I thought that only happened in cartoons

[Doofy]

The antimony mine I worked at used Gelex 70% for blasting surface rock. Now antimony is almost as heavy as lead and the blast would send it flying almost a quarter mile away. We told the Boss the percentage was way to high and we were tired of chasing down all of the blasted ore. He was an idiot.

 

[turnkey4099]

The following story is not meant to be funny, but illustrates how unsupervised kids with fireworks can cause a catastrophe....

A friend of mine and his buddy were about 12, over at the buddy's house, blowing up models. They had an aircraft carrier. So they packed it full of firecrackers and bottle rocket heads and floated it in the creek behind the buddy's house. Then they thought it would be cool to have flames, so they poured out a can of gasoline onto the aircraft carrier. Then when they tried to light it, the lighter didn't work. So they walked to the house and got some matches. When they came back, they lit a match and threw it at the boat.....

Well, WHOOSH! The entire creek lights up about 50' down from them. While they were gone, the gas moved downstream. So now there's a 6' wall of flame about 50' long moving down the creek setting shrubbery on fire as it passes each subsequent piece of property. They ran inside and told the kid's mom. She comes out to look, eyes get huge, and she runs back in and calls the fire department. Takes the fire department about 5 minutes to get there, and several minutes to get to the back yard. By then, the fire is about 100 yards down the creek and starting to diminish.

Fortunately, it was a very wet area, the bushes were green mostly, and about all of it went out before the fire department got there. However, they had to go through about 10 yards and spray down smoldering shrubbery and such.

Both kids were charged with arson.

The charges were eventually dropped, and their parents had to pay some fines and restitution for some of the landscaping. All-in-all, it could have been much worse if it had happened in a different location, a dry area, etc....

When my friend told me about the fire the next day, he was actually very remorseful and scared. I could see it in his eyes. He was just shaking his head in disbelief at how far that gasoline traveled downstream and how much fire there was when it first went WOOSH!

Now we still blew stuff up after that, but we never messed with gasoline again. Sometimes you never know or learn until you see it for yourself. His story was good enough for me.

My and my older brother (he was 14 walked 3 miles to visit a couple of friends. Their folks were gone so you had 4 kids from 12 - 14 on a farmstead with nothing to do. What could go wrong! After kicking around awhile we found a hid out hens nest with eggs. Decided some scrambled eggs would make a nice snack. Found an old wash tub reasonably clean and figured it would do for a pan. found some old boards in an old 2 room shack so built us a fire on the dirt floor, upended tub over it and proceeded to scramble eggs. Meanwhile my brother was apeing around (swinging) on a joist sticking out of the loft floor that had hay piled on it. Yep, pulled the floor down, hay slides over the washtub. We think nothing of it other than missing out on some scrambled eggs and left about an hour later. Half way home we looked back and saw the smoke boiling up. Dunno why it took so long to light off but it burned the shed. The amazing thing was that our parents (me and my brother's) never found out! We never did hear what Jim and Jack's parents did to them. 40 years later we told the story at a family reunion. We still hear about the time we burned down a "barn".

 

[Doofy]

Ten years old and my favorite pastime was playing "Army". My Father had left to Alaska to work on a couple of drilling rigs and my Mom was at work. I had a brand spanking new Thompson submachine gun "Squirtgun". I thought it would be great fun to have a Flamethrower. Filled with gasoline and it worked really, really well until the gas dissolved the plastic. That thing would shoot a flame a good 35 feet! Lucky to be alive. Never did tell my folks.

 

[PILOON]

In my teens, (I'm well past that) caps and sticks were often left in the field ( still have some I grabbed back then).
In those days I could go to the 'blast store' and buy Forcite with only showing my driver permit.
LOL, fishing was supposed to be good with blasting, I guess fish did not know that as all I harvested was minnows.
We used to use a lasting cap placed in a pipe and shoot marbles put onto the lake to see how far they would go.
Times sure have changed. Today I'd need a permit to purchase fertilizer!

 

[bunyip]

Seems that Nitro Glycerine is a vaso-dilator, and when it dilates blood vessels in your head, it causes severe headaches.

I worked in prisons for over 20 years and we had a Governor who was disliked by almost everyone, one of the prison medics told me he used to get out of date heart tablets, crush them and rub them on his hat band.
The old Governor often complained of headaches and said it must be the stress of the job and it was probably time he retired.
Thanks for reminding me of that one as it made the day for a lot of people, must be terrible to be hated that much.

 

[Doofy]

In my teens, (I'm well past that) caps and sticks were often left in the field ( still have some I grabbed back then).
In those days I could go to the 'blast store' and buy Forcite with only showing my driver permit.
LOL, fishing was supposed to be good with blasting, I guess fish did not know that as all I harvested was minnows.
We used to use a lasting cap placed in a pipe and shoot marbles put onto the lake to see how far they would go.
Times sure have changed. Today I'd need a permit to purchase fertilizer!

And you would be arrested for polluting the lake and you would be comitted to the FunnyFarm for losing your marbles.

 

[MossRoad]

Ten years old and my favorite pastime was playing "Army". My Father had left to Alaska to work on a couple of drilling rigs and my Mom was at work. I had a brand spanking new Thompson submachine gun "Squirtgun". I thought it would be great fun to have a Flamethrower. Filled with gasoline and it worked really, really well until the gas dissolved the plastic. That thing would shoot a flame a good 35 feet! Lucky to be alive. Never did tell my folks.

Liquid WD40 and a super soaker, some long cotton swabs on sticks taped an inch out from the barrel for pilot lights and Bob's your uncle.

 

[Doofy]

Liquid WD40 and a super soaker, some long cotton swabs on sticks taped an inch out from the barrel for pilot lights and Bob's your uncle.

Great Fun! Great Minds think alike. Also, stick matches shot from the BB rifle makes a fairly good bang when shooting brick buildings. Then came the safety police and completely ruined matches.

 

[dstig1]

Yeah I'm just gonna leave this here...

Yeah the volatility of gasoline can get you in trouble real quick. I've seen a couple minor incidents that woke me up enough to be very cautious with it...