In a smoky 19th century Colorado saloon, two billiard balls collide and explode with a pop like a gunshot, and every man in the room draws his weapon. That documented problem is our entry point into nitrocellulose, the volatile compound that revolutionized global warfare, gave birth to the plastics and motion picture industries, and still hides in plain sight in your bathroom cabinet.

This deep dive explains what happens when cellulose meets nitric and sulfuric acid, then follows the accidental 1846 discovery in Christian Friedrich Schoenbein's kitchen, the deadly Faversham factory explosion, Frederick Abel's 48-hour washing fix, and the rise of smokeless powder. We cover John Wesley Hyatt's camphor-plasticized celluloid and the ivory crisis, mother-in-law silk, Kodak's flexible film base, the catastrophic nitrate fires of 1914, 1926, 1929  ...