• pearable@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Honest question? If joke, I don’t get it.

    Our protagonist meets Tyler Durden on a plane. They start a conversation, and Tyler talks a bit about his work as a soap salesman. Later in the movie we learn he uses human fat from a liposuction clinic to make it. Later still, we find out the process of making soap creates nitroglycerin he uses to make a bomb. That’s all I remember about soap in that movie.

    • themachine@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I might be explaining the joke out of turn, but the soap says “fight club” on it held by the guy who says not to talk about it. At least that’s what I thought the poster was pointing out. Not sure why they’re getting downvoted…

    • Agent641@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      By-products of soap can be used to make nitroglycerine, which when stabilised with an inert binder, is approximately dynamite (commercial dynamite is far more refined tgan this crude early recipe produces)

      It always made me laugh when he’s just like “you get glycerine from this process. All you need to do is just add some nitric acid.” As if youre baking brownies.

      Glycerine can be purchased in bulk very easily. Nitric acid is exceptionally difficult to buy, very hard and dangerous to synthesise (outside of a well provisioned chem lab) even if you have the precursors (concentrated sulfuric acid and potassium nitrate) and to then produce nitroglycerine requires a lot more care than just mixing them together.

      • CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz
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        8 months ago

        Even in a well provisioned lab you’re gonna have a hard time coming across large amounts of nitrogen rich compounds, exactly because they’re crucial to making explosives.