Hi Klavier,
You could only perform such an experiment, if you can make sure that you do not endanger others. From this follows that a lot of viruses that you can spread when detection fails is not a policy for you to follow. When people test viruses they do that under pre-conditioned conditions, in a virtual surrounding, and with special tools that can analyze what happens. Even under such circumstances, you are never to be connected to the Internet.
If you are an irresponsible person, you look on virus forums for links that people give to live viruses, or even better, you take down all protection from your machine (av, at, fw, as), and hang it unprotected onto the Internet, with a honeypot installed, then you can have all the fun without much effort, your machine has been turned into a zombie owned by malcreants, unworkable for the user, and a source of infection and spam for people that do not know how to defend themselves against this. Do you really want to do that?
Answer this question for yourself. I do not think this a wise idea.
If you like to follow another path. You learn about searching effectively, analyze threads on anti-malware forums, learn about the workings of various malware, cleansing routines like hjt, killbox, and become a malware fighter. Learn to analyze and write script, like java, C++ or delphi, Unite the ranks of the malware fighters, learn to help fighting malware by standing on the shoulders of those that came here before you. You do not have to download viruses, or be an author of viruses to be a good malware fighter. These things have nothing to do with each other. Boy, you do not like to start from the wrong end, will ye?
polonus (malware fighter)
polonus