Question of the week!

[northernwalker]

You and your spouse are at home and have just collected the mail from your box. In it is a package addressed to your sixteen-year-old, who is out at band practice. It has hazmat stickers on it. You can think of no reason why your child should be receiving this, so you decide to open it and risk the ten years in prison for tampering with the mail. Inside is 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate which was purchased on Ebay. Warning bells go off in your head, and a quick google search tells you it's used in improvised explosive devices. Your child doesn't have any legitimate need for this. Do you:

A) Call the cops immediately?
B) Talk it over with your spouse?
C) Call the hospital and take the kid in to see a shrink?
D) Got to school, collect child and talk?
E) Make a panicked post to an LJ parenting community?

The broader question could be, at what point would you call the police and turn in a family member.

Comments

[herveus.livejournal.com]

B followed by a frank conversation with the child. Calling the cops wouldn't even be on the radar.

On the other hand, the scenario plays funny to me. I don't know (and couldn't readily discern) if ammonium nitrate is a mailable substance. A ten pound parcel would be about the size of two five pound bags of sugar and would not fit in most mail boxes.

I haven't looked recently, but when I was that age, I could go over to my local garden store and buy ammonium/sodium/potassium nitrate by the pound. They probably would sell me a 50 pound bag (more or less) if I wanted one. I had access to wettable sulfur powder and other useful substances to facilitate making various pyrotechnic substances.

Heck, to make NH3NO3 go blam takes considerable effort. The usual formulation involves mixing it with diesel fuel. It's been a very useful farm explosive in the past. You do need a blasting cap to set it off. It's also what was used in Oklahoma City.

NH3NO3

[bunnyjadwiga.livejournal.com]

Isn't that what blew up that port city in texas when they had the big fire, too?

Re: NH3NO3

[herveus.livejournal.com]

Yep. The ship burned for quite a while before it cooked off and blew up. It is pretty stable unless you heat it up. Ten pounds is going to be hard to get to the explosive state that way.