Bomb in dorm room, oops

[glassisbonedry]

Every year during high school I’d go to football camp at the college where I wanted to eventually play ball.

Was rooming with a friend one year and during some down time thought we'd liven things up with some fireworks we’d bought on our way up.

Since we couldn't have smoke spilling out through the dorm we looked around for something that could contain it.  Found an empty 64 ounce Gatorade bottle in the trash, that should do the trick.

After lighting a spinner we quickly dropped it in the bottle and screwed the cap on.  The bottle was on the window ledge and we were standing about a foot away.  The spinner was bouncing off the walls of the bottle and the cap was holding all the smoke in as planned, excellent.  We were definitely entertained.

We figured if one spinner was cool, four at once would be even better.  The fuses were long enough that we had all four in and the cap on before they took off.  Let the games begin.

Sure enough, those things were going crazy in there.  Like a mini light show a foot in front of our faces.

Then there was an explosion. 

It was so loud our ears were ringing.  The room was instantly filled with smoke.  After a couple seconds the smoke began to clear and we quickly realized what had happened.  The Gatorade bottle has exploded.

The first thing we said to each other was, "Are you OK?"  Unbelievably, aside from a cut on my shoulder that was bleeding pretty good we were otherwise fine.

We quickly surveyed the rest of the room and found glass fragments blown all the way to the door.  That's when it started sinking it that the bottle didn't just break, it detonated like a frag grenade. 

Naturally, within seconds the RA was banging on the door, just about the time the smoke alarm started going off.

There was simply no cover story for this.  Had to open the door and face the music. 

To this day my buddy and I still talk about how amazing it was that we didn't lose an eye or suffer serious facial injuries given our proximity to the blast.  Definitely a bad day, but could have been much worse.