However, as I used to tell my college kids (in intro to terrorism) if you don’t know the bad guy tactics then you can never hope to catch them. you will hear more about that when I get around to reviewing The Monkey Wrench Gang, The Mini-manual of the Urban Guerrilla, and Turner Diaries,
The author claims to be a chemical engineer, but I cannot verify that due to his use of an alias, I do know that the majority of his books are written toward clandestine drug labs, and are unofficial “required” reading within the DEA. I don’t know anything about drugs, but I can say that this book is a lot better than the majority of available explosive books.
In my experience, if someone mentions the “anarchist cookbook” in a discussion about energetic materials, you need to stop talking to that person because A. He is a moron, B. He doesn’t know anything, but thinks he does, C. Even the author of the “cookbook” admitted pretty much every thing in the book will get you killed (he wrote it in high school and later realized how stupid he was as).
As “Uncle Fester” admits in his book, making some explosive compounds is easy, it was “common” to make nitroglycerine on a kitchen stove in the late 1800’s, but if you don’t totally understand the chemistry, you can blow yourself up. What I like about this book is the “how not to blow yourself up” tips.
I do not have personal first hand knowledge from following the procedures in this book because without proper licensing it is highly illegal to do so. BUT, from my training and research I believe that the procedures would work, and that they are as safe as can be outside of a lab, using chemicals illicitly procured – which means – if you buy this book and try to make this stuff you will probably get arrested or blow yourself up (or both).
However, from a first amendment perspective, having this knowledge available is priceless.
*having mentioned explosives, terrorism, the first amendment, and the turner diaries together on one page has probably put me on another damn list…
not to mention the words, illicit, chemical, DEA, drug manufacture, and clandestine lab…. Crap, I did it again…
My plan for a large scale disaster is mostly to use as many non-electric items as possible, by using as much 1800’s tech as possible. However, just because the grid is down, doesn’t mean its all little house on the prairie. Additionally, most of us have generators that could be used for short duration problems like floods or winter storms.
If you own a gun you need to read The Ayoob Files.
Anyone can go online and order sutures, quick clot, and fish antibiotics, and a quick trip to the co-op can net you all sorts of neat medical trinkets. If your willing to spend the money you can buy all sorts of high adventure medical kits, or military medic kits, but knowing how to use them is another thing altogether. That is where Ditch Medicine: Advanced Field Procedures For Emergencies fits in.
One self-reliant project that I enjoy, but haven’t got around to videotaping is home