What's the most watchlist-worthy research you've ever done for writing?

[Professor Gnoll]

When writing any kind of story, any writer knows that research is a necessity. You don't want to make a stupid mistake and yank the reader out of their suspension of disbelief right? Of course, stories aren't just about happy, normal things, and sometimes you have to do some research on the... weirder side of things. So what's the weirdest stuff you've ever had to research for the sake of writing, likely to get you put on government watchlists?
As for me, my current weirdest thing is probably trying to find out what the best cuts of human meat are. Consensus seems to be that rump, thigh or biceps meat would be the tastiest, with some argument as to the actual quality of said rump meat.

[Thanqol]

When running Night's Black Agents I was doing an awful lot of googling of secure governmental facilities, intelligence ministries and European members of parliament.

[Marlowe]

I found myself googling the age of consent in Iceland. After I'd made a joke about it.

It turned out to be exactly what I guessed.

[Concrete]

I was working on a story about a shadowy organization which secured, contained, and exploited spontaneously occurring portals to other dimensions, so I needed to figure out how they acquired vehicles and equipment,how they would make money of this and also how these worlds would affect the human body.

so I found myself researching the prices for black market military materiel and weapons, how radiation and various diseases affected the human body, how one would go about disappearing from the grid, conducting a funeral for someone who was irretrievably lost without making this known, how to divert and spend large sums of money without leaving a paper trail, how to get various raw materials onto the open market without revealing their source, and which governments would be the most likely to overlook various illegal activities, such as speculation and money laundering.

I also read up on various military operations, how to hide large facilities from aerial surveillance, and much more.

Well, now that I write it all out, it does sound just a tad more sinister than it did at the time...

[Asmodean_]

"Isis map of the world"
Because alternate universes.

[Cealocanth]

Ah, that would be the time I did extensive online research on the most deadly poisons known to man, what they do to the human body, how long they take to start showing symptoms, and how to use the Deep Web to obtain said toxins. If I didn't know I was doing research for a modern-day assassin character in an RPG, I would say I was planning on killing someone horribly.

[Talanic]

Well.

I've perturbed some of my coworkers by having an in-depth response to "What the heck is strychnine, anyway?"

I've also researched military response times for a disturbance in central Wisconsin - which wouldn't be so big of a deal, but MRAPs are made in my hometown. Granted, when I asked the question on reddit boards, I always phrased it along the lines of a response to Godzilla fighting the Hulk in the midst of a zombie outbreak...

Most of the rest of my research is solidly historical, mythological, or fantastic.

[Iethloc]

I've researched both the tensile strength of various human body tissues, and the advantages and disadvantages of different shapes of knife blades.

[Artman77]

The sad reality is that you don't "get put on a watch list". You're already on one. Google, Internet Explorer, and Safari, as well as most internet service providers (at least in the states) all have clauses in their Terms of Service that state that they can give ALL your searches and browser history to the authorities at any time without notifying you first. Google will do this for governments in any country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_concerns_regarding_Google

You are being actively monitored. All the time. There was a writer of realistic fiction who recently moved to a new apartment. His internet searches included "how to kill someone and get away with it" and "famous serial killers". The FBI, local police, and SWAT showed up at his new place, roughed him up, went through all his things, confiscated his computer and laptop, and arrested him despite his pleas that he was just a writer, and innocent. After several days in jail they finally figured it out and let him go. They never paid him back for the damages to his apartment or his stuff.

[5a Violista]

Recently the most crazy thing that I've looked up was how mechanical bombs work (especially opposed to chemical bombs, etc).



I've researched both the tensile strength of various human body tissues, and the advantages and disadvantages of different shapes of knife blades.
I've also done this, but it was for research and not writing.

[AkazilliaDeNaro]

Recently I had to google the buying price of a nuclear weapon, a list of Criminal organizations capable of buying said nuclear weapon, and the average number of doses it takes to Overdose on any given drug.

These searches were, in fact, research for the same story.

See if you can figure that one out.