TECH-ARCHYBeyond the Pages of The Anarchist Cookbook BY ROCCO CASTORO PHOTOS BY ED ZIPCO
Photo Assistant: Marisa Abaza
| OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: What follows contains details of how to create very bad things that are extremely dangerous and probably illegal wherever you live. DO NOT attempt to re-create anything you see or read here unless you want to go to jail or die. If you blow someone’s face off and try to blame it on “an article in Vice magazine,” we will be very disappointed. To be unmistakably clear: After you read the next few pages, this publication is not responsible for how and when you injure yourself or anyone else at any point in time from now until infinity. You fucking morons. |
At the tender and impressionable age of 19, William Powell wrote the original print edition of The Anarchist Cookbook. It was 1971 and the young man felt compelled to create an instructional catalyst for civic unrest resulting from the Vietnam War. He researched military and Special Forces manuals at the New York Public Library and culled together a black-covered anthology of disobedience (and, honestly, fun). Initially, no publishing house had the stupidity or balls to print Powell’s work because it was basically a guide to making drugs and explosives, seriously hurting people, and flourishing in a riot. Then Lyle Stuart, nut-job publisher of controversial titles like Naked Came the Stranger and L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?, stepped up to the plate and (metaphorically) said, “Why in the hell wouldn’t I want to put out a self-help book for struggling domestic terrorists?” Since then it’s been trickling through the scabby underbelly of the small press, and today you can even buy the thing on Amazon.
In the mid-80s, a text file titled “BHU’s Handbook” began spreading through the then-nascent bulletin board system (BBS) pirating scene like wildfire. It contained many similar recipes to Powell’s original Cookbook and was eventually expanded on by readers and BBS administrators, like a primitive, more sinister version of Wikipedia. Along the way, someone appropriated Powell’s title, and the text files became collectively known as the “electronic Anarchist Cookbook.” Additional volumes were compiled by authors who used pseudonyms and added entries on a whim—Exodus, the Jolly Roger, and RFlagg being the best known and most prolific.
Five or so canonical iterations later, the electronic Anarchist Cookbook became a dangerous, rabid mutt of half-baked chemical experiments and retarded morals. Through the internet, the Cookbook is still reaching fresh eyes and planting seeds of malcontent every day. On the flip side, William Powell is now a born-again Christian and works alongside his wife as a codirector for an educational NGO in Kuala Lumpur. He has renounced the book for years and wishes for it to be taken out of print. Authors who retain their copyrights have this luxury; however, William sold his to the original publisher. He has also made it clear that he has no affiliation with or involvement in the electronic versions that have usurped the title of his book.
Almost everyone who has even a passing interest in destruction has at least heard of the Cookbook. But most accounts of executing various projects are dubious at best. We wanted to try a few classics out for ourselves, so we prepared a batch of recipes and headed to a remote warehouse to risk serious bodily harm. For this article, we selected five projects from RFlagg’s Anarchist Cookbook V*, which was released in 1997. We chose this revision because it came out at a time when affordable access to the internet at home was quickly becoming a reality and eclipsing BBS culture. It is still widely available online. Being that the internet is full of shit and many people claim the Cookbook’s contents are bunk, we entered this experiment with the hypothesis that nothing would work. We followed the ingredients lists and instructions to a T, and it turns out the entries we picked held at least some credibility. We’re presenting this as a safety test so you never, ever have to try these things yourself.
*Just to reiterate: From here on out, any use of the word “Cookbook” refers to this version and not Powell’s original.
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Oct 27, 2009 wrote:
ok ive never owned the book and i have done all of thes myself plus some because of rumors and crazy adhd moments...ive moved on to some stuff and i need to make a 4 foot fuse or we will die ha | | Anonymous, on Jun 20, 2009 wrote:
That blogun design was stupid, i made one with a curtain rod, duct tape, and coat hagers, that will put a homemade dart deep into a 2x4 from over 50 feet away. | | Anonymous, on Jun 7, 2009 wrote:
nabasa ko n sa libro yung tungkol s 2 binata na nagpasabog ng cafeteria s school.tsk.yung title nung libro "kids killing kids" d ko lang matandaan kung sino yung author.meron din dw kc ung 2 bata n yon ng cookbook.wala naman akong source kung saan meron ng ganun libro dito..
| | Anonymous, on Jun 7, 2009 wrote:
nakakainis naman.. saan naman ako makakabili ng cookbook na iyan dto s pilipinas...haist, gusto ko din matuto nian..
| | Anonymous, on May 10, 2009 wrote:
The author of the book was the Principal of my school in Tanzania in the eighties... | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
This shit takes me back. We used to fill them only 3/4 full. Usually cos we’d understimate the huge quantity needed to fill up a tennis ball. Either that or we’d get bored early. Loads more fun though cos you’d have to keep picking it up and chucking it again and again with the risk of losing a few fingers on your go. Russian Roulette style. | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
i had this semi-mental scrounger mate who washed about twice a year. his flat was a total dose hole and he had a collection of black bags full of garbage and random stuff he refused to through out that he washed when they started to smell too bad. anyay, we made naplam. crumbling a polystyrene into a bottle of Bells whisky full of gasloline whilest getting stoned on buckets and smoking roll up fags. we where too chicken to use all of it, but we did light about 25ml of it and it shot up a flame about 5 foot. it started off hissing and popping then got more and more intense until the flame shot and spat everywhere. it was wild. | | Anonymous, on Apr 29, 2009 wrote:
i would hate to be shot in the neck with a needle from a blow gun. that just seems really painful!! needles freak me out | | Anonymous, on Apr 29, 2009 wrote:
lets just hope this article doesnt get into the hands of some 11 year old kid who was reading his older brothers magazine. it could be an elementary school disaster. | | Anonymous, on Apr 28, 2009 wrote:
this was back in the day when i had a failsafe system on my computer that would erase my entire harddrive in a few seconds or that’s what it was supposed to do anyway. not that the govt was going to bust down my door but it was fun thinking i was in deeper than i really was. | | Anonymous, on Apr 27, 2009 wrote:
Land-lubbers, "The Infamous Jolly Rogers Cookbook" still resides on a few 1.44’s for my 512k Amiga which we unforunatley lost in the doldrums, yaarrr. | | Anonymous, on Apr 26, 2009 wrote:
Hah, I used to use the pay phone/paperclip trick before there were cell phones. | | Anonymous, on Apr 26, 2009 wrote:
2 to 3 foot of pipe, the reason it didnt work well is coz your pipe is about 3inches long... | |
| rabies babies, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
how awesome would it have been if instead of that crazy guy stabbing monica seles he had thrown tennis bombs at her? is it wrong that i wasn’t very taken aback by that? her grunts have always pissed me off. and she’s ugly. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
My fav. has to be the tennis ball one. It’s like the old man’s grenade. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
I knew it. Born again christians and napalm go hand in hand. Oh and jesus also. | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
Apparently if you smoke a dried bannana peel it gets you stoned. Tru dat | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
why didnt you guys just do this shit in a fucking alleyway?
Hmm, maybe they didn’t want to go to jail. That’s just a guess though.
| | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
You were making napalm at 8? What, were you the Doogie Howser of guerilla warfare or something? | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
"Wow, only 38 years out of date on this article. You guys are WITH THE TIMES.
Vice is played the fuck out - if you didn’t know before, here ya go."
Hey putz stick. No one’s ever done an article on this to my knowledge. How does that make it out of date? They’re still floating around on the internet. Did you even read the fucking thing? | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
Napalm Screen Saver? | | Anonymous, on Apr 24, 2009 wrote:
Wow, only 38 years out of date on this article. You guys are WITH THE TIMES.
Vice is played the fuck out - if you didn’t know before, here ya go. | | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
why didnt you guys just do this shit in a fucking alleyway? | | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
really? what did you make? shits in your undies? that sounds preeetty crazy. | | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
fuck i think we used to make crazier shit when we were about 8 years old.
you guys need to step up your idiot-game
| | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
next time make sure the landlord’s
away so you can get down to business :) | | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
7gms of nutmeg is a lethal if not tasty dose! better the Yew but not the berries the foliage and even the bark, the berries are not too toxic so too much is needed and discretion is the ’poisoners’ ally OR | |
| Nick Sick, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
I was all about those tennis ball bombs as a kid | | Anonymous, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
We should see how many Molotovs it takes to really blow up a tank (a la GTA). | |
| captain cheesepuff, on Apr 23, 2009 wrote:
what???? there is a macgyver handbook? i know what i’m asking for for mayday! | | | Next 30 comments > |
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