Let’s go crazy, let’s get nuts

By KATIE MAVRICH

Don’t Try This At Home

Hunter S. Fulghum

Broadway Books

2002

Don’t Try This At Home

Hunter S. Fulghum

Broadway Books

2002

Think of it as ordinary people doing extraordinary things – with the proper training, of course. In the book, or shall I say, instruction manual, “Don’t Try This at Home,” one can learn to do so many off-the-wall tasks it would be impossible to name them all.

Hunter S. Fulgram, the author, is a technology therapist by trade. But with the knowledge and skills he has obtained by doing the research for this book, it shouldn’t be long before he is able to leave the days of consoling network specialists behind.

While many of his questions while doing research were met with silence on the other end of the phone line, and still more resulting in the click of the line being tapped, he was still able to get the valuable information necessary to, say, smuggle top secret documents across the border.

For each mission, all valuable information is given. Readers get important background information, the time required to pull off the stunt, a list of necessary items, and step-by-step instructions to do something such as swimming across the English Channel.

Some of the feats in this book could prove to be useful at one point or another in your life – winning a joust, for example. Others could land you in jail: “borrowing” the Mona Lisa. Still, more could get you killed – conducting a SWAT team hostage rescue, or swimming through the bypass tunnels of the Hoover Dam – if directions aren’t followed exactly and could also land you in jail if you get caught.

Fulgram leaves no stone unturned. Readers will find the phone number to Greater Niagara General Hospital, in the event that something goes horribly wrong when you go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. If you are planning on destroying a nuclear missile silo, a good thing to know is that you will need the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms permit No. 33, and a variety of other local or state permits to do it legally.

In addition to basic materials, readers who want to act on these suggestions will need a massive amount of money because most people aren’t going to have an M1A1 Abrams tank sitting in their driveways just waiting to be driven through a tornado. Military experience will come in hand greatly, as will having a military at your beck and call, should you ever have to rescue MIA’s from a POW camp.

And who would have thought that anyone would need a truck loaded with Holstein cows and another truck loaded with 24 bales of hay just to break into Fort Knox?