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What better way to teach your children the fundamentals of field expedient explosives than with the Lil’ Sapper’s Plastic Explosive Playdough Playset, brought to you by MikeD Enterprises.
The Play Set includes:
Playdough, packaged in 1.25 Oz rectangular packages, each wrapped in O.D. green cellophane,
miniature M.D.I. initiation systems and plastic molds so your child can create field expedient shaped charges, linear shaped charges, platter chargers, and an endless variety of steel cutting charges.
*Playdough included in playset does not actually detonate
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There is no immediately obvious way by which this idea can be improved. |
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Except by having explosive playdough, of course. |
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Some future Marine demolition trainer: |
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"You know, it's really strange. I never used to get grunts coming in with a lot of bad habits to unlearn..." |
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//a lot of bad habits to unlearn...// |
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Shouldn't be so difficult, Marines excel at unlearning. |
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You got a bun for the title alone. Haven't even read beyond that yet, but unless you say something like: "To show children the futility of solving problems with explosives" the bun will remain. |
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Ok, read it. Not sure I like the last line but the bun remains. |
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When I built a radio with my dad as a child I remember a little book we used had a water-through- pipes metaphor to help the child understand how invisible electricity and sterile circuit gubbins worked. Perhaps a little faux-bomb kit could be made with bubblegum, straws,tubes, compressed gas canister etc. The metaphor in the little book could be reversed as electricity. Most of the air powered gubbins wouldn't be 'automatic' like electrical components, but the child should know he/she dies when the bubblegum pops. |
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//...but the child should know he/she dies when the bubblegum pops// |
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If you write a book carty, I'd use that as your lift quote. It would catch my attention. |
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This would have the advantage of diverting the destructive instincts of youngsters into rather more regulated channels, rather than parents having the experience of being summoned to their child's primary school to be informed that the staff had confiscated a cardboard box containing wire, batteries, a small alarm clock, various micro-, tilt- and trembler-switches, a "double-safe" arming circuit and a quantity of plasticine representing the main charge. |
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On being questioned on the purpose of said box, the teachers were alarmed to be informed, "I no longer wish to go to school, so I am making a bomb with the intention of demolishing the critical utilities in the early hours of a Sunday morning. The school cannot open with its water, electricity and gas supplies destoyed, and heating plant severely damaged. Repair of these systems takes much longer than classrooms." |
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It might also save the mother from crushing embarrasment, and the head teacher from frozen horror and a potential heart attack, if the father, on being presented with the product of his first-born's ingenuity, didn't peer into the box and then smile, pronouncing his verdict of "The little chap's done damned well. It's just like the diagram I gave him". |
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Fortunately, your society has developed institutions where such amoral, sociopathic individuals with an unhealthy obsession with violent destruction can be effectively contained. In the UK, it's called "The Royal Engineers". |
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Special Forces Engineers. |
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"If there's a problem that can't be solved with high explosives, we have yet to see it." |
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They don't actually say that, but I propose that as their motto. |
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Maybe you could also do a teenagers range that exploded *just a little bit*? |
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aw can't it detonate just a little? |
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Include flashbulbs. Maybe both electrical and mechanical (like the ones in the old MagiCube flash cubes) types. |
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//amoral, sociopathic individuals with an unhealthy obsession with violent destruction can be effectively contained.// |
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Here in the good ol' US of A, it is the U.S. Army Combat Engineers. Those escpecially violent wind up in the 82nd Airborne Division. And we are having a blast. |
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You're talkin' 'bout 'merica? |
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Hold on - sappers don't just demolish and blow stuff up (do they?). They build stuff too - bridges etc.? |
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Righto. Box ticked. Paperwork done. As you were...
<ka-boom!> |
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//They build stuff too - bridges etc.?// |
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That's what the recruiter said; "Engineers build shit and blow it up". So far, I have blown shit up and *been* blown up. The only thing I have built is a "beeramid"... recreationally. |
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The trick with those is to stick a 10-gram PETN booster block and an electric det in the centre can of the bottom row, then when the beeramid reaches monster proportions, fire her up. |
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NB do not do this indoors, in a tent, or when - however much you loath and detest them - some snotty Captain from the Civil Affairs Team, a total arsehole infIicted on your unit by the Staff just to get them out of GHQ for a few days has a "few beers with the lads" and is given the "honour" for placing the final can on the top. |
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As a youth, I realized the danger of explosives, so arranged to use 'relatively' safe methods to make things go bang: * |
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1) Glass ampoules filled 80% with water, neck heated to plasticity in a butane torch then pinched with needle-nosed pliers. This closed capsule was then set into the flame of an alcohol lamp and gave a truly satisfying "BLAM." |
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2) Exploding wires - high voltage / energy capacitor (50-200 J) dischaged through 30 guage copper wire makes a splendid "BANG," and is easily controlled using an ignitron (mercury vapor discharge tube.) |
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* Do NOT try either of these techniques without wearing hearing and eye protection! |
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I was recently priveledged to witness a demonstration of explosives, where eye protection was set six inches from a blasting cap. |
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Wear your eye protection farther away than that distance. |
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I wouldn't recommend flying with this toyset. |
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