Simple bombs are trivial to make if you have a high school understanding of chemistry and physics, some basic manual skills, and a clue about how to handle yourself in shops and/or labs. You can get arbitrarily complicated in optimizing bombs, but it’s not even a tiny bit hard to make something explode in a very destructive way if you’re not very restricted in what you can deliver to your target.
Tons of people would need no instruction at all… but instructions are all over the place anyway.
The knowledge is not and never has been the gating factor. It’s really, really basic stuff. If you want to keep people from making bombs, you’re better off to deny them easy access to the materials. But, with a not-impossible amount of work, a knowledgeable and strongly motivated person can still make a bomb from stuff like aluminum, charcoal, sugar, salt, air, water… so it’s better yet to keep them from being motivated. The good news is that most people who are motivated to make bombs, and especially to use them as weapons, are also profoundly dysfunctional.
Simple bombs are trivial to make if you have a high school understanding of chemistry and physics, some basic manual skills, and a clue about how to handle yourself in shops and/or labs. You can get arbitrarily complicated in optimizing bombs, but it’s not even a tiny bit hard to make something explode in a very destructive way if you’re not very restricted in what you can deliver to your target.
Tons of people would need no instruction at all… but instructions are all over the place anyway.
The knowledge is not and never has been the gating factor. It’s really, really basic stuff. If you want to keep people from making bombs, you’re better off to deny them easy access to the materials. But, with a not-impossible amount of work, a knowledgeable and strongly motivated person can still make a bomb from stuff like aluminum, charcoal, sugar, salt, air, water… so it’s better yet to keep them from being motivated. The good news is that most people who are motivated to make bombs, and especially to use them as weapons, are also profoundly dysfunctional.