"Works" Bomb Alert

[plumtreeblossom]

This is a Snopes article (of the true variety, not urban legend) worth passing along. "Works" bombs are simple but extremely dangerous explosives made with a soda bottle, Drano and aluminum foil. They have the capability of severing fingers and disfiguring faces, and it appears they're all the rage with America's fine youth these days. Don't touch capped soda bottles in your yard or elsewhere unless you can plainly see that it's completely empty. Call 911 instead.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/bottlebomb.asp

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

We used to do that when we were kids! I didn't, but a bunch of my friends did.

Ours were usually copper etchant and tin foil, rather than draino. But we also did dry ice bombs -- dry ice and warm water. Ricky got second degree burns to his leg from a copper etchant bomb, and Danno blew his thumb off, although the surgeon was able to re-attach it.

[mizarchivist]

Oy. Well, I'll be careful when picking up random trash, which I do sometimes. :/

[minkrose]

No kidding. I just brought home a soda bottle to recycle on Sunday. It was sitting in a parking deck, clearly going to be trashed if I had left it there.

I'm fine, but now I'll be paranoid. None of my friends did crap like this when I was young. Hell, Andy grew up setting off fireworks and NO ONE ever got hurt because they were responsible about it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/urban_faerie_/]

Oh geeze this sounds like something my highschool guy friends would have done... When they weren't building potato guns or trying to make LSD out of bananna skins. :p