What falsities have you heard from non-educated people about explosives, or chemicals, or some common items. Ones that you arnt sure if its true, post them here, and lets all clear them up.

I read in the book - "Blaster's Training Manual" , and it said in there that one gallon of gas is equal to over something like 20 sticks of dynamite. I know its powerful, but thats a lot of explosive.

Here's another - "A car battery is like 5 sticks of dynamite itself, so If you caught an electric golf cart on fire, it could make a hole in the ground"

Any of these true? :confused:

Nah. In order to be explosive, gasoline has to be mixed with an adequate supply of a good oxidant, in the absence of which it is harmless. By comparison, dynamite, the principal active constituent of which is nitroglycerine (glyceryl trinitrate), has in its same molecules both an inflammable part (the glyceryl radical) and an oxidant (the covalent nitrate groups). This ensures a greater rate of propagation of ignition, producing expanding hot gases, than liquid gasoline in the presence of air, and hence greater explosive force.

Bugger.

Well it would be a good explosive if you could maintain a highly concentrated vapor cloud of N20 and gasoline. That has some serious potential.

Both are true and not true!

Dynamite has approx. 5 MJ/kg while gas has 40 MJ/kg. This means gas has about 8 times more energy. The problem is you normally cannot release that amount of energy within microseconds, like you can with HEs.
If you could (e.g. mix the gas with liquid N2O4 etc), the same weight of gas would do more damage than dynamite. Just think of how much ANFO you could mix with a gal. of gas, and subtract the energy that the AN contributes .... :D

A medium size car battery has approx. 12V x 45Ah = 0.54 kWh = 1.9 MJ. This is half a kilo of 40% dynamite. Again, this energy will not be released in microseconds. If you short it, it can catch fire, and if you burn it, either the plastic melts and it runs out, or the little gas inside could explode. But this is no big bang, rather like <1g AP, it splits the casing, spills acid etc so you shouldn’t put your face over it …. :p

They were somehow right, but were both comparing apples to bananas!

Having been a Volunteer Fireman I've seen more than my share of vehicle fires. In EVERY case of the gas tank going off there was a "Whump" sound which buldged the tank and blew off the gas cap and filler door sending a flame jet about 3' long. In one case it did open the seam in the tank about 1/2" and burning gas dripped from the tank.

No big explosion, no giant fireball, in fact it didn't even lift the back end of the vehicle off the ground but it did "unload" the shocks. The biggest danger came from the exploding tires, damn rubber tread flew every where and one rear tire blew off a fender and tossed it about 15' away.

I've had one car battery explode on me while "jumping" another car and it did exactly what Boomer described. It split the case and blew acid all over the engine compartment. Luckly my head was over the open hood or my face would have been covered in acid. Moral to the story, don't "jiggle" the hot cable once it's attached to the post.

If you really want to see an impressive site watch what happens to a full O2 tank when it's dropped and the valve shears away. The tank was about 4' tall and 6-8" around. It went threw 2 concrete block walls, traveled just over a city block and punched itself into the trunk of a big Buick parked in the lot of a Big Boys resturant. Idiot was moving the tank in a pickup truck without the safety cap on it and dropped it off the truck backing into a building. He had 3 tanks in the truck and his luck was to have the one without the cap on it fall out of the truck, he had them tied in the bed with some twine. Murphy was watching that day.

Here is something - http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlux/energies.htm

you might want to look at, that discusses about the energy contained within gas as compared to high explosives.

I've just read an article in this month's NewScientist (21 August 2004), about the wreck of the USS Richard Montgomery, sat on a sandbank only 2km from Sheerness in Kent, (approx. population 11,000).

It's a 'Liberty' cargo ship that ran aground carrying thousands of bombs for the WW2 effort. Some were salvaged back in 1944 for that effort but over 13,700 explosive devices were left, and now the decaying wreck is posing a serious danger.

A kind of falsity, (more lack of knowledge I suppose), I picked up on was here:

In 1946 bomb-disposal experts at the Ministry of Defence added reassuringly that the bombs "would not be likely to constitute a danger if they are unfuzed (sic), provided that no big explosion takes place in close proximity to them".

Notice that the author of the article (sic)'ed the spelling of fuze. The correct spelling.

The author then went on to use fuse in reference to the HE initiators in the bombs for the rest of the article. :rolleyes:

But of course we can't expect someone writing for a major scientific journal to know the difference between a fuze and a fuse, or at least check their dictionary, can we? :confused:

TreverSlyFox, your post was interesting ! I remember my HAZMAT training
pretty well and have to retake the test every time I renew my CDL. The
idiot with the O2 cylinders - I hoped his ass was jailed, fined, or both ! Did
this idiot have a HAZMAT endorsement on his license ? You know yourself
that that securing with twine and without protective caps is a recipe for
disaster. That guy was fucking moron !

As for gasoline, I have an impressive video the Navy shot of its ordnance
tests out at China Lake, California. The LCMDR who loaned me the tape
(and of course I copied it) told me about 1 of the gasoline-based FAEs that
was demonstrated. IIRC, 600 gallons of gasoline dispersed into the air and
ignited. The flame front completely destroyed whatever was in its path not
only with fire but what also appeared to be an enormous shockwave. I've
heard the story of the gasoline/dynamite equivalent and no doubt there is
some truth to it in an FAE application.

So basically, the only way to have gasoline put out close to its full power, would be to put it into an aerosol, then ignite, but it still is hard to acsess its power quickly, like with an HE.

I always wondered about a battery thing, good to clear it up.

The amount of energy in a Mars bar far exceeds that of a stick of dynamite. If butter could be made to explode with the same timescales as an HE, you would have the most powerful (chemical) explosive known to man, by mass.

From memory, a stick of dynamite has only 4kJ of energy, whereas a mars bar has 400+kJ of energy. However, it takes your body a few hours to get the energy out of a Mars, whereas a detonator will output the entire stick of dynamite in a few milliseconds.

FAE is loved because it is very cheap, yet very powerful. You get to dump all that hydrocarbon energy goodness into the event in a few tens of milliseconds. In theory, you could get the kind of detonation event seen in car engines that are mis-timed, too, which would further shorten the time it takes to dump the energy.

Sorry Jack but it is 4 KJ per gram, not per stick! Still Mars is higher (even dry bread is higher at 1200 kJ/100g).

Speaking of energy content, what about the hype on benzene triozonide (sp)? Some crap book says it has over 8 MJ/kg, which is 20% more than the perfect CHNO explosive (EGDN with zero OB). I thought this was only possible with metal fuels, fluorine compounds etc.! Are these 20% coming from the peroxide (ozonide) bonds?

Anyone have any pictures of grain elevator explosions?

Hmmm, bread you say, oh well, there isnt an plausable way to harness this energy in a short amount of time is there?

Boomer, comparing like for like, they both have the same ratio by the gram.
If Dynamite is 4kJ per gram, and Mars is 18.85kJ/g, my arguement still holds! The Mars bar is 4.5 times more "powerful", but over hours, not milliseconds.

CommonScientist, the way to harness the power quickly is an intimate mix of the food with liquid oxygen. Then light it. That gets the energy out pretty damned quickly!

About the gasoline explosion, that is how a car engine works. It is mixed with air and a vapor and then compressed and ignited, causeing harnessing the force to make the axle turn.

Thanks for telling us, nobody here knew ! :p

I read in an older post that the higher sensitivity of acidic AP is also a falsity. Everybody here rants on about how important bicarb washes are, while one of the chemistry pros here posted that while this is true for HMTD, ketonic peroxides are not sensitised by (moderate) acidity. Remember H2O2 is stabilized by acetic acid!

At least if using HCl it should not be necessary to use bicarb, any traces left will vanish when you dry the stuff. IIRC Mega does not mention it either.

Another myth is that drying NG will prevent it from getting acidic, because the NOx formed cannot form acid without water. The truth is that NG is decomposed by the NOx alone. And the less water present, the stronger the acid formed will be!

Another explosive falsity I have come across just recently on another thread: that terephthalic acid (para-benzenedicarboxylic acid), usually polycopolymerized with diols to make polyesters, can be efficiently made into explosive compounds, e.g. by nitration. It could be done, but very inefficiently, unless it is either firstly decarboxylated to benzene, or, with some difficulty, firstly reduced to p-xylene (which is also not entirely satisfactory); but in either case, uneconomic compared to starting with benzene (or better still toluene) in the first place.

Bugger.

A few 'low tech' falsities:

Explosives always detonate with a huge fireball in the movies! None of the explosives I ever used show anything else than a pale flash. I wonder, if even warheads detonate with a fireball. I can imagine, that umpteen kilos of a negative OB explosive can show some fire. What's about TNT or dinitro-naphthalen? Do these show flames???

Similar, the believe, that one could 'ignite' a gaz or petrol container by detonating some dynamite put below it.

Or even the ridiculous panic of a flame striking back (through the hose) into the propane can and blow up the whole caravan. My parents still believe that shit!!

Life would be lot more easy if all this was true :cool:

Most explosions done in the movies are nap charges, or sometimes they use petrol. Or so I hear.

Those "fireball" explosions in the movies, and fires, are usually simulated using Hollywood "special effects". If they were real, they would be very expensive to do, as well as posing serious dangers to the actors.

Bugger.

That's the problem with movies - it's more important for the effect to look good than to represent truth. And technically yes, as long as there is a negative oxygen balance leaving something to react with oxygen in the atmosphere there can be (what I think is referred to as) a secondary fireball. It won't definitely happen but it can. But then again - it does look impressive in a movie to see a massive fireball.

But once you start going into falsities in movies, you can just about pick any movie with explosives in it and show where they are wrong. Like when when the guy outruns the blast - I'm sure he can run faster than an 8 km/s detonation wave. Or when they make a high explosive by mixing mothballs and ammonia from the corner grocery mart. The list just goes on.

To Boomer:
my congratulations to you Boomer! You always write good posts, very informative and with a lot of HE's knowledge.
About AP's acidic sensivity i agree with you. I wash my AP only one time and with a bit of bicarbonate and my AP is very stable. I can press it, i can blow it with a hammer but it doesn't detonate. Well it detonate by hammer blow but i have to hit very strong!
I think that the most important thing is the reaction temperature, a low temp will give trimeric AP that is more stable.

About explosives falsities i read in a anarchist book that they use to set off astrolite with a fuse!
In a FBI document they said that AP is as powerfull as RDX! If it were only true!

Oh this is classic,I remember a long time ago reading totse and thinking it was like official or some shit. That was before I gained any knowledge of O-chem. But I remember reading that if you took some potassium permanganate and put it in a half filled jar of gasoline that it would be the equivilant of half a stick of dynamite. Needless to say, thats ridiculous. Its funny because I know people who think that shit is real and talk about it like its something to try. Of course these are the same people who know NOTHING about where to obtain potassium permanganate much less any other chemical.

Well... Has anyone ever actually shot at a can full of gasoline? On the movies it sure as hell blows up if they throw it behind them ast they're being chased, and then they shoot it with a snub nose .38 doesnt it?

Would it catch on fire?... Maybe... If the planets align right and such, but blow up... Not unless you could pay god to make it possible.

They tested shooting a gas tank of a car on mythbusters. Five bullets went through, and no ignition whatsoever.

Lighter flint fragments inside of a hollowpoint would make a difference. :)

Those big french bangers are really sticks of dynamite.
At least that's what some kid tried to convince me :P

Anyone ever try shooting a propane tank?In the movies they always seem to blow up just like the gas tanks of cars. :rolleyes: .I wanted to try this for my self.I don't have a spare gas tank but I do have three propane tanks lying around.

So I filled the tanks up,and made some special bullets.Using NBK2000's idea I bought a pack of five lighter flints and stuck the flints in the hollow tip of some long range .22 bullets.(they fit perfect).Then I removed a 5" circular patch of the protective layer of spark proof paint that coats two of the tanks.Then I set up the tanks and shot them each from 50 ft away.

My results were;The first tank I shot with a regular bullet,It was one with the protective coating removed,nothing hapenned.The next two tanks were shot with the special bullets,the tank with the coating still on it shot a twenty ft flame out of the hole where the bullet entered for about 6-7 seconds.The tank with the protective coating removed blew right up when shot with the modified bullet.

So from the tests I have done I'm pretty damn sure that unless you're using bullets with flint in the tips you probably won't be blowing up propane tanks just by shooting them.but then again it could happen,It's just unlikely. :D

I hate when people try to act like they are some kind of expert on explosives, especially when they are all talking about shit from the ACB and you KNOW they are full of shit but I mean you cant really say anything I mean, you cant be like "hey I make explosives and thats not true" you kinda just gotta sit there ignore it.

Yeah, that does fuckin suck...

@k9.. I never saw that episode of Mythbusters... Actually I never even knew they made that one! Damnit! I was gonna shoot a plastic 2 gallon gas can with an AK for an experiment to put on my website! Bastards beat me to it...

Um.. Dragon's breath shotgun ammo is a shotty shell full of flint particles... You'd have to cover the end of the hollow point with a metal plug or piston of some sort to prevent the flint particles inside from flaring up in the barrel though me thinks. Fill around the flint with magnesium flakes and you've got starburst ammo, which would make a huge difference between punching a hole in a tank and making it burst into flames.

I remember in an old western movie where the characters were supposedly placing bottles of NG in the bridge supports... That's the ONLY movie I can remember where they used actual explosives rather than a nap charge to blow something appart

It was a pretty good episode. They were shooting the shit out of the car at one point.

But relating to dragon's breath, I was under the impression that they used magnesium (and possibly WP).
http://www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/publicacts/pubact92/acts/92-0423.html - here lists it as --> "Dragon's breath shotgun shell" means any shotgun shell that contains exothermic pyrophoric mesh metal as the
projectile and is designed for the purpose of throwing or spewing a flame or fireball to simulate a flame-thrower."

And here's another interesting site on that - http://www.mindspring.com/~bad_karma/gaming/WoD/Gunfondlers/Dragonsbreath.htm

Notice that the author of the article (sic)'ed the spelling of fuze. The correct spelling.

The author then went on to use fuse in reference to the HE initiators in the bombs for the rest of the article. :rolleyes:

But of course we can't expect someone writing for a major scientific journal to know the difference between a fuze and a fuse, or at least check their dictionary, can we? :confused:

Interestingly enough almost all military specs. refer to it as a fuze. I believe the difference is that a fuse is the burning string while a fuze is the method used by military explosives. Normally it is a percussion based initiation method. Where I work we make "fuze kits" used to disarm "fuzes", and what we are disarming is a percussion based initiation system,eliminating the need for overly sensitive primaries.

Lighter flint fragments inside of a hollowpoint would make a difference.

Or use tracer rounds, during my service we started a forrest fire shooting tracers.. :D

I have no good story to tell this time except the one I asked before and you guys told me it's a myth...that explosive charge that is mixed with some fine sawdust makes greater effect (supposedly FAE?)

Just some comments on other post. I agree that H2O2 is acid stable, but I taught that it is H3PO4 that is used to buffer it to rigth pH range and heavy-metal ion complexing. Why should H2O2 be acid sensitive when it is itself weakly acidic compared to water?

As for organic compound air mixtures...My old professor told students on the lecture of accident that happend to him. There has been some experiment with acetone - liquid nitrogen mixture. It would be OK if the bottle provided by supply service contained liquid nitrogen...but it was liquid air:( I want describe what happend...exept that the women who worked with him still have small glass fragments in her legs (don't wear skirts even if you are from Scotland). This happend long time ago and before people became aware of danger with improperly labeled bottles.

"You'd have to cover the end of the hollow point with a metal plug or piston of some sort to prevent the flint particles inside from flaring up in the barrel though me thinks"

Being at the front of the bullet, they're not in contact with the propellent gases, so won't ignite. Anyway, lighter flints (zirconium?) aren't exactly flammable, they just glow and slowly oxidise.

Flints glow and slowly oxidise yes, but if they're hot and they are impacted in pretty much any way, the flint will burst into a bright shower of sparks, accompanied by a bright flash. I've got a video of this on my digi vid cam, but I have no good way of getting the video from the camera to the computer. Transfering the video from the cam to the computer with the usb cable gives me some choppy ass video :(

Air friction would heat the flint up, but I'm not sure as to whether it would actualy get impacted by the air or anything hard enough to make the flint shatter and spark up. Better safe than sorry though right?

Also I've only thought about the dragons breath ammo having flint in it becase it was mentioned to me before, and then I found a patent for a dragons breath kind of round that was full of flint pieces. It's probably not the most common dragons breath kind of round though.

The flints aren't going to do anything inside the barrel, nor the bullet, until impact with a hard target. At which point they'll be broken up and the friction of being pushed through metal will ignite the fragments into a shower of nice n' hot sparks, sufficient to ignite fuel vapors.

Take a lighter flint, wrap it inside of end of a stretched out lighter-flint spring (from a dud lighter), and heat it red-hot in a flame. Once it's glowing, toss it against a hard surface and watch what happens. :)

That's actually what the video I have on My digital video camera is of.. heh heh. Cheap thrill...

Using a portion of the large flint from a flint and steel fire starter in the end of a hollow point should be much more effective than many different flints.

Back on topic and more falsaties though... Isn't it funny how in movies they can but a 2lb block of "C-4" in the front door of 2 story brick concrete and completely disentegrate the entire building and the 2 buildings beside it? It gets even more humorous though when a block the same size is put on a safe door (in the same movie even) in a bank and all it does is blow the door open without ripping it from the wall or denting it?

Or like in the old Arnie movie Commando where he uses claymore's to blow up buildings

Holy crap! I remember that movie! When I was like 7 that was like my favorite movie. But yeah totally unrealistic, he sets all these claymores then on his way out, when hes running through that field and all the building like blow up behind him, its clearly not even close to realistic, especially with all that fire. But man I didnt know that when I was little and holy crap that movie rocked for its day. LOL (Nostalgia setting in)

I have always been told that a full disposable lighter is equal to a stick of dynamite by some uneducated "friends" I used to hang out with. They freaked when I told them that they won't then threw one in a fire. Nice little pop and fireball, but nothing spectacular.

Fuel tanks are usually composed of non-pyrophoric metals just for that very reason - to prevent ignition during a severe accident. The ignition (if any) would not occur as the projectile enters the reducing environment of the fuel tank, but once it exits the other side, ejecting a fine mist of fuel into the air. If there was enough kinetic energy still left in the round to strike pavement and generate a spark, then this fuel-air mixture might ignite. Otherwise you will be left with a leaking fuel tank, creating a high risk of fire. My fears have not been the bullets which strike the tank itself, but rather those which follow and strike the fuel-moistened concrete nearby - no flints required.

Let us not forget the ability of Lite-Brite's to spontaneously detonate and cause mass death.:rolleyes:

It's easy to scoff at the hysteria, but seeing as how I'm not familiar with cartoons or lite brites, I'm not sure what I would have thought had I glanced up and seen of those displays attached to an underpass. If they covered up the wires and batteries and shit, maybe more people would have instantly recognized it as a sign.

Fuck ads and ad agencies anyway. People who push product at the expense of cluttering the city deserve a good kick in the nuts, just on the principle of the thing. There's no truer mark of a consumerist sheep than letting yourself be conned into identifying with a product--or even worse-- an advertising campaign.

It's getting harder and harder to find things that aren't just plastered with logos.

Go into Wal-Mart and try to find a baseball cap without a logo. I've managed a couple of times, but they cost almost twice as much as the hats with sports team logos. :rolleyes:

Isn't that the truth! And with sunglasses, even the expensive ones don't give you that option! I once went to look for a pair at an upscale department store in Manhattan. Everything sucked because it had logos all over it--like I want to pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege of my face being a fucking free ad for Dior! On top of that, they were all poorly made; barely any better quality than the rip-offs you see everywhere. It dawned on me that the entire designer sunglasses market is a racket and a total scam perpetrated against rich suckers.

I must have been standing there for a long time because the sales bitch asked what type of glasses I was interested in. "Do you have anything that doesn't have a logo on it?" With her big, fat, idiotic empty face, she looked at me like I was from another planet. "Why don't you want a logo on it?" she whined with mild scorn. Like that was a bizarre request that was totally beyond the limit of her comprehension. "Well, I just don't." "Um, no not really..." she said, eying me skeptically.

Damn. Sometimes it really feels like I am from another planet.

Ok here is probably the most common mistake that MANY of my friends have said. ~~One M-80 is equal to a quarter stick of dynamite~~ Ive tried to prove them wrong with the pure physics of it but they just keep saying NO MY FREIND TOLD ME IT WAS! So theres a common one.

"Make a pouch out of the newspaper and put some fertilizer in it.
Then put cotton on top. Soak the cotton with fuel. Then light and
run like you have never ran before! This blows up 500 square feet
so don't do it in an alley!! - Jolly Roger"


That one always made me laugh, but more the thought of some complete idiot trying it in his parent's back yard. :D

Ah, the good old fertilizer AN fuse sensitive bomb.
That's more like a crappy smoke bomb than an high explosive. Making explosives is easy if you know what you're doing, but those k3wl k00kbooks make you think that setting fire to any mix of household products can detonate.
No, little jimmy, mixing Tide, Bleach and gas does not make an explosive. :rolleyes:

Ha, Dr. Hextromeister inspired me...

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The entire final sentence is false, except the last one in the list.

Essentially anything posted on Bombshock is a load of shit

There is a lot of explosives bullshit in the movies, with huge fireballs and total mayhem from impossibly small charges. I cringe when I see such things. It's just so damned stupid.

Even standard Sheeple :D seem to be tired of the lame-ass fireballs in movies. When are the producers going figure it out??

Remember the movie "Heat" with Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Al Pacino? I thought that the scene with the linear shaped charge, used on the back of an armed vehicle, was exceedingly well done and realistic. I though that the human factor (the truck driver completely dazed from the blast) was excellent as well.

Another "OK" scene is in The Bourne Supremacy, where Jason Bourne turns the gas on in a house then shoves some newspaper in a toaster. :D The resulting pressure pulse inside the house looks fairly realistic, though there is too much smoke (which I wouldn't think would happen in a propane/air explosion) and three "bad guys" get forcibly blown across the yard. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't happen either.

In Heat, the overpressure from the LSC blew out the back windows of cars in the car lot. If the overpressure was that strong, that far away, the guys inside the armored car would have been dead.

A couple days ago I was editing HE videos in a cafe and a kewl (who I don't even know) approached me. He started telling me all about how ANFO was fuse sensitive and how he wanted to make kilos of AP (even though he'd never made it in the first place).

I told him that he was wrong about the ANFO. As for the AP..... I told him about phone.

Then I recommended he gets off totse before he dies.

Lots of buddies of mine "blew up a lot of stuff" on Halloween, or so I was told. Then they told me they got their hands on a few M-80's. Impressive! I'm thinking to myself :rolleyes:. (my friend and I were setting of a very large ETN charge on the beach, see my other thread)

It annoys me a great deal that these people boast about taking the "mysterious powder" out of fireworks and making REALLY BIG BOMBZ. :D Fools! Meanwhile I am just dieing to belittle these people into mush with what I do for a hobby, but there is something important to be learned here. This is one thing that isn't a good idea to show off about. Even as insignificant as it would seem, with wrong listeners, word travels fast, often to the wrong people. Its wise to show discretion.

Oh crap, this is too good. I was just scrolling through YouTube (looking for explosives videos of course), and found a video titled "9/11 CONSPIRACY:WERE THERMITE SHAPE CHARGES USED AT THE WTC?"

:D

They misspelled "Shaped Charges" too.

-------

I'd have to watch "Heat" again and analyze the details, but I assumed that it was shrapnel that blew out the car windows.

Would someone be so kind as to explain to me what a “thermite shaped charge” actually is? Considering thermite is not an explosive, I find it hard to believe it can be shaped. Is the concept of a thermite shaped charge some crackpot idea (all I find on google are crackpots talking about conspiracies), or am I ignorant of this technology?

Mega,

I had never heard of it either until on another thread (http://www.roguesci.org/theforum/showthread.php?t=4155&page=12) (see final post) NBK mentioned that it can be used as the liner rather than the explosive. Of course you're right that it wouldn't work as the latter. :)

If there are SC warheads that incorporate thermite, then it may be that the liner isn't exclusively thermite. Perhaps a multilayer liner is used incorporating both a standard copper layer for penetration and a thermite layer for delayed/prolonged incendiary effect? I can't quite visualize exactly how that would work, but at any rate, the thermite would play a role analogous to that of the incendiary in armor-piercing incendiary rifle ammo.

There's a patent application by BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE (20060266204) for;

...cutting operations using linear thermite charges; the charges cut one dimensional or two dimensional geometric shapes; the invention is useful for structure entry or demolition.

So Thermite can have a cutting or penetrating effect like a shaped charge, though obviously not as deep.

If the plasma from the thermite reaction could be contained enough to direct it onto some structural metal it would be more than sufficient to collapse a building. Without all the messy shock waves of real shaped charges. It would make sense judging by the speed of the falling towers and the lack of explosions. However, I have no interest in getting into another argument over the incident.

I'm thinking a "thermite shaped charge" is something like channel iron filled with thermite with a thin slit cut into one side for exhaust/cutting. Obviously channel iron wouldn't hold up to the heat so something else would have to have been used.

As far as explosive falsities go, I've heard that a C-cell battery is the equivalent of a frag-grenade when tossed in a fire... usually, however, they just leak, slowly I might add.

Those kids who "blow stuff up" on Halloween/4th of July are useful though... Ever run low on fuse? Cut it short and make the noob light it!

He started telling me all about how ANFO was fuse sensitive

Lol I've had one kid tell me about how an M-80 can set off 25kg of ANFO and another tell me in awe about some guy who was selling baked bean cans filled with crushed sparklers.

I saw this on a forum...

"I am defanitely going to make some BP and flash this weekend, cos I hear it's safe for a begginer (me), but i'm not sure about it. I understand ratios and that, but do I just mix this stuff together, and light it on fire with a lighter, or what? Should I shake it to mix it in a container? Also is it a weight rateo or amount like 1 oz to 1 oz or 1 cup to 1 cup?"

I posted that he was dumb and should not try anything till he reads more, but he flames me and goes on to say:

"I heard that dinamite is 50% flash, 25% BP and 25% salfur, (I think i will make some soon), so this isn't that dangerous, cos they put it in M-80's and a friend told me that one went next to him and nothing hapened."

I don't know what to say...:eek: This is bad and he will get himself killed

EDIT: Later, he says that: "I think dinamite is safe to hold in your hand because it is only flash powder, so i defanitely will make some this weekend.":eek:

...Completely missing the fact that flash powder will remove your fingers if you're not nice to it.

"...and light it on fire with a lighter..." - god, I remember doing that at about age ten. I lost all the skin on the side of my hand, melted the top of the lighter, and had to grow back both my eyebrows and my fringe. Stupid films with people lighting lines of black powder as a sort of fuse...

I did, for a while, have an aquaintance whose idea of "explosives" was to find anything with the "oxidiser" hazard label on it, add powdered anything until he had a gallon or so and dampen with petrol, then set a twenty-metre fuse. However often I told him he was an idiot, he didn't listen, resulting in both him and his little brother going to hospital. He was just lucky he was a minor, because fireballs and explosions that size are definitely illegal.

This is one thing that isn't a good idea to show off about. Even as insignificant as it would seem, with wrong listeners, word travels fast, often to the wrong people. Its wise to show discretion.

Wise words indeed.

The less you tell people, the better. The average hobbyist will have ample opportunities to tell would-be "explosive Xpertz" exactly what time it is. This, however, should be avoided at all costs.

In this day and age, you really do not need word getting out that you have any real knowledge. In fact, I've faked "kewlhood" on several occasions to escape real trouble.

So Thermite can have a cutting or penetrating effect like a shaped charge, though obviously not as deep.

Actually shaped part is (unintentionally) misleading. When people see the word "charge", they tend to believe that it's an explosive device. Actually charge means load, so it's not an explosive device but rather a cutting device.

I remember finding a few you tube videos showing thermite charges in action. (Like this one : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn-MCCZ3O1M)

You can hear hiss and pop sound in the video.

There's a lot of misconception about consumer fireworks. Many people refer to the flash inside of firecrackers as "gunpowder". I've also had a cousin tell me that high explosives can be set off with a model rocket engine in place of a detonator.

However there is a difference between what one person conceives and what is generally determined to be a "falsity". We can look at what one individual, through personal lack of knowledge, believes and what is a common misconception. I think this thread is about common misconceptions. "If you drop NG on the ground it will always detonate with utmost violence" (measurable VoD & initiation sensitivity). "Dynamite is initiated with a fuse". (Conceptualizing that material does not need a detonator) "Ammonium Nitrate is an explosive" (Not knowing the difference between a blasting agent and a secondary explosive).

As far as misconceptions go with NG, we can thank Hollywood for those. I was watching a TV show (Lost) with my wife a few nights ago. It is an entertaining show, but there was a point in the particular episode where they come accross Nitroglycerine. The supposed "expert" was warning them that simply dropping it could cause it to explode while holding a stick of the dynamite, when all of the sudden, he explodes in a flash and get spread over a mile of forest. Obviously, NG should be handled with care, but simply holding it will not set it off. And if you did drop it, you would have to get a fairly solid hit, especially if it is desensitized with clay, AN, ect. He also stated that NG is the "most sensitive explosive known to man", which is entirely false.

Also, I would urge you to read some of the posts people have made on my youtube videos involving NG here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saqlhTuV4DQ) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bO6YEi0lu8). People seem to think .1g of NG will destroy the area the size of a football field. I deleted one last night, which I shouldn't have because it was hilarious. It went something like this:

"Fucking retard, that wasn't Nitro. Nitro explodes with a big fireball. And 25g would have blown up the camera."

I used proper grammar and puncuation, which he didn't, but you get the point. Or here is a good one:

"If it was plain Nitroglycerin it would like blow that pond up. Does the ammonium nitrate lower its explosion."

And this is my personal favorite:

"Fuck you bitch
This is not nitroglycerine sucker
You would be died if it really was.
This was equivalent to a 0,1 to 0,2 grams of nitro charge.
Also, there wasn't any flame.
Nitro is making a lot of fire when exploding so stop sucking sucker!"

Its funny how people with lowered cognitive ability (due to their mother drinking when pregnant, drugs, ect.) always instantly resort to starting their posts with "Fuck". So anyway, we can all thank Hollywood for making every 12 year old who watches Die Hard 2 Xplosive Xpertz :p

Hollywood's' a scream! I like the "fireball" in every explosion ever filmed. My wife's family has some "effects" guys sprinkled in there and once we got into a discussion about it. I said I thought that effect was over used and the guy I was talking to was amazed that anyone would even critique the effect.

From what I would determine many of the effects guys don't really know the composition of the materials used. I personally think it's gross hydrocarbons in most of the big ones and naphthalene + flash in some of the smaller ones.

Hollywood is responsible for so many misconceptions in so many different venues, it's sickening.

From what I would determine many of the effects guys don't really know the composition of the materials used. I personally think it's gross hydrocarbons in most of the big ones and naphthalene + flash in some of the smaller ones.

I don't like to be called a pyrotechNICIAN. That's what many of the effects guys are- They just take pre-packaged effects, wire them up and shoot them. They often couldn't make what they use, many don't know the chemistry or techniques of manufacture.

As far as what the fireball effects are- If it's near an actor or valuable prop/scenery, it's often a dust fire ball such as non dairy creamer and/or finely powdered napthalene lifted with plain old black powder. If it's out in the open, it's often a liquid fuel. Depending on the size and effect desired, it may be lifted with either high explosives or black powder. Additionally, there are pre packaged effects simulating mortar hits and other small explosions- They are usually dust effects.

At this point, if you try to make an explosion that looks real, the audience won't get it. They are conditioned to the fireball look... And they all think that you can out run a shock wave on foot.

One of the first things I usually tell someone I am teaching to shoot is: If you saw it on TV or in the movies, forget it. That's not how it works in the real world.

What are you talking about Bert? I outran a shockwave on foot once! :D
I was once on a quest to make an explosion similar to those seen on the movies just out of curiousity. I suceeded when I put 500g of APAN under 7.4L of gasoline. The fireball was impressive, I still have it uploaded to my photobucket account here (http://s164.photobucket.com/albums/u6/pudgedog69/Compile/?action=view&current=FAE.flv). This follows the same method outlined in the military improvised explosives handbook where it is described as a "fuel air explosive". There are two stage FAEs that first launch the fuel in a cloud and then detonate it with a second charge a few miliseconds later. This one was obviously a single stage. It is generally used to destroy thin walled structures, such as crappy mud huts and used in caves. In the future, I may try the same design, except with 500g of PLX, ANNM, or some other high explosive over a few gallons of naptha. Anyway, it is funny how people believe NG and HEs in general is always accompanied by a fireball. Silly kids...