The Time I (Accidentally) Built a Bomb

One afternoon in the halcyon days before we had a screaming banshee living with us, my husband and I decided to lie down for a nap. I could wax nostalgic about how glorious it was, but that is not the point of this story. 

Just waking up, groggy with a haze of sleep, we were suddenly jolted awake by the sound of glass shattering loudly nearby. We had just set up a ludicrously expensive television in the living room and my first thought was, “Oh god, the tv!” I thought our cat had knocked it off the tv stand. I don’t know if a shattered plasma tv would even make such a sound. Thankfully, that is a noise with which I am not familiar.

I dash into the living room to find the tv intact. 

My husband thought someone was breaking in to his brand new truck. He ran outside, still shirtless, to find all his truck windows also intact. 

We walked around and checked all the interior windows. All unbroken. 

What could possibly have made that sound!? Something was amiss, but we couldn’t figure out what. 

As you might imagine, waking up to the sound of shattering glass will quite literally scare the piss out of a person. So I went to pee. 

That’s when I saw it. 

There was shattered glass all over the bathroom. “What the f***?” I whispered to myself, not knowing exactly what could have possibly happened in there. 

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the bottle of homemade bath salts I had made was the culprit. 

I am crafty in the sense that I both like to make things and am also chaotically clever. Additionally, I am basically a crow; I collect things that are shiny or might prove “useful” one day for one of my crafts. One of those things was an old bottle of Crown Royal my husband had long since finished off. I painted it a beautiful shade of blue and decided I’d use it as a decanter. 

In this instance, I decided that the newly painted decanter would house bath salts, (not the kind that makes you eat other people’s faces) a fun and easy thing I could make myself. So I set about concocting this potion using epsom salt, baking soda, food coloring and essential oils. Pleased with myself, I put the delightful smelling powder in the bottle and made sure the lid was on tight (wouldn’t want the humidity of the bathroom solidifying my wonderful, powdery creation). 

In what will come as a shock to literally no one, mixing random household compounds together should not be done unless one has a fundamental understanding of the chemical reactions those compounds will cause when combined. I am reminded of the time on King of the Hill when Peggy told the readers in her advice column to combine bleach and ammonia to save time on cleaning. 

The bath bomb recipe that I had invented caused a chemical reaction that resulted in the Crown Royal bottle violently exploding, sending thick shards of glass flying outward.  I am horrified to think about what could have happened had anyone been in the bathroom when my homemade claymore mine blew up. 

Actor re-enactment of the explosion

I asked our science teacher the following Monday what, specifically, had caused that reaction. He told me that when you mix epsom salts and baking soda, the combination creates a build-up of carbon dioxide. If it is then trapped in a container with a lid, the carbon dioxide has nowhere to go but out, causing a violent explosion. 

I’m ashamed to admit that I gave new meaning to the term “bath bomb.”