[RCW2001]

Whats the story on the castor bean itself? Can you just go buy them? (I know I could just google search for the info but I don't necessary want my ip popping up on 'castor bean' websites. :/)

[Dinsdale]

Don't look but thesmokinggun has an actual ricin recipe (or did at one point, it was part of the AlQueda terror manual they had online).

[Darksheare]

Not sure where one could get such beans, conisidering they aren't good for eating.
But they are supposedly easy to get one's hands on.
I honestly don't know, since I haven't tried.
(If I do, I'll let FR know. But from what I've heard, it's too easy. Didn't a samll shipment of castor beans go missing in the US southwest recently?)

The Ricin comes from the beans husk, after one is done processing the bean for the oil. Beyond that... the info is on the net. I don't recommend looking it up. With recent stories going the rounds, don't need law abiding info hogs like us getting nabbed as terrorists while the real perps thumb their noses at the Feds.

[El Gato]

Here's one place you can order them. Cornell has a good site on the bean and the ricin. Another site, for vets, states that the seeds are up to 3% ricin, which is huge, I think you could effectively poison folks just by grinding up the beans and substituting it for some of the flour in breads, rolls, etc, if the poison isn't destroyed by the baking process. Another site states that 3 seeds can kill an adult. The plant is native to Africa and India, but is often used as an ornamental and has become "naturalised" over much of the south. IOW, it grows wild. The oil, which is the only non-toxic part, has long been used as a laxitive and was used as a lubricant, including mixing it with aviation gasoline in the early days of aviation, during WW-I for example. Seeds or started plants should be available at your garden store. I found one site that would sell you 10 seeds for $2, onther had 10 for $1.25 These of course are for ornamental purposes, for agricultural quantities, I suspect the costs are much lower per seed. However a California state site indicated that growing them is very labor intensive, because unlike wheat, milo or soybeans, they don't all ripen at once, so they have to be picked by hand. This means that they are mostly grown in very low labor cost areas, like India for example. Thus getting large quantities of seeds/beans might take some doing, and would surely raise supicions, unless you were a garden seed dealer.