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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 2399575" data-attributes="member: 99">I've got plenty of these memories too including some centered around bottle rocket fights.  But the one that came from my pre-21 days involved a friend (and fellow board member here)...So we were around 15 and out for a night of minor mayhem (probably after having played a few hours of D&D).  Another friend of ours had been experimenting with making a "kerosene bomb" and had brought along his contraption.  It consisted of an empty mayonaise jar filled about 1/3 full with kerosene.  The fuse stuck out the top and was a piece of scotch tape that he had patted onto loose gunpowder extracted from a few shotgun shells.  Having seen his share of Bugs Bunny cartoons, he knew that gunpowder burns at a nice leisurely rate so that somebody could light the fuse and then run away before the big explosion.  The fuse was about 8 inches long.Our friend who had designed this amazing device indicated that he would be happy to allow somebody else do the honor of lighting it.  This task was taken up by pyromaniac and fellow ENWorlder, Speaks With Stone.  He set the "bomb" down in the middle of a gravel parking lot and the rest of us backed away to "safe distance", which we estimated to be some 50 feet.  Speaks With Stone then went off to light the bomb with his handy lighter.The thing is this:  Modern gunpowder does not behave like they show in the cartoons.  It burns FAST.  So fast in fact, that there was nothing at all like the amount of time that would have been necessary for Speaks to retreat to safe distance after lighting the bomb (or any significant distance for that matter).  Instead the entirety of the fuse burnt in about 1/8  of a second and produced a flash that only managed to illuminate the shocked expression on Speaks' face and render the rest of our night vision ruined.In the wake of this bright flash, we could see nothing.  One thing that was certain was that the "bomb" had not gone off (it actually takes a fairly determined effort to ignite kerosene from my experience).  The next thing we were aware of was the sound of fast approaching footsteps across the gravel and then a pause as Speaks leapt into the air and performed a flawless tackle on the would-be bomb-maker whom he pummeled for a few seconds citing the potential loss of his eyes and disfigurement of his face had the kerosene ignited as planned some fraction of a second after the fuse was lit.We all went home after that, adrenaline pumping and resolved never to volunteer to light any homemade bombs again.  I think we largely stuck to that resolution, depending on the precise definition of "bomb". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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