From "News of the Weird" "Sounds like an Urban Legend, But It's Not: In April in Fayetteville, AK, exploding beans and rice tore a hole in the roof of Steve Tate's home. Tate had packed the food in frozen carbon dioxide in 6-foot-long pipes for later storage at a cabin, but the gas needed some room to expand. Bomb technicians from nearby Springdale exploded the other pipefuls Tate had prepared."

If you choose frozen CO2 to store food, you need to let it evaporate before sealing the container.

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), July 18, 1999

Answers

Using dry ice, liquid carbon dioxide or liquid nitrogen requires that you let the substance in question turn to vapor, no ifs, ands or buts. And you ought to see what a two-litre soda bottle with liquid nitrogen does when it finally vaporizes. The one I saw blew a trash can apart like a grenade went off inside.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), July 18, 1999.

Kinda blows the lid off his "quietly prepping", doesn't it.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), July 19, 1999.

I can just see the headlines now:

Doomers come under investigation for hoarding explosives!

or

Y2K cultist arrested! Search discovers 500 lbs of bomb making material secretly stored in 5 gallon buckets.

or

Ed Yourdon. Is her really a terrorist? Heraldo has the answers at 8.

or

Survivalist Refuge discovered with Tons of explosive materials. Entire enclave aerial sprayed with Beno. Government scientist believe all is now safe.

-Greybear, I'll quit now, too much material here. This could go on forever.

-- Greybear (greybear@home.com), July 19, 1999.

Steve Tate must've cut too many physics classes in high school.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), July 20, 1999.