube then light? Yeah, if you really want an idea you shouldn't try at home, take a handful, wrap their fuses together, tape to that the fuse of a brick of black cats, and light. I've used the fire extinguishers at my house a few times, and none have been for anything having to do with the home
Things my younger brother and I made when we were kids (about 12-14 years old): -Spud guns -Tennis ball grenades -Thermite -Styrofoam napalm -Laundry soap napalm -Orange juice napalm -Tannerite -Sparkler bombs -Co2 cartridge bombs -Drano bombs -Shotgun shell firecrackers How I still have all my fingers, I do not know.