Fubar512 1,350 Posted April 6, 2015 (edited) I'm sure that we've all been involved in a few reckless activities in our time, were we managed to get away without losing life or limb in the process. Throwing fireworks into sewers and igniting pockets of methane gas, throwing weighted "block busters" into lakes and rivers and feeling the concussion rattle the dock one is standing on when they went off, etc. I guess the height of my adolescent insanity was the time we filled a large, glass mayonnaise jar with black powder, buried up to its lid in dirt, and set it off. The resulting explosion seemed like a small nuclear detonation to our 13-year old eyes, complete with a chocking, billowing grey mushroom cloud. Luckily, no one got hurt, though I suffered from tinnitus for several days afterwards. That last bit was was amazing, considering that we were extracting glass shards from that jar from trees and wooden garage doors (with pliers) for days afterwards! Another memorable stunt involving fireworks, was shooting off 2 oz rockets at low flying NY Airways helicopters flying into Newark airport from NYC. We came close enough once so that the rotor blast from one deflected the rocket away (those rockets would reach over 1200 feet / 330 meters altitude). But that didn't stop us. What did, was when we laid one of those same 2 oz rockets down on the pavement (sans tail), and sent it down the street, "torpedo" style. The rocket flew fairly straight along the asphalt, then hit the ridge surrounding a man-hole cover, sending it airborne for a few dozen yards. Unfortunately, this happened while a Newark police cruiser was crossing the intersection on that early July day in 1974. Back then, patrol cars didn't always have air conditioning, so both front windows were wide open. The rocket flew in through the passenger side, and exited the driver's side, probably within mere inches of the officer's faces. Needless to say (and judging by the way they recklessly pursued us the wrong way up a one-way street) neither officer found the incident very amusing. A decade or so later (when I was in my mid-20s), a friend brought a a black powder "mini-cannon" to work (we were both working for a state-operated mass-transit agency at the time). It resembled the one pictured below. It was not meant to fire a projectile, as it was intended for starting events, such as yacht races. Well, having access to a machine shop at work, we could not leave well enough alone, so we bored it out to enable one to shove a needle-bearing from a 662 wheel bearing down the muzzle. For those of you not familiar with what I'm talking about, imagine a hardened-steel cylinder about .030 in diameter, and about .75 inches long. That was our intended projectile. Our first test firing was disappointing, we so upped the charge in 50% increments, until it could penetrate the side-paneling of an old GMC bus! The building that we shooting this thing off in was pretty much empty, so my maniac of a friend decided to liven things up a bit by shooting at the mobile-home that substituted for a foreman's office. It too, was empty at the time, and sat some 100+ feet from where we were shooting. The report from the now double-charged cannon sounded as loud inside the garage, as a 12-gauge shot-gun with magnum loads. It was in fact, so damned loud, that everyone who was on the property came running in to see what had happened. My friend walked over to the intended target, saw no damage, and decided to call it quits on our experiment, as he had attracted more attention than he felt comfortable with. An hour or so later, our shift-foreman strolled into my work area, and in his Irish brogue proclaimed "There's a frikking hole in the office. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you lad?" Another decade later (yes, I was in my mid-thirties by then), I was working for a spill-containment contractor, setting spill-containment booms around barges and tankers as a preventative measure. I recall "booming-in" a medium sized tanker one evening. It was empty and riding high. My deckhand had brought along a few block-busters along just for kicks. Once the tanker was boomed in and our boom-boat was tied up and we were leaving for the shift, my friend decided to drop a (weighted) block buster into the water, about 10 feet away from the side of the tanker's hull. When the block buster went off, the resulting water hammer reverberated throughout the empty tanks of the ship, sounding as if someone had dropped a huge rock onto a large steel plate. We tried to act surprised as the crewmen on the tanker peered down at us from the rail... So, who wants to go next? Edited April 6, 2015 by Fubar512 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+CrazyhorseB34 937 Posted April 6, 2015 (edited) I have been a member of a Union Army Civil War artillery reenactment crew for years. Go for it. I am all about that boom. And the bass! Edited April 6, 2015 by CrazyhorseB34 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GASCAN39 7 Posted April 6, 2015 Soccer with a tennis ball......doused in gasoline......and set on fire. "Swerving" in a Ford Pickup on a dirt road, (Long before arab punks used it a substitute for dating girls) taking turns riding in the passenger window with only your gluteus maximus inside the vehicle. (What could go wrong). Swimming with alligators, drunk driving and not even having a driver license. Crawling through sewer gutters until we wound up on the alert ramp at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base....."Wow, a B-52 with nukes on alert.....no one has been this close before!!!!" 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+Swordsman422 61 Posted April 6, 2015 During my days at what is now University of North Georgia, my friends and I would soak tennis balls or tampons overnight in kerosene and sneaking them into the cannon used for Retreat. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+Dave 2,318 Posted April 6, 2015 I shot a propane tank with a .54 Cal muzzle loader... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FastCargo 412 Posted April 7, 2015 In my youth, I took a few shotgun shells, taped a small metal marble to the base, touching the primer pin. Then threw it in the air in the middle of the road and ran like hell. Roman Candle fights. Electrical silliness...ever put a wire in a slot of an electrical outlet, another wire in the other slot, then tried to complete the circuit with a "D" cell battery? Yeah, don't do that. FC 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+pcpilot 181 Posted April 18, 2015 I shot a propane tank with a .54 Cal muzzle loader... I would just love to hear what happened when you did that.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ironroad 218 Posted April 19, 2015 My friend in middle school, who later would become a firefighter, was freaking pyromaniac. Once, he (perhaps with some assistance) set the woods behind his house on fire using 1xmodel rocket engine, 1x can of pipe cleaner, 1xmound of dry leaves. He, allegedly, took the rocket engine had an assistant dig a small hole, placed said rocket engine in said hole, poured pipe cleaning fluid on it, and then set up the electrical charge. After a short countdown, said rocket engine fizzled, smoked, and then made a small pop. Him: "Well that was a waste of time..I'm hungry lets go back inside." Assistant: "Hey, what is that smell!?" Him: "I dunno, I don't remember it being so foggy when we came out here." My friend also found out that if you take small bottle, fill with with high octane marine gas, wrap a string of fire crackers around said bottle, then leave of trail of black powder (black powder that he gathered the previous day from cutting open shotgun shells), it will explode. And when it explodes it will rain hot flaming gas and plastic upon the earth. I'm not much of religious person, but I thank god for keeping him and assistant safe through those bone-headed times. I shot a propane tank with a .54 Cal muzzle loader... Ohh one more thing... If you age said friend and his assistant by a few years, and gave said friend and his "assistant" driver licenses and keys to an automobile. Said friend and his "assistant" may have had a tendency to meet up with an even large group of friends after school to test their cars on the local highway after school. On one such occasion, said group of friends may have been engaged in a friendly night competition when the flash of blue and red lights dazzled their rear-view mirrors. According to one source, the group of friends allegedly decided to gun it and hide their cars at an abandoned industrial park till morning. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
+pcpilot 181 Posted April 19, 2015 http://www.collegehumor.com/video/51780/this-is-so-funny One of my favorite videos. "Not the NUTS!" Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
