[Right Wing Professor]

I think you mean 'nitrogen triiodide'. That's actually pretty harmless; it mostly crackles, and the biggest danger is getting an iodine burn from it. TATP is just stable enough to use as a terrorist explosive, but unstable enough only a suicide bomber would risk it. And you can make pounds of it from stuff you can buy in a hardware store. Much of the lore about it is crap, BTW, including about half of what's on the Wikipedia page.

We handle it in 200 mg quantities, tops.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

That's my understanding of it as well. It becomes more unstable in larger quantities.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I think we made something like this in college. We made stuff with iodide, when wet it was OK, but when dry it was a contact explosive. We'd put it in people's locks to scare them when they inserted keys, and dribble it on the floor so kids in the morning would step on it.

Nobody really hurt, but obviously not a good thing to be doing I suppose. We never blew anything up with it. I can't remember what we made, or how we made it. We had a guy in our group that had all the knowledge and I think probably he did most of the work. He was also really good at picking locks and got us into some places were weren't supposed to be.