Comments on: Mercury Thiocyanide

By: avist

avist — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:13:08 +0000

I can totally see ancient witch-priests dazzling the poor town-folk with this.

But then Ali S. has a good point about the witch trials!

By: DOJ

DOJ — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:46:37 +0000

those things scarred the pavement in my carport

By: CheeseDuck

CheeseDuck — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:01:26 +0000

Yum! Poison!

By: Zachary

Zachary — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:52:25 +0000

As if I'm worried about mercury fumes when its got cyanide in the name ! So snakes are bad now ?

By: TwoDragons

TwoDragons — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:49:35 +0000

Nate--BWAAHAHA! We used to do that too! Then we got bored and started to experiment. We discovered that if you dumped out several boxes and stacked them into a huge pyramid, and then lit the top one, it would start a chain reaction that lit the rest down the line. You could keep the fun going for eternity with enough boxes!

Mom banished us to the road after we filled the entire yard with sooty curls. Did you know that stuff turns into a black paste when it gets wet, and makes awesome shoe-prints all over freshly-cleaned carpet...?

--TwoDragons

By: Ali S.

Ali S. — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:44:01 +0000

I wonder if anyone found this back in ye olde days and attempted to show it to people. I bet that was part of the reason for so many witch trials.

All in all a very cool substance if not a little dangerous for your health.

By: neo

neo — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:30:00 +0000

This shit we used to do 30 yrs back when were kids. this is really old stuff. Neatorama's post quality is going down?

By: Shish

Shish — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:09:59 +0000

Apart from the mercury fumes, mercury thiocyanate is a poison in its own right that can be absorbed just by skin contact. I hope they washed their hands after touching it. The common firework version is made of nitrated naphtha pitch, and doesn't contain any mercury.

By: Zav

Zav — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:34:41 +0000

I long for my own personal bottle of orange ammonium dichromate.

By: Kitty

Kitty — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:46:44 +0000

The whole box at once? What happened?

By: nate

nate — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:24:53 +0000

Wow. Total childhood flashback.
I remember that lighting one at a time started to get boring so of course we just lit the entire box.

By: supaswag

supaswag — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:55:31 +0000

I remember them stinkers well ..that was the time before CGI

By: TwoDragons

TwoDragons — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:10:21 +0000

Oh man, I remember snakes as a kid. They were my favorite "kiddie" firework! I would light dozens of them at once and watch them fill the driveway with long trails of ash. They'd stink like heck, too.

--TwoDragons

By: Algonkin

Algonkin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:05:55 +0000

Looks like an Alien

By: sam

sam — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:02:10 +0000

Very cool - just a quick note though for those wondering: those little black snakes you lit up as a kid do not contain mercury and they are still available AFAIK. The ones you probably lit as kids depend on Sodium Bicarbonate and are harmless.

I've never seen a snake like the one in the video, but supposedly they used to be sold as the "Pharaoh's Serpent" according to wikipedia.

By: Vijay

Vijay — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:24:33 +0000

Cool;

We used to fire this, during festival times in India.

Your video make me remember those childhood days.

Thanks

By: joe

joe — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:05:00 +0000

i lit about 10 thousand million of those when i was a kid in the 80s... does this mean an imminent death from mercury poisoning for me?????

By: Justin

Justin — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:01:16 +0000

Wait a second... I've seen that episode of South Park. This wont end well!

By: Ty

Ty — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:28:46 +0000

the rock was fun, but even more entertaining was the kids' scripted acting at the end.

By: red

red — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 05:11:17 +0000

man that was cool