_________   SWAT MAGAZINE ISSUE NINETEEN: JULY 1999   __________
  /         \___________________________________________/          \
 /	                     The Team   	 	            \
/                     By -=The Firestarter=-   	                     \
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Ahh yes, the SWATeam. The group that you either love or hate, the group
that produces one of the UK's longest running underground e-zines, and
of course, the group i founded over three years ago. I look back at
how we where back in '96, myself and Brakis stealing road signs for a
laugh, getting pissed on a regular basis, setting fire to stuff for a
laugh and harrasing people on the phone. Yep back in the good 'ol days
the SWATeam was a small group of friends who enjoyed getting into
trouble and liked socilising.
I think that there was only 4 of us that where the "hardcore" members,
Myself, Brakis, Shadow and Crisp. We spent half of our lives devising
nasty things that can be made from shotgun shells, the other half of
our lives where spent making the nasty devises.
Life was good, as far as we are now, we where extreamly lame back then,
we had no worries except for the occation police visit, there would
always be somebody who hated us and went out of there way to make our
lives hell, why? because a group of 4 teenages in a small village over
the summer and easter holidays are always victimised by old biddies
and the mentaly challenged. Didn't matter what we did, we'd always be
a target of these people, but life goes on and we did all we could to
make the lives of those who put us down, a compleat hell. Something
that i belive we did quite well.
Then i got on the internet and began my search for the knowledge that
would put me where i am today, my first stop was the yahoo seach engine
simply because it was the one used by Compuserve at the time (dunno if
they still use it or what, ain't used C$ for years now).
Key word: Anarchy  That's where it all started, i surfed onto anarchy-
online and looked through there links section, there i found an e-zine
that was soon to be the "template" for SWAT, the magazine was Canadian
and had mainly h/p/a topics (like i said, a template for SWAT).
Within a week i'd taught myself the arts of making simple explosive
devices, then i got the Jolly Rogers cookbook, it took me only two days
to read every single file, i read it again and again. The simplicity
of such devices, just how simple getting the chemicals was, it was so
cool. I fed my knowledge back to other team members, I sent Brakis as
much of the information as i could accomidate on floopy disk. Hacking
and Phreaking never interested me (actually it was about 4 months until
i found out exactly what phreaking was), explosives now that's
something that's interesting, dunno whether it was because i've always
been interested in explosives and i'd learnt to make very basic low
grade explosives at the age of 10 or what, but these where cool.
So I decided that i'd write a magazine similar to the one i found on
anarchy-online, that was back in September 1997, a mere 11k
with 6 articles, all writen by me. 4 of which where actual files, the
others where just disclaimers and shit like that. So i signed up for a
web site at geocities and began using the Compuserve website making
program to knock up a basic site (dunno what that programs called).
But of course i knew fuck all about HTML, but i very soon learned.
Behold SWAT's web site was up and running, a pathetic effort, but i was
proud of it. Being new to the internet and all that i didn't have much
of a clue as to how it all worked or how people actually found your
site. So i just told people at school about it, that worked.
Three months past, nothing really happened within the small group of
friends that where the SWATeam, ok so we had blown up a lot of stuff
due to our endless supplies of shotgun shells, but as far as progress
went, we'd done fuck all. The magazine was up and running and into it's
3rd issue, nobody had really been on the web site, and after moving
from down south i decided to call it a day and release SWAT Magazine in
January 1998 since my only writer (called Monkey) was living down south
so i couldn't exactly get any help from him, Monkey was never really a
SWATeam member, more like a friend.
Well Christmas 1998 came, Brakis and myself where kind of drunk and
we decided that we would make something of the SWATeam, we got a note
book and pen and began to make notes on what we where going to do,
first off was a list of potential members, then there was a list of
supplies and positions within the group. That was a start. January
rolled around and so did Issue 1 of SWAT Magazine, compleatly revamped
and looking good. Well ok it wasn't all that much different from the
issue that was released back in September 1996, but it had a lot of
improvements. I listed a few of the things that we did, the kind of
fun stuff that we did to people we didn't like. The group had also
acquired another member, Gizmo Gremlin, later to become Red Viper and
then onto the guy that I wanted to kill. But anyway he helped me out
with general pyrotechics, well setting fire to stuff anyway. Things
where good.
Issue 3 came out, ohh still pretty lame, but it had some content to it
at least. Looked good, more pyrotechics information something that i'd
got really good at by this time, mostly down to the supplies that could
be acquired from my many friends. I also discovered Usenet and made a
post to alt.ph.uk from a friends computer, wow 'leet AOL had an easy
to use newsfeed, since i hadn't a fucking clue as to MSN. Hell the
tripod site got 100 hits that night, shit man, i'd struck gold. I got
about 10 hits a day on the web site, e-mail came in very slowly. So
that was it, i decided to begin to e-mail people, i e-mailed the web
master of every hacking/phreaking/anarchy site i could find, that
worked, 20 hits a day. Of course a few people on alt.ph.uk had narrow
minds and decided to flame us, well ok we had very few skills back then
and i admit that we where lame, well AEnima 1.7 and 100,000 e-mails
later proved that point.
Half way into April 1998, easter time to be exact, the SWATeam had
discovered Sodium Chlorate weedkiller, so stuff that was to bring about
the biggest change in the SWATeams arsenal of pyrotechics, it was very
cheap, easily avalible, avalible in large quantities and could be
very quickly constructed into an explosive compound. We went through
sevral kg's a week, didn't cost much, and it was great fun. Then the
worse thing happened, somebody spoke of our little "fun" operations
that we did, all hell broke loose. Panic struck the SWATeam, an hour
on the phone to Brakis soon had everything sorted out, since we didn't
squeal, we'd suspend everybody else, and we did. A few months later
and that was all sorted out. June 1998 also brought about another
state of panic, Red Viper had decided to carry out a bomb attack, well
ok he flushed a small grenade down the toilet of the school we where
attending at the time, go figure, bomb down toilet explodes and people
don't exactly turn a blind eye. So what happened? well i got off
scot-free, Red Viper on the other hand wasn't so lucky, which i was
pleased about since he tried to blame me. Yep he got the police to have
a nice chat with him, actually it was his parents that got the police
involved.
Shortly after that incident Red Viper left home and we never heard from
him again (which is a good thing). Also a few SWATeam members joined
Darkcyde communications, a short spell in the phreaking world soon got
me sorted out as far as fone hacking goes.
Life went on, the group changed quite a lot, we acquired new members,
Shadow drifted from the group, and we'd become pretty good at phreaking
and very good at explosives.
This progressed for a few more months, the SWATeam web site was getting
more and more popular, the magazine drastically improved and the
other group members got more skilled in there chosen field.
Before anyone knew what was happening, the SWATeam where pretty big,
well from a group of 4 people with a geocities site that had maybe 1
hit a fortnight if we where lucky, we'd had over 30 people join and
leave the group, we had our own domain and the site is getting a well 
over 1000 hits a week, the magazine is read world wide and is now 
far from lame, looking at issue 1 and comparing it to issue 16 
(issue 16 seems to be the best issue to date- well Brakis and myself 
think so). So what's the point to this little article? well it goes to
show that in only three years a group can rise from nothing, a bunch of
no skilled lamers, to an (almost) organised group of people that have
skills in all areas, some of our guys being top notch in there chosen
field, and those who aren't are quite capable of getting there.

Of course i must thank the following people who helped me out, or
inspired me (thus helped inprove the group and magazine):

ExtreemUK - For getting me started in hacking as well as a little help
    in getting started with carding.

Netw0rk Bug - For helping me take the magazine and the group to levels
    that i couldn't do on my own.

Hybrid - For getting me started with phreaking.

The Catslash crew - For there mag that inspired SWAT Magazine

The Jolly Roger - Oh c'mon, how many pyrotechnitions can you name that
   can't attribute something to this guy?