Yeah not sure why that changed, when I was a kid you could only get sparklers and small stuff that stayed on the ground. Today I could get everything for a near-professional show if I wanted to spend the money.

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Loughla 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I was a kid you could get actual m80's that were like a quarter stick of dynamite. Now you can only get little firecrackers that don't even blow up little green army men.

It's really dependent on your state laws. My state allows fireworks, so you can get most things but they are very limited in size and explosive content.

What it amounts to is that most cities/counties don't enforce their existing laws in this area because people would have a shit fit, and they would arrest so many people that it's kind of impossible.

Something something banning things doesn't really work to do anything but make criminals out of every day people.

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jandrewrogers 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> actual m80's that were like a quarter stick of dynamite

Not even close.

A military M80 [0] is ~5g of flash powder, an inconsequential amount of low-explosive albeit enough to seriously injure yourself. The consumer "M80" are even weaker. These are used to simulate real explosions by the military.

The smallest standardized military demolition charge contains ~110g of TNT, in a similar small cylindrical format. There are multiple orders of magnitude difference in power between an M80 and these demolition charges.

A "quarter stick of dynamite" isn't a standard thing. But if it was, it would probably come in around 50g of TNT equivalent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-80_(explosive)

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Fezzik 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You could sure make decent explosives with OTC fireworks though - in the early 90s we would buy hundreds of those whistling fireworks, hammer them, cut the bottoms off, and then fill various bottles with all the powder. We made a shockwave with one of our makeshift bombs and decided we should probably stop after that.

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sidewndr46 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

In most states you can go buy all the tannerite you want. That's an actual explosion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VaLtf_EIVQ

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jandrewrogers 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The old school whistling fireworks were often based on picrate chemistry. Picrates famously have the ability when burned to hover between normally deflagration and true detonation; the whistling is a side effect of this. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history (see below) was a picrate explosion. These aren’t used anymore for safety reasons; they don’t have a great stability profile and picrates are true high-explosives.

Over the years they have found alternatives for and phased out most high-explosives used in fireworks. Many high-explosives will just deflagrate/burn but can spontaneously detonate with considerable power if the conditions are right, which makes them dangerous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

	▲	dmurray 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Have advances in explosives, fuses and quality control made fireworks safer in the last 40 years? Or perhaps the safety improvements are offset by sellers now offering bigger fireworks (either because those are now actually safe and both buyers and sellers are more comfortable with them, or just because of a general hedonic improvement). Or perhaps they are safer for their users, but worse for starting fires or interfering with low-flying aircraft. Either way I would be interested in reading more about this, something more nuanced than "fireworks dangerous". At the least it's a counterpoint to what happened with illegal drugs which seem to have become more dangerous as a result of regulation and bans.

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jtbayly 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

M80s were more like 1/8th of a stick, I think. My uncle bought quarter sticks of dynamite one time. Wow. Quite a bit bigger and louder than an M80, and M80s were LOUD! My dad's cousin blew off most of his thumb and parts of several fingers with one. It was old, and it had a flash fuse. He was planning to toss it, but it went off instantly. (Don't hold fireworks when you are lighting them.)

A couple of years ago my brother got some flat triangles from a guy on the side of the road. First thing I've seen in years that was like an M80. We put a flat soccer ball over one, and it went 50 feet in the air. Very fun.

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fc417fc802 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Today I could get everything for a near-professional show if I wanted to spend the money.

Not unless you're purchasing on the black market or (illegally) manufacturing it yourself.† The professional stuff is substantially larger than anything sold on the consumer market.

† Which is surprisingly trivial to do BTW but please be extremely cautious and very thoroughly master the underlying theory if you decide to go that route.

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trollbridge 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yep. I volunteered for a real fireworks show in California once. The size of the mortars was… so much bigger than the stuff I was used to seeing people get at fireworks shops.

Along with the reminder from the safety coordinator that each firework was capable of completely talking your arm or leg off. The “consumer” grade fireworks aren’t capable of that, although they’re still dangerous.

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jtbayly 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not sure if being homemade was the reason, but I just heard about a medflight for somebody hit by a homemade firework.

I say this as somebody with a book on how to make them, but I've always been a bit too scared to try.

	▲	fc417fc802 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Being homemade is (almost) never in and of itself a reason. A lack of knowledge or judgment certainly can be. However often the motivation for DIY is to circumvent regulations to go big but of course one of the primary reasons for such regulations is that the associated consequences when things go wrong are dire. The story could well have turned out the same even if the item had been purchased from a reputable vendor. There's a very good reason the professional shows use barges or large fields and set up a huge exclusion zone around them.

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nozzlegear 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I was a kid growing up in Iowa in the 90s, my friends and I would hold Roman candles and bottle rockets in our hands and try to shoot them at each other. We're lucky we didn't get seriously injured, but it was all fun and games back then as long as you didn't tell your parents.

	▲	4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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topgrain2 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Did you move? There are huge differences between states in what’s available, all the way from “just sparklers and other tiny stuff that doesn’t fly” up to “anything that doesn’t require an explosives license”, and within states areas near cities often restrict fireworks sales.

	▲	lazide 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some places, I’m pretty sure they just waive the explosives license too.

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andrewinardeer 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Capitalism. Get rich or die trying.