How to Blow Up a Movie Review: An insurrectionary anarchist perspective on How to Blow up a Pipeline (2023)
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a 2021 book by Swedish Marxist academic Andreas Malm that certainly has an explosive title, but definitely has seen its share of criticism from anarchists with two essays of note responding to it.[1][2] The book quite honestly comes to conclusions that anarchists have already been at terms with, case and point being informal anarchist organizations like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front and even more radical formations like the Animal Rights Militia. And while the book has its shortcomings, It has certainly seen extremely wide readership.
But our focus today is on the much more relevant and provocative film of the same name, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which is perhaps the most incendiary film in recent years. As a film it has far more reach than any book. It has long detailed sequences dealing with the construction of improvised explosives and even mentions many chemicals involved. The devices consist of metal barrels filled with the powerful explosive ETN (Erythritol tetranitrate) that are detonated with homemade remote detonated blasting caps that use lead azide and are partly made from electric Christmas lights and old automotive airbags components. They use cheap Baofeng UV-5R radios in the film to detonate the explosive devices and successfully blow up two sections of a Texas oil pipeline after having turned off the valve a bit upstream. They even blow them up at high points on hills to stop excess oil from being spilled.
The use of these explosives and techniques by the film is likely no accident as these are some of the more easy to make ones. A very rough overview of some of the manufacture will be described but none of this should be attempted without extensive caution and a solid grasp of chemistry basics and safety. ETN is probably the best easiest high power explosive to make and detonate and it doesn’t require too many difficult to acquire chemicals. It can be made with only the following chemicals: erythritol (sugar substitute), and nitric acid made with sulfuric acid (found in drain openers) and potassium nitrate (stump remover). It should be stabilized via recrystallization in acetone and a sodium bicarbonate bath. A relatively easy to make primary explosive for blasting caps is DDNP which avoids the need for lead (as used in lead azide, the primary explosive in the movie). DDNP production is described well in the US Army Technical Manual 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook ( freely available on the internet archive and sites like library genesis, zlibrary, annas archive, or other shadow library, where many other books on explosives are available).
The film is complete with analysis of green counterinsurgency and the grapples with the label of terrorism, and ends the discussion stating that “If the US Empire thinks we are terrorists than we must be doing something right”. The characters are all given clear reason for taking part in the events of the film through brief but powerful flashbacks that also serve to develop the characters and also build suspense. They certainly make a questionable decisions here and there about security but we will leave this without much info for spoiler reasons.
making nitric acid scene in the movie:
adding the stump remover
adding sulfuric acid to the strump remover
This film is not only accurate and realistic but serve to give an added sense of possibility and feasibility to the events depicted. The film has already earned dozens of security memos by the FBI, RCMP, and dozens of other law enforcement agencies around the world. As anarchists we should certainly take this film seriously and spread it around with watch parties and discussions. Doing so should be done with good security culture as this film is one that you probably shouldn’t post about on twitter, threads, instagram, facebook, or some other capitalist social media. Preferable you should download the movie with file sharing software like bittorrent but be careful to use a vpn or seedbox.
Anarchists have long utilized the power of explosives and it is high time we see more attacks on the infrastructure and machinery of our annihilation. Live live the struggle for anarchy!
[1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-dunlap-ecological-authoritarian-maneuvers
[2] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/klokkeblomst-green-desperation-fuels-red-fascism-return-fire