This week four high-school kids in the Hays, Texas school district, including the son of a sherriff's deputy, were arrested for making bombs and charged for possession of 'prohibited weapons' which carries a potential sentence of up to ten years in jail.
These kids were turned in by a classmate when one of them brought a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook to school to show a friend. Authorities have determined that there was no intent to use the napalm-like material they had manufactured for any purpose other than their own amusement and they had no plan to harm or threaten anyone.
This incident raises a lot of questions about where our society is going.
First off, what is wrong with the youth of today? When I was a kid my friends and I had already manufactured napalm, Molotov cocktails, and pipe bombs by the time I was in 8th grade and we didn't even have The Anarchist Cookbook to use as a reference. We had to rely on information we found in histories of saboteurs from World War II. These kids are in 10th and 11th grade and they're only just now discovering the joys of blowing things up and starting fires? By the time I was in high-school we were making thermite and white phosphoros bombs because we finally had access to a decent chemistry lab. Is this backwardness in explosives design a failing of a our school system, their parents or society as a whole?
The second question is why the hell are these kids being arrested? They should be given an 'A' in chemistry and encouraged to enter something in the annual Science Fair. Where are we going to get our future weapons designers, pyrochemists, resistance fighters, and chemical engineers from if we discourage teenage experimentation with the threat of a decade in jail? One of my grandfathers was an artillery officer who later became an engineer and designed tanks. The other supervised the development of the proximity fuse which was a vital advancement in ordinance technology. My father-in-law also developed new explosives for the US military. They were considered heroes and patriots, and they got their start down the road to these explosive accomplishments by experimenting when they were kids. It was this urge to experiment which drove Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla and Alexander Graham Bell to lay the groundwork for the technological marvels of this age. Discouraging experimentation of this sort ultimately seems like a terrible mistake for the country.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Baronius
Wow. I'm the first person to comment, but... I don't know what to say. You're an interesting gentleman, Dave.
2 - Dave Nalle
Just so you don't think I'm too nuts, I did a canvass of some friends I got together with last night and 3 out of 4 also had experience making explosive and/or incendiary devices while they were teens, including one who made thermite while he was in highschool using a magnesium igniter and aluminum oxide. Now that's some serious fun.
Dave
3 - Jerry
Jeez. Really bored tonight Dave? Sometimes I think you need a governor on your brain!
4 - Dave Nalle
Ah Jerry, the swine before whom my pearls of wisdom are cast...
Dave
5 - troll
all too true - good stuff and funny too
6 - Clavos
Add me (and about four of my friends, two of whom actually became chemists) to your list of teenage bomb makers. We also made rockets; real ones, with solid fuel, some of which actually flew.
A fun read, Dave.
7 - Jerry
Well, at least the article wasn't about what I first suspected.
I was afraid you may have gone over the deep end in light of our apparent failure in Iraq, and were promoting resorting to the tactics of the enemy; "teenagers with bombs".
8 - Bliffle
True. My best friend L was fond, in highschool, of making nitroglycerine in his parents basement, the better to blow up golf greens at night. He went on to become a distinguished prof of chemistry at a prestigious engineering school whose name you'd recognize. My buddy D and I were electronics nuts so all we did around age 12 was build illegal transmitters so we could gab to each other on the AM band (thus obviating special receivers!). D went on to make and lose 5 fortunes in electronics (I don't know whether he's flush or broke these days, but he's had a good ride).
Seems like a boys destiny is Danger. We all knew how to operate a slimjim, hotwire a car and make a key by taking a wax impression quickly of the original. How to hop freight trains, etc. We ran thru the town at night like a pack of stealthy indians, stealing apples and fruits and vegetables from Victory gardens. I learned to drive, at the farm, when I was 11 and my feet could reach the pedals. We were all experienced auto mechanics by 15, able to repair most cars and accomplished at overhauling an engine. And nobody died. Well, except for the kid who got swept into the power plant down at the river while swimming, and an 8 yr old got run over by a streetcar. I almost got run over by a barge tow on the Mississippi when the Johnson 20hp (a big outboard in those days) on my "punkinseed" homemade hydroplane quit and the boat went down sternfirst ( I threw myself forward on the deck to trim it to the surface and kicked enough to just miss the hull as deckhands stood by on top with pikes to try to push me aside).
Now, I see, the kids don't even go out on the street in front of their own homes. I suppose they're inside, watching TV. How sad.
9 - Dave Nalle
I never did nearly the variety of risky things you did, Bliffle, but perhaps the process we're seeing the final stages of today had already begun when I was a kid, since I think I'm a few years younger than you are. But I did have some fun burning and blowing up things, and it seems like back in those days we never got in serious trouble no matter what kind of hijinks we were up to. I got grounded a few times - but could always sneak out at night because my room window was close enough I could jump to my treehouse. But there was certainly never any hint of anything like getting arrested. Even when one of my friends blew a 10ft wide and 4ft deep hole in the local playground with half a stick of dynamite there wasn't a police investigation or anything. None of the kids ever turned him in for it - it was just a big, amusing secret.
It even extends to simpler things. When I was in 8th grade I either rode the public bus to school or rode my bike about 10 miles on city streets to get there. Now I've got a daughter who's 14 and it's almost inconceivable that she would ride a public bus or ride her bike through downtown to get to school.
The times they were a changing, but I'm not sure for the better.
dave
10 - STM
"Ah Jerry, the swine before whom my pearls of wisdom are cast ... "
Lovely syntax, old boy. And you are right. Explosive devices and bizarre experimentation with chemical reactions are rites of passage.
You can do some very interesting things with surfboard resin and hardener, BTW ....
11 - Matthew T. Sussman
Dave Nalle
Is
MacGyver
12 - Dave Nalle
I'm not MacGyver, but I feel an urge to learn everything that I can about how things work. I'm taking a blacksmithing class in the spring.
Dave
13 - STM
I have just remembered doing something really naughty with a disused railway freight wagon, which also involved the police. Fortunately, they couldn't find us ... and no one was hurt.
That, I suspect, was a matter of good luck rather than good management as it was last seen heading downhill on a gentle gradient at gathering speed, and with boys leaping out of it for dear life, in the direction of the old Sydney airport goods yards near Botany Bay (how appropriate, had we been caught).
I have a book, by the way, given to me by my wife last Christmas, an English number by two guys named Con and Hal Iggulden called The Dangerous Book For Boys ... which has excellent instructions on how to do heaps of stuff.
Bomb making is not included, but it's a hoot anyway, especially if you have boys or, like me, have never grown up.
14 - SHARK
Oh.
My.
Gawd.
SPOILER ALERT:
People, please --- AVERT YOUR EYES!!
What yer about to see is technically considered "Text-Based Masturbation."
=====
Dave does a "satire" filled with wit and insight.
Shark gets through one paragraph and wants to drink fuel oil mixed with fertilizer.
This is Al Barger without the cute/dumb colloquial cliches.
=====
Dave, no shit, stick to the serious, loony right-wing libertarian bullshit political essays. This limp attempt at humor is more explicit evidence that you're one of the most uptight, humorless, frustrated, egotistical guys on the fucking planet.
AND...
The astute reader did note that the entire point of this little narcissitic exercise can be found in the money shots:
1) "When I was a kid my friends and I had already manufactured napalm, Molotov cocktails, and pipe bombs... We had to rely on information we found in histories of saboteurs from World War II."
~OHHH, WHAT A CHILD PRODIGY!
2) "One of my grandfathers was an artillery officer who later became an engineer and designed tanks. The other supervised the development of the proximity fuse which was a vital advancement in ordinance technology. My father-in-law also developed new explosives for the US military. They were considered heroes and patriots..."
~OHHH, GENIUS IS IN THE NALLE GENES!
=====
PS: You and Matt ("The guy who invented Campbell's Soup was the first bullionaire!") Sussman should form a comedy team.
And then kill yerselves.
haha.
Just "joking".
HAHA.
15 - Clavos
sharky,
as always, quaint (and pointless) diatribe
Shark gets through one paragraph and wants to drink fuel oil mixed with fertilizer.
good idea...
16 - S.T.M
It'd just make him fart
17 - Donnie Marler
Dave,
When I was a kid in the 60's and 70's we still had M-80 firecrackers. Remember those? Calling an M-80 a 'firecracker' is like calling an M-16 a BB gun. Man, those babies had some oomph! lol.
We had fun with them, all boys like to blow things up when they're little. I believe it truly was a rite of passage to a degree. We certainly never tried or wanted to hurt anyone. My Dad used to go with me and show me some of the things THEY did as kids. We were tame compared to the old man and his friends! lol
18 - Dave Nalle
Good point, Donnie. I remember my dad telling me a story about him and his friends going to the top of the hill in the middle of the main street in Germantown, PA and pouring gasoline on the trolley tracks, waiting until it had flowed all the way down the hill and then lighting it on fire. The cops caught them at it while the entire town was illuminated by the flames, but they let them go because they thought it was a pretty good prank.
I wonder if we go back enough generations if the risky activity just keeps getting bigger and bigger, or at what point and under what conditions does it level off.
Dave
19 - Bliffle
We seemed to get away with a lot until age 14. Parents would just wave away the petty stuff, unless it hurt someone else, in which case we'd suffer embarrassment and payback. But, the way I remember it, starting highschool was the demarcation, a sortof entry towards becoming the kind of sobersided respectable adults we were to grow into. Highschool mischief was taken much more seriously.
And our attitudes changed. Before highschool, when we went to the western movies we'd cheer for the indians, our natural cohorts (they didn't go to church or chat with the school mar'm, wore no shirts and ran around hooting and hollering). But in highschool the cowboys became our heroes and we noticed the school mar'm was young and physically different. We still didn't like church much, but it gave us an excuse to go bowling on Youth Night and showoff to the girls with our fancy hooks and preen in our favorite shirts and jackets. Farewell to innocence.
20 - Mohjho
Dave, I can’t believe I am agreeing with you.
I too made small bombs and even artillery when I was very young. These little experiments in bomb making were a joy for a 12 year old. Nothing like things that go bang to get a group of boy excited.
Now of course I would discourage any kids to play with explosives, but dang it, it was fun. We lived in the country and the only victims were gopher holes.
I wonder how being arrested for making these devices as a kid would have affected me as an adult?
On the other hand, my brother did get in trouble (not arrested) with the police for making an explosive device when he was young. He ended up an Air Force officer as an ICBM launcher. Go figure.
21 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
First of all I think it really depends on how much damage potential the weapons have. I really dont feel comfortable with kids having weapons to blow up school right a their fingertips. Rockets and the like.. well that's different. Actually my elementary school actually taught us how to make rockets in fourth grade and we fired them off in the play ground. Boy did they go high! I wonder if they still teach that..However, a kid can satisfy and cultivate his curiosity with out making stuff that would dozens of people. That is.. unless his curiosity is what it feels like to kill dozens of people.
I have to say it is pretty funning watching a bunch of old geesers sit around and bemoan the "good old times" and how the "times sure are changin." If you don't like how your kids turned out you can't really blame anyone but yourselves. For starters.. don't buy a TV.. no more than 1 computer in the house.. no computer games.. and definately no playstation or what's the other one called? At least not till high school. But no matter what.. no generation is going to be like the one before it.. it's inevitable.
I do get the sense parents are just too conservative raising their kids.. everything gotta be just right.. lots of organized activities.. no risk taking or dangerous stuff at all..doing anything risky is such an anomaly these days and adults totally overeact. Just leave em alone and next time they're bored let them figure out what to do. Last week a friend and I went kayaking on a flooded river and we ended up with a squadron of 20+ firetrucks, poice cars, ambulances and pick up trucks out after us. Damn that was fun.. and funny seeing the total overeaction too!
22 - sr
Careful what you say guys. We still have the BATF lurking in the bushes. Shark keeps a low profile. Smart man. He probably makes nukes over the weekend. Just a thought. sr
23 - Baronius
Dave, Bliffle, don't worry too much. The couch potato kids are sitting at their computers playing Super Mario Monkey Cars... and destroying the firewalls of Pacific Rim arbitrage houses.
24 - ss
"Is this backwardness in explosives design a failing of our school system, their parents or society as a whole?"
Let's start counting fingers
Parents - Twenty between them, or ten in a single parent household, look no further
It's the parents fault.
School system - If a shop teacher has more than 8, he's never tried anything really creative with a bandsaw. So if the chemistry teacher at your mayhem illiterate child's high school has ten fingers, mystery solved
The schools have also failed.
Society at large - When I was a kid lots of people worked in factories, at machine shops, and on farms. Missing fingers on adult males, while not quite the norm, were common enough.
If one of your friends' dads offered to shake hands, you were about to be the victim of a little joke.
Nowadays losing a few, hardly vital, body parts is considered a sign of clumsiness. In some pampered quarters (like the one's I comfortably inhabit)missing fingers are even considered unassailable proof of bad judgement. Possibly even outright stupidity.
Society must shoulder some of the blame for stigmatizing the grip impaired.
25 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
Interesting enough the new Montana senator is missing 3 fingers.