Translated from German. Also available in French.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part! And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop!” – Mario Savio
The cornerstone of a sustainable arson campaign is reliable delayed ignition. However, for small groups without a secure procurement network (which is most of them), many older instructions for making timers are simply no longer feasible.
The rise of online stores in recent years has made it almost impossible to get transistors or ICs from local electronics stores with cash. Even if there is such a store in your area, caution is advised as the police are sometimes surprisingly good at tracing back electrical components. Internet ordering is also unfortunately not an option for our purposes. If you try to solder the required parts out of cheap devices from the dollar store, you will quickly realize that the surface mount device (SMD) components used today are usually much too small to solder by hand.
This guide therefore came out of the desire to share our experience with materials that are readily available at supermarkets or hardware stores. It can also be considered an update to the ELF guide “Setting Fires with Electrical Timers”, which is still well worth reading.
– Angry Birds Commando, Fall 2024