YouTube Gets the Bomb

The video site is exposing the fringes of our culture, including homemade bomb-making.

YouTube is an excellent resource for making improvised explosive devices, if that’s the sort of thing you are into these days. And judging by all the do-it-yourself (DIY) videos on YouTube, quite a few people are. Keep in mind that I am not talking about terrorists here, just ordinary kids making DYI bombs and blowing stuff up in their backyards. This may seem subversive – it is certainly dangerous. But it is a hidden part of our culture that YouTube is shedding some light on.

There are literally thousands of videos on YouTube that come from the DIY culture of homemade bomb-making. They generally fall into two broad categories: videos that explain how to make explosives, fuses, and triggers; and videos that show stuff being blown apart with the homemade explosive device. These are amateur videos, often made by or showing teenagers in action, usually filmed in rural or domestic settings, and remarkable for the general lack of attention that is paid to this activity by the press, the police, and scholars.

I have often been struck by how, when the press does cover stories about homemade explosives, it usually (although not always) involves someone of Arab descent being hauled off to jail for showing something about bomb-making on YouTube. Apparently, this is a hobby that is OK to indulge in if you are an all-American sort of boy, but you do not want to be wearing a turban while explaining how to make a cell phone detonator on YouTube.

Speaking of remote controlled detonators, the kind you often see in the movies where the bad guys have a cell phone that can detonate a bomb anywhere in the world (at least, anywhere there is decent cellular reception), I was surprised to learn how easy it is to make one. I am not going to tell you here, but judging by the very detailed YouTube videos on the subject, a 12-year-old could cobble one together in about 30 minutes or less. The more ambitious of you might want to take on one of the more complex projects described on YouTube, such as the many homemade shoulder-fired rocket launchers (I’m not making this up).

The bombs themselves come in a very wide variety, including chlorine, acetylene, fertilizer, and gasoline. Even common devices such as sparklers, spray cans, and toy rocket engines can be used to blow stuff up. Again, detailed videos explaining how to make various explosives, such as the popular flash powder (blows up real good), are all over the ‘Tube. Sort of brings into question the “Don’t be evil” motto of Google, YouTube’s corporate parent.

Both scholars and the press are fixated on how terrorists use the internet to make bombs, but appear to have largely overlooked the fact that our kids are way ahead of the terrorists. We North Americans are experts at this sort of thing. From Christian militias sneaking around in the woods and planning to kill cops and unleash Armageddon, to Americans clinging to their divine right to carry machine guns in shopping malls, ours is a culture infected with the professional, the paranoid, and the good ol’ boys-having-fun varieties of militarism. There was even an old Second City skit back in the 1980s that featured celebrities being blown up (“He blowed up real good”). Perhaps not all of this is so bad after all.

All cultures have their fringes, usually somewhat hidden from the scrutiny of the mainstream. What YouTube is doing is providing us with a window on the edges of our own society. Freed from the controlling constraints of broadcast media, YouTube is allowing for an unconstrained view of ourselves. And guess what? We like to blow stuff up.