The Right Thing 2016-05-23

[ShirouZhiwu]

On the subject of suppressors:
The pistols are 10mm. 10mm bullets are supersonic and comparable to the .44 magnum. They will create a pop or crack as the bullets create their own little sonic booms. Suppressors in such a scenario serve strictly as blast reducers. This is essential when firing guns indoors if you don't want to suffer both temporary and permanent hearing loss in the middle of your shoot out. It's not so much to conceal your shooting from any neighbors, but to make sure you can still hear afterwards.

[FreeFlier]

On the subject of suppressors:
The pistols are 10mm. 10mm bullets are supersonic and comparable to the .44 magnum. They will create a pop or crack as the bullets create their own little sonic booms. . . .

Generally, yes, though the last I knew subsonic loads with heavy bullets were readily available from commercial sources, and anyone who can get depleted uranium can definitely have such made, since DU ammunition is definitely not commercially available.

. . . Suppressors in such a scenario serve strictly as blast reducers. This is essential when firing guns indoors if you don't want to suffer both temporary and permanent hearing loss in the middle of your shoot out. It's not so much to conceal your shooting from any neighbors, but to make sure you can still hear afterwards.

It also serves to prevent or reduce the chance of ignition of flammable vapors/gasses, which is why SWAT teams raiding drug labs use them.

Suppressors also suppress muzzle flash quite thoroughly, which is important when using night vision gear.

--FreeFlier

[Jabberwonky]

And the approved method of destroying most high explosives is to burn them.

Most of the demolition elimination I witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq involved pyrotechnic destruction of said materials...

[AnotherFairportfan]

And the approved method of destroying most high explosives is to burn them.

Most of the demolition elimination I witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq involved pyrotechnic destruction of said materials...

Ditto Viet Nam. I was coming out of the receiver site (USNAVCOMMSTA Cam Ranh Bay) to head back to the comm center (fifer or teen miles down the peninsula) when the EOD boys let off a ton or two across the bay...

It was amazing watching the shock wave walking across the water. (And i'm pretty sure i saw it moving through the air, too.)

[FreeFlier]

And the approved method of destroying most high explosives is to burn them.

Most of the demolition elimination I witnessed in Afghanistan and Iraq involved pyrotechnic destruction of said materials...

Looks like that was an IED . . . you blow those if you can rather than risk disarming it so you can burn it.

And a lot of blasters and EOD men will blow it if they can . . . it's quicker, and they frequently like the bang.

Bulk unprimed explosives in decent condition, though, burning is normal.

Now if you have dynamite that's sweating nitro, or is covered in white crystals . . . those you might blow. If you have the room . . .

There was a case in Portland OR back in the 1970s where they burned a couple of tons of dynamite that was covered in white crystals in a boiler in a open field near some houses . . . because they didn't dare risk moving the stuff. It would have had to be slid out of the stack, which would have likely set it off. Got everybody out of the neighborhood, piled lots and lots of dry wood around it, and burned the works . . . it burned quietly.

Dad got that story from the EOD man in charge of the operation while dad was attending a blasting seminar. That guy had quite a few interesting stories . . . and dad was one of two or three blasters there who had destroyed old dynamite, so he was asked to tell how he'd done it. Also to tell about what had tipped him about a bunch of times where "old dynamite" wasn't.

--FreeFlier

[GlytchMeister]

Today I Learned if I see brown or clear fluid on dynamite, walk away and call for help.

If I see white crystals on dynamite, back away slowly while speaking kind words in a soothing voice, avoiding eye contact until well outside of the blast radius, then RUN THE F__K AWAY and call Freeflier, Jabberwonky, Al, Sarge, and Frank Doyle (FBI guy from Mythbusters).

[FreeFlier]

Oily liquid on dynamite, no matter what the color, you withdraw all personnel and call for experts. That liquid is nitroglycerine, and it will detonate from heat, shock, friction, freezing, electrical shock . . . or simply because the mood is upon it.

Crystallized nitroglycerine is even less stable.

The good news is that dynamite is only made for special purposes these days . . . most people use either ANFO because it's cheaper and less sensitive, or water gels because they're safer.

(DuPont discontinued production of dynamite in 1976, and the other makers mostly discontinued it soon after.)

Water gels have odd properties . . . they slowly become more and more stable until they can't be made to detonate at all. (This is exactly the opposite of most explosives.)

--FreeFlier

[GlytchMeister]

Honestly, if I ever found something that looked vaguely like it could be a bomb, I'd order a hasty retreat. There's a reason I never screwed around with explosives. Hideous fuels that burn super hot, stick, or produce molten metal as a byproduct? Sure, I used that stuff frequently. The closest I got to an explosive was a modified potato cannon with non-dairy creamer on the business end. Makes a handy dandy signal, and that's really just a rapid burn, not a detonation.

Explosives? Nuh-uh. No. Nopenopenope. That's where I draw the line. No bombs. Absolutely not. Never used them.

If I see any sort of chemical formula with too many nitrogens and not enough carbons and hydrogens, I start making "get it away from me" hand gestures, because I know high-nitro compounds are just begging for an excuse to realize a lifelong dream of becoming a rapidly expanding cloud of hot nitrogen gas.

Same thing with fluorine chemicals. Unless it's toothpaste, tap water, or Teflon, I don't want it around. Mad-Scientist-Glytch has always wanted to play with O2F2, but Biological-Imperitive-Glytch and Self-Preservation-Glytch and Common-Sense-Glytch overrule him.

...aaaand radioactive anything. I get enough radiation from the sun, X-rays, and radon coming up from my basement, thankyouverymuch, kthxbai. Again, it's that whole "mad scientist" vs "I don't wanna die horribly today" debate.

[GlytchMeister]

I love me some deflagration, but I am no fan of detonations.

...

Huh, I bet someone could make a mnemonic out of that somehow....

[Just Old Al]

Today I Learned if I see brown or clear fluid on dynamite, walk away and call for help.

If I see white crystals on dynamite, back away slowly while speaking kind words in a soothing voice, avoiding eye contact until well outside of the blast radius, then RUN THE F__K AWAY and call Freeflier, Jabberwonky, Al, Sarge, and Frank Doyle (FBI guy from Mythbusters).

Leave me the the Hades out of it...even I ain't that crazy.

[FreeFlier]

And by the way, dynamite is normally not red. It's white, cream or tan with black or brown lettering on it.

Red sticks are normally road or railroad flares.

--FreeFlier

[Dave]

... and was one of two or three blasters there who had destroyed old dynamite, so he was asked to tell how he'd done it. Also to tell about what had tipped him about a bunch of times where "old dynamite" wasn't.

I'll take "unresolved narrative hooks" for ten points, Chuck!

Please spoil some beans!

[Sgt. Howard]

Today I Learned if I see brown or clear fluid on dynamite, walk away and call for help.

If I see white crystals on dynamite, back away slowly while speaking kind words in a soothing voice, avoiding eye contact until well outside of the blast radius, then RUN THE F__K AWAY and call Freeflier, Jabberwonky, Al, Sarge, and Frank Doyle (FBI guy from Mythbusters).

Leave me the the Hades out of it...even I ain't that crazy.

WHAT?!? Al, I'm surprised... yes, PLEASE call me first. Specialty of the house is anything unstable (including me). Worst thing that happens is Miss Annie will roll her eyes and say, "Here we go again," or words to the effect.

[Vitrbjorn]

WHAT?!? Al, I'm surprised... yes, PLEASE call me first. Specialty of the house is anything unstable (including me). Worst thing that happens is Miss Annie will roll her eyes and say, "Here we go again," or words to the effect.

My wife just grabs an old WW2 era iron pot and yells 'fire in the hole!'

[Warrl]

My wife just grabs an old WW2 era iron pot and yells 'fire in the hole!'

Chili with beans and habaneros?

[FreeFlier]

... and was one of two or three blasters there who had destroyed old dynamite, so he was asked to tell how he'd done it. Also to tell about what had tipped him about a bunch of times where "old dynamite" wasn't.

I'll take "unresolved narrative hooks" for ten points, Chuck!

Please spoil some beans!

Most of the time calls about old dynamite turned out to be red sticks in a bag or box in the garage . . . and were road flares.

Though once it was at the house formerly belonging to a deceased logger who had done his own blasting . . . and was known to be a bit careless about safety precautions. And that's careless by logging standards . . . dad was a bit worried about that one: worried enough he went out after dark to have a look . . . there was never an explanation why he'd had road flares in the furnace room of his house.

Then there was the call when dad asked the standard question "What makes you think it's dynamite?"

"Because it says DuPont Ditching Extra on it, and on the box!"

"Okay . . . I'll be right out!"

About ten pounds of, indeed, DuPont Ditching Extra, and starting to sweat.

The owner plowed up a big chunk of a field while dad went to town for a truckload of dry wood . . . they laid out a long narrow fire pile, carefully carry the dynamite out to the pile, laid it on top, put the box at the far end, added some more dry wood over the top of everything, and lit one end of the pile . . . waited for it to burn out, and inspected it for leftovers. It burned quietly and there weren't any leftovers.


One of the other times he hauled it out to where he was blasting, piled good dynamite over it, tamped (covered) the works with mud and set it off with the main shot . . . a bit noisy, but it worked. (The big risk with detonation is that the explosion will through unexploded chunks around.) The important thing on this one was that the old dynamite was evidence in a criminal case, so dad had to account for destroying evidence . . . the state magazine inspector issued an official order to destroy the dynamite as a hazard within thirty days, then dad, the inspector, the magazine owner, and a law enforcement officer all went to the site, they watched dad prepare the shot, then they all signed official witness statements that the dynamite had been destroyed as an undue hazard in accordance with official orders issued by an agent of the state of Washington and that it had exploded with sufficient force that it was unquestionably dynamite. They all expected to be called to testify, but the defense read the statements and stipulated the testimony!


The boiler episode i mentioned above the dynamite had been stolen about ten or fifteen years before . . . they'd never found it, and then someone went to scrap the boiler, and for some reason instead of just torching the smokebox off like usual, he cut the nuts off the cleanout door instead, and pried the door open . . . then he turned the torch off and walked away.

The EOD man from Vancouver (WA) Barracks came over to supervise disposal, and he's the one that told about it.


At the start of this seminar, the leader went around the room asking everybody to tell what they did, and what was the biggest shot they'd ever set off . . . got to this middle-aged man, and he sort of smiled and said "Three and a half million pounds of ANFO . . . "

Stunned silence, then someone said "My God! You could move a mountain with that!"

Soberly: "We did."

He was the head blaster for an operation in the Mesabi iron mines, and they'd been opening a new section . . . there was a mountain that needed to go, and after checking everything out, they concluded that the safest and most economical approach was to take the entire mountain and the block under it in a single shot, since they had the capability to do that.

BTW, that was set off with precisely two fuse caps . . . they primed with Tovex (a DuPont water gel) primed with detonating cord delayed with MS delays, and led the main trunk back to a flat-topped sawhorse with a hatchet laying on it. When they were ready to fire, they took the pigtail (two blasting caps taped into two small boosters and taped firmly to a short length of detonating cord) out to the bench in the back of a pickup, tied the pigtail firmly to the main trunk with a square knot and taped the ends down, then spitted (lit) the fuses and drove away . . . about ten minutes later, the shot went off.

They didn't use electric firing because there were always eddy currents in the ore, and with this arrangement, if something went wrong and you had to stop the shot, you could drive out there and cut the det cord with the hatchet! Whack!

--FreeFlier

[GlytchMeister]

"Three and a half million pounds of ANFO"

You know something is really bad when you read a number in word format and your brain insists it was a typo and they just added too many zeroes.

That's... A lot of MythBuster ANFO Cement Trucks. (That's my standard unit of measurement for non-nuclear but really big explosions - because I know what a MB ANFO Cement Truck explosion is, I can see it in my head and visualize multiples of it.

...that's a lot of the "Industrial Diamond" myth explosions. Or even the explosion where they welded two sheets of steel together and made a potato chip. Hell, that dwarfs the Train Station explosion...

Holy shit...

[FreeFlier]

They didn't haul it in anything as small as cement trucks. They had specially designed trucks for the job.

They were selling off their 18" diameter rock drills . . . because they were too small.

They used Caterpillar D9s and D10s . . . for cleanup.

I believe they were using bucket-wheel excavators to feed the ore to conveyors.

And, BTW, a properly design and executed shot isn't spectacular . . . there's a rumble and a lot of dust, and when the dust settles the object has slumped into a pile.

Of course, ever now and then there's a mistake . . .

--FreeFlier

[AnotherFairportfan]

They didn't use electric firing because there were always eddy currents in the ore, and with this arrangement, if something went wrong and you had to stop the shot, you could drive out there and cut the det cord with the hatchet! Whack!

--FreeFlier

Many years ago, i read an article about Hollywood demolitions experts.

{At this point, i always like to mention that, if you've seen the beginning of the film Deja Vu, the chief powderman and his crew ere aboard the boat with fire extinguishers, just in case ... and it was back in regular service three days later.. OTOH, the bridge scene in Duck You Sucker* was, from what i've read, the biggest practical explosion on a film ever, at least to that point - which is why it doesn't look as impressive as some Hollywood explosions}

In those days the formula for a car explosion (which doesn't happen in real life) was like ten or twenty pounds of cat litter, a gallon of gasoline, a gallon of rubber cement and a quarter-stick of dynamite. Pretty red fireball, black smoke and fiery trails.

Powdermen said that, if you REALLY screwed up in the studio magazine, the first you'd know was when your head hit the blow-out hatch in the roof.

And my favourite line of all was the old-time powderman saying to an apprentice that, when you're using det cord, make damned sure it's right before you touch it off "...because you'll play hell trying to stomp it out."

===================

* I have no reason why that has both the English and Italian dialog.

[GlytchMeister]

Misplaced decimal points are the avatars of chaos and disaster.