The Pyromaniac’s Child

Roughly one in five Americans suffers from some sort of mental illness. The severity of these maladies can range from inconsequential to catastrophic with everything in between. However — in moderation — some of these unfortunate syndromes can actually be a good thing.

As an example, full-bore Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is utterly debilitating. Folks with severe OCD are so consumed by their involuntary routines they are unable to engage in normal life as we might define it. A bad case of OCD can render you nigh impossible to be around. Just a smattering, however, makes you a good doctor.

The capacity to fixate on details amidst a chaotic situation is critical to certain professions. The key is to strike the sacred balance between effective physician and intolerable human being. As my wife can attest, in my case the results are lamentably mixed.

The same can be said, surprisingly enough, of pyromania. Pyromania is classified as an Impulse Control Disorder. Truly serious sufferers most usually end up in prison. Those of us with just a sprinkling of the malady typically gravitate toward gun writing.

An Explosive Combination

First, the obligatory disclaimer. Proceed at your own risk. Testosterone is the most potent poison known to man and nobody forces us to do stupid stuff like this. I’m not recommending anybody go out and try what follows for themselves. Keep in mind I’m a professional gun writer. People expect such idiocy from folks like me. The following tale is presented for entertainment purposes only.

An engineering degree combined with enough time in uniform playing with the real deal to gain a certain modicum of comfort around ordnance laid my foundation. Homeschooling my kids well away from civilization accelerated the unfortunate natural urges. I could wield such stuff as thermite, binary explosives and improvised thermobaric charges conjured from coffee creamer and decry it chemistry or physics class. One of the more reliable crowd pleasers was homemade solid rocket fuel. It’s a wonder my kids turned out normal.

It’s not like the recipe is some kind of secret. You can find anything on the Internet. The easiest homemade solid rocket fuel uses potassium nitrate as an oxidizer, sulfur as a catalyst, and powdered sugar for fuel. I sourced everything locally. It is simply breathtaking how much energy is bound up inside sugar. Make some of this stuff and you’ll never look at a Snickers bar the same again.

We experimented with dozens of different designs. Interestingly, a solid rocket motor doesn’t burn from the bottom up. Solid rocket fuel burns from the middle out. Whether it is a bottle rocket or the Solid Rocket Boosters on the space shuttle, they all work the same way. There is a hole bored through the center of the propellant grain (the technical term for the rocket motor) such that the fuel ignites along its entire length. The top is sealed and the bottom ends in a nozzle to constructively vent the chaos. The result is unfiltered awesome.

Experimentation is half the fun. We made one- and two-stage rockets with payloads and without. We are blessed to live on a remote rural farm so we could test our creations off the back porch. I used a length of steel rod shoved into the ground as a launch pad. Some of these rockets were a bit on the large side.

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