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Comment by mirimir | Hacker News Reader

Hey, I did that when I was 13 or 14. There was lots of ammunition lying around in the woods, if you knew where to look. Mostly 7.6 mm, but some 12.7 mm and 20 mm.

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Sometimes I think 'hey, I had a pretty interesting childhood', and other times, I read comments like this one.

Sometimes it was too "interesting". I was 13 in 1962. A few years later, my parents worked at the UN in New York City. I met some people who were into LSD, and started smuggling it back home. When things got iffy, I ran away, and lived on the road. After a few years, I found a mentor, and got refugee status. Then college and grad school, and a ~middle class life :)

Out of curiosity, under the assumption you had kids, was your parenting style the anti pattern to helicopter parenting?

I don't think that I've had any kids. But yes, I would have been a laissez-faire parent, I think. Although it's possible that I might have become paranoid and over-protective (and over-controlling).

With a bit of work you've got the beginnings of a nice lyric there :)

People have suggested that I write an autobiography. But I'm more of a technical writer.

What woods were these that had 20mm cannon rounds scattered about?

Not far from Veliky Novgorod.

Probably means 10 gauge shotgun shells but I've never heard anyone call them "20mm"

edit: hmm, maybe that doesn't make sense since he also says 12.7mm, maybe he lives where there was once a war like m0zg says

20mm was a pretty popular caliber for AA guns, and you can often find them in the ground around the cities and military bases in Europe that have been heavily bombarded in WWII. In Europe it's a lot of fun to play with metal detectors since there's a lot of stuff in the ground around old cities, from ancient coins to more modern things like WWI and WWII bullets, broken bayonet blades, helmets, and all kinds of old metal junk.

This is true of nearly any country which had a real, actual, land war on its soil. Which is most of European countries, and especially the former USSR and today's Russia. As kids in Russia we burnt TNT for fun (or whatever the waxy thing was that's found inside artillery shells) and threw WW2 rifle rounds into bonfires. Only much later did I find out that TNT fumes are toxic.

TNT is indeed a very safe explosive. And yes, it burns ~like wax, but lots more sooty. Basically, detonation requires high-velocity shock. More even than blasting caps. You need a secondary explosive. Which, anyway, is why it's good for artillery shells.

Belated footnote: When the military run low on TNT and other "safe" explosives, sometimes they switch to stuff that's far more shock-sensitive, ages faster, and becomes very hazardous over time. So one key thing is knowing which types of munitions are ~safe to play with, and which are deadly.

Also, TNT releases NO2 when it burns (or detonates). Plus a bunch of ~toxic and ~mutagenic aromatic hydrocarbons, which end up absorbed on the soot. Some of which is respirable.

>Only much later did I find out that TNT fumes are toxic.

sounds like those self-made detonators we used to dispose the stuff of were a healthier choice :)

In any german city there is a good chance, that some forgotten bomb rots away right beneath the building you live, blowing up any second.

Excavator work here is something for heroes and suicidal people.

When I was a kid we used to pick up 50 Cal tracer ammo in the desert by the snake river. The story was that during training planes would pull most of their tracers out of ammo belts and dump them in the desert so they wouldn't have to put out wildfires later. 1970's

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