TL;DR
Much like bungee jumping or weapons handling, learning how to handle chemicals correctly should be part of pop culture. So that people don't blow up their fingers. Did you know there are hand surgeons who specialize only in fixing hands? Some wounds never heal (go look up phantom pain, I'll wait) and stitching together what's left is tricky business.
A lot of the fun compounds in making explosives are also used to make rocket fuel. Just because I know about reactive chemistry doesn't mean I'm cooking, it just means I have a chemistry background.
Introduction
Chemistry has a special place among the natural sciences because it's the one you're most likely to get in trouble with. For some reason, physicists and electrical engineers don't get the same treatment when they play with tesla coils. Or biologists and their pathogens. But hey, if you cook any amount of chemicals you're immediately a drug dealer or a terrorist. This is why we can't have new antibiotics.
In any case, with the proliferation of LLMs, it might be good to cover the basic facts around explosives most people forget about because they're not on wikipedia.
If you do anything wrong, your fancy glassware will end up broken
There's a lot of very nice chemistry that does not require risking a significant amount of money. If you really wish to practice, try making basic black powder or nitrocellulose first. When doing risky things it's often a good idea to retrace the steps taken by the previous generations, because they didn't write down all of their operational practices. The companies making explosives today are descended from the companies that made gunpowder, nitrocellulose, dynamite.
Even black powder isn't as simple as people think. Mixing the chemical components isn't enough to get good quality black powder. It needs to be milled (without causing sparks!) so that the sulfur and potassium nitrate can be pushed into the spongy texture of charcoal.
Once you've made whatever you're making - well, how do you store it? Someplace where other people can touch it?
Here's a fun thing: A lot of the fun kind of chemicals are hygroscopic meaning that they absorb water from the air. You will need a dessicator to dry the chemicals after washing them (you do not want the product contaminated with leftover base or acid). And after that, a very dry place is a good idea.
You do not want to store the product together with your reagants or glassware, so you will need space.
Forests are a great place to test out your product. Which you'll want to be pure, shock-resistant, and shelf-stable so that you can carry it safely to test.
Making shelf-stable product matters
This isn't a Walter White vs Jessie Pinkman kind of thing, purity does matter. A lot of the fun compounds react with metals and produce even funnier little compounds. If you're making bullets, the brass alloy can react with the primary explosive used as part of the firing mechanism.
The army has had experience with explosives and has very lengthy manuals on storing materials. They are horribly boring descriptions, but when you're transporting things in the range of tonnes, lengthy descriptions of what works and what doesn't and why are a good thing. Maybe people will stop storing large piles of ammonium nitrate without supervision (look up the Beirut, Lebanon ammonium nitrate incident).
The point being, there are fun compounds that are easier to make which are less shelf-stable and more unpredictable.
You can get payed to blow-up things
Demolition experts are a thing and competent people who know how to explode things are important. There's probably a mine in Australia that needs a hand in blowing up things.
For some reason, guidance counselors forget to mention such career options.
Ice cream is $6, explosives are expensive
I mean it's basic math. But for some reason you're Satan if you have ever touched chemicals.
The importance of Zen
This goes without saying, but the kind of people who can reliably make explosives without blowing themselves up are separate from the people who are likely to use the explosives.
It's funny how surgeons are allowed to yell people out of an operating room, but God forbid you have boundaries if you are working with anything else that's critical.
Society frowns upon your shenanigans
Most of society runs on type 1 thinking (get Daniel Kaufman's thinking fast and slow if you don't understand that reference). In other words, it runs on prejudice (which is why marketing works so amazingly well). Jane Austen got a lot of things right.
Making any kind of chemicals puts you straight in the risk category. But it's also where all the fun happens. It's also where a lot of tragedy happens.
Why sanitizing reality ends up crippling people
In the immortal words of Lady Gaga "Russian roulette is not the same without a gun".
In NewSpeak this is considered "thrill-seeking behavior", labeled and categorized and showed in a box. But these joyless medicated corporate lizards would have never been hired by Steve Jobs. There's more to life than a fucking psychology textbook. Beyond the Brave New World consensus reality, there's a real world.
Well, back to the grind. The important thing is to exercise and stay hydrated. There's some fun Linux kernel stuff I want to be working on. Hopefully I'll have time for it.