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The Kernel reflects on the Anarchist Cookbook and its legacy in the Information Age:
The Anarchist Cookbook is largely a book of recipes—for drugs, for explosives, for trouble. It contains directions on how [to] make LSD and tips for growing magic mushrooms. There are sections about constructing bombs out of fertilizer, putting bombs in mailboxes, and “how to send a car to Hell.”...
The Anarchist’s Cookbook‘s proliferation initially spread only as far as people who were willing and able to physically sell it, limiting its reach mostly to independent bookshops and hand-me-downs from knowing older brothers. As the book rippled across America, a pair of Duke University graduate students in the late 1970s were figuring out how to link their computers together into a new kind of network.
Using homemade modems, Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis created a decentralized system called Usenet that plugged into the ARPANET, a precursor to the modern Internet linking a handful of universities across the United States. Usenet functioned like a bulletin board service where users could post messages for each other. It started by linking Duke with the nearby University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, but it quickly grew exponentially.
Truscott and Ellis called it the “poor man’s ARPANET.” Getting a computer to hook into that network took upward of $100,000 and the explicit backing of a major research institution. Usenet, on the other hand, only cost as much as a computer that could run the Unix operating system, a modem to get online, and however much the telephone company charged for the time spent online.
Since 9/11 The Anarchist Cookbook surfaces in the public discourse every 5 years as new journalists rediscover it and write breathy articles about its ties to threat-to-civilization-du-jour. At the moment, that's ISIS. But even before the Internet there was as much information in the US Army Field Manual about how to build IEDs and booby traps as there was in the Cookbook. Now with YouTube, Instructables, several billion other how-to sites and files, and even Mythbusters, most nerds and geeks would say any one work is irrelevant--the meme's the thing.
So if suitable, common materials and the information to assemble them into weapons are ubiquitous, it would seem the missing ingredient that transforms them into realities is motivation, and the more you motivate someone the more they create the reality you would like to prevent. Food for thought...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:25AM
As 3d printing, amateur biology, and other technologies get cheaper and more accessible, more interesting things will be shared online.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_%28gun%29Liberator [wikipedia.org]
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jul/21/chemputer-that-prints-out-drugs [theguardian.com]
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2015/03/12/the_end_of_synthesis.php [corante.com]
http://www.genome.gov/sequencingcosts/ [genome.gov]
The "information age" makes distribution easy and potentially anonymous. New tools that hit the market (Kickstarter) at $500-2000 will enable science and manufacturing at the scale of a motivated hobbyist.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:33AM
May I, please, download from your site a kilo of pure ammonium nitrate?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:36AM
Make your own like the rest of us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:40PM
I thought you were joking at first, but no it is relatively easy to make. I suppose that should make me happy that we don't just go around blowing each other to bits with it despite wide availability.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2015, @10:40AM
I was because it's easy and cheap to buy in non-OKC-bombing quantities.
It's also pretty damned easy to make though if you have a fume hood, as are most nitrate type salts. Ditto the nitric acid necessary to make it. Just as a safety warning though, while making nitrate salts and nitric acid is relatively safe, making things like nitrocellulose and especially nitroglycerin is most decidedly NOT safe. Regardless of legality, do not screw with making explosives unless you really know what you're doing or don't have a life plan that includes next week.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:34AM
Why, if we didn't have rules, any Tom's Dick that's Hairy could put any news item on the front page of SoystainNewsTimes, anything at all, without approval, without editing, without even fact-checking. Common trolls would be indistinguishable from officially sanctioned submitters. Nobody would know what to believe anymore. It would be total ANARCHY, man, total ANARCHY.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:35AM
I remember first reading it in a text file I downloaded off of a bbs back in oh 93 or so. Of course by then I'd already gotten to play with fun toys like AT4s and grenades but it was still a fascinating read. It went quite well with Steal This Book which told you how to set up an over the power lines radio station and that you could tape a brick to a "return postage guaranteed" bit of junk mail and return the annoyance.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:38AM
I bought mine new in 1972, at a neighborhood book store. It was a novelty item back then, like the Whole Earth Catalog.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:41AM
When did you first learn that you could write a personal check out to cash on the surface of your school desk and sign it and take the desk to the bank and demand that the teller cash it for you? It's a perfectly legitimate signed check, doesn't have to be a piece of paper!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimshatt on Tuesday March 24 2015, @11:03AM
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:21AM
I remember seeing it on a good friend's BBS in 1994 or early 1995, then realizing that his computer would kick me off (he limited everyone to 60-minute sessions) before it'd finish downloading. So I decided to play a few rounds of the awesomely depraved BarneySplat [breakintochat.com] instead — probably more worth my time, since (as you said) I wouldn't have known WTF to do with the Cookbook anyway.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:29PM
On 3.5" diskette - distributed by sneakernet in grade 8. We felt like such rebels for having it, and only discussed it in hushed tones. Of course, having it was a novelty - being 8th graders, we really had no feasible use for most of it, nor enough foundational chemistry knowledge to actually put any of the more interesting things into practice.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tibman on Tuesday March 24 2015, @02:28PM
As a kid, found a copy of Steal This Book in a crawl space of a large apartment building. Really interesting book and made you think. I wasn't a bad person but it showed that there are a lot of social rules that you can give the finger. About a week later i used a flathead screwdriver to open the massive recycle bin at the nearby mall to recover about a cubic meter of porn magazines. This was 7th grade. Changed my life, lol.
The anarchist cookbook went around school on floppies. Somehow i ended up with one and though it was pretty neat. Learned some theory but you can't practice/play with much of that stuff. Later in highschool i had more money and was able to actually acquire some of the materials. Made black powder from scratch. It was a lot of fun. Made some sweet rockets. Some burned too slow and melted the rocket. Some too fast and exploded the rocket. Really taught me a lot about how to do things precisely. I did end up getting in trouble though. I was always careful and never hurt anyone or damage any property. I was just having safe fun. Anyways, some kids at school wanted to set off smoke bombs in the halls as a prank. I told them that smoke bombs (from the store) usually burned/stained floors and walls as they rolled around. They could make something far better and safer if they made it themselves. I then told them how to do it. The teacher was standing behind me the whole time. He reported it and my whole house was searched by police-like guys. They didn't find anything.. because science taught precision. You don't make more material than you need, you clean your labware, you properly store materials (charcoal goes back to the grill, sulfur and friends to the garden shed). Anyways, joined the Army a year later and had similar experiences to yours. C4 was incredibly impressive. Dirt would fall for minutes afterwards! Since joining the Army i have never stored, built, or told other people how to build anything "unfriendly". I did get to see/dismantle some sweet improvised timers and stuff in Iraq. After leaving the Army i took up gardening and cooking. Similar skills and they won't send you to prison by overly fearful people. Curiosity is not a good trait these days.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:34PM
I probably got it from the library. I remember talking about it in Jr High, which for me was the early 70s.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:47AM
It's been over 13 years already. Don't you think it's time to retire that tired old meme by now?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday March 24 2015, @11:23AM
Don't you think it's time to retire that tired old meme by now?
What meme? Plenty of things are still different to how they used to be because of 9/11. Are we now not allowed to make reference to this because it's "passé"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @11:28AM
It's already 41 years [wikipedia.org] ago...
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:46PM
Of course it is. But thanks to the media, TSA, DHS, NSA, Congress, and local police continuing to freak out over transformers (the toy), pictures of guns, and lite brite, it's alive and well.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @09:37PM
Not until islam is dead buried and gone.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:57AM
Motivation, indeed. While there are enough bored, depressed young men in the world, extraordinarily few of them choose the direction of terrorism. In the US, at least, the FBI has quite the reputation for setting up potential plots, recruiting some of these bored men into the plot, arresting them - and then claiming to have stopped a terrorist attack [rt.com]. In the real world, of course, it's called entrapment. But who watches the watchers?
Anyone who has half a clue about chemistry could construct a perfectly serviceable bomb. Works like the Anarchist's Cookbook make the process more approachable, but really, there's nothing terribly difficult about it in the first place. The world is not - and cannot be a perfectly safe place. I am reminded of the idea in the UK of banning kitchen knives [bbc.co.uk]. Idiotic. If you can't shoot someone, and you can't stab them, then you'll hit them over the head with a rock.
Will they outlaw rocks? Geology textbooks? Maybe we should outlaw undereducated journalists instead...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Tuesday March 24 2015, @11:51AM
Paper.
Paper cuts are nasty!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Kell on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:30PM
If we outlaw rocks, only outlaws will have rocks.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:06PM
the avengers handbook
Minimanual Of The Urban Guerilla
Firearms, Explosives, Sabotage & Guerrilla Resistance
and for everything else, there's US army manuals covering it.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday March 24 2015, @12:14PM
sorry I don't recall which one, it's been a long time. There is a recipe for something in there, that if you follow the instructions it will spontaneously detonate. That led me to believe - at the time anyway - that either the CIA or FBI wrote the book.
It happens that you can make a really effective, easy to use and easy to make high explosive detonator out of some items that you can find at most supermarkets, some of which are open twenty-four hours a day. Look up the "Refreshing Sports Drink" meme at kuro5hin for more details.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Daiv on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:00PM
I remember that rumor too when I went about asking friends for the mythical cookbook. I remember thinking "Well that's a perfectly believable lie some adults would use to deter people from using the thing." I learned that lesson fairly early from an uncle. His farm had a sign that said "Some of these vegetables have been poisoned." I asked which ones and he said "None. That sign is just believable enough to deter everyone but the most desperate." I tried to use the ploy in a later job on my bagged lunch in the fridge, which didn't always tend to be there by the time my lunch rolled around. "One of the items in this bag has been poisoned." Bosses didn't like that very much, got me in trouble.
Anyway, when I finally got a hold of a 3.5" floppy with the cookbook, between several groups of cronies, never was one discovered to not work when done accurately. And between all of them, pretty much every single thing was attempted. Reinforced my skepticism of "My friend said", or "I heard" statements.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Tuesday March 24 2015, @01:22PM
Information is not deadly. Sorry, it just isn't. Doing dangerous things is dangerous. Knowing how to make a pipe bomb or zip gun isn't dangerous information in my head, it's just what allows me not to sound like a moron when the fictional character I'm writing happens to do something dangerous in a fictional setting, esp. when this setting is in a video game.
I haven't "self radicalised" just because I keep up to date on foreign politics.
This "data can be dangerous" meme needs to die. Awareness is not evil.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @09:23AM
Agreed. Knowledge isn't power. Just potential. Putting knowledge to work is power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @02:46PM
is the annotation that will end up in your file after you download it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by mr_mischief on Tuesday March 24 2015, @03:51PM
Many of the things in The Anarchist's Cookbook are useless to downright dangerous to the user. Most of the concern about it shouldn't be about people building bombs, but kids trying to build fireworks blowing up themselves and the house.