The Right Thing 2016-05-23

[Jabberwonky]

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

I suspect that the bang was more of a reason than anything else...

[Catawampus]

(And i'm pretty sure i saw it moving through the air, too.)

You often can if it is a big enough explosion and relatively far away.

If it's a big enough explosion and not far away you likely can, too, but you might be a tad too distracted to notice the more subtle visual effects.

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

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

A few times with old metal-cased ordnance I've seen them heat the thing up a bit to the point where the explosive melts, then just drain it out. I think that the times I've seen that done was always when it was in a place where simply making the thing go boom wasn't really an option, and moving it was not that great an idea either.

Water gels have odd properties . . . they slowly become more and more stable until they can't be made to detonate at all.

Not to be confused with liquid explosives, which are often the very opposite. Liquid explosive land mines are really obnoxious that way: they start off with you having to step on them for them to detonate, then later if you step near them they'll detonate, and eventually you'll be sitting somewhere listening to all of the mines spontaneously blowing up.

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.

So, no funding your college lifestyle with an illicit meth lab?

[Dave]

Mad-Scientist-Glytch has always wanted to play with O2F2, but Biological-Imperitive-Glytch and Self-Preservation-Glytch and Common-Sense-Glytch overrule him.

It makes a great mixer with pentaborane

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.

In one of E.E. "Doc" Smith's space-opera novels, the protagonists (from Earth) ended up spending some time with a race of intelligent humanoids who lived on one of Saturn's moons (Titan, I believe). These folks had evolved to live at extremely low temperatures (their body fluids were laced with fluorine) and would "burn up" if exposed to the heat of a human body.

Their primary military weapons were radio-steered torpedoes, coated with a highly reflective shielding (against their enemy's high-energy-photon weapons).

The explosive was quite simple... N26, or (as the protagonist described) "pure, crystalline, pentavalent nitrogen. No wonder it's unstable!"

Not the kind of stuff you can get Dow to turn out by the truckload. Or even by the microgram. It really doesn't like any temperatures you'll find on our planet, except in a specialized laboratory.

[Catawampus]

Mad-Scientist-Glytch has always wanted to play with O2F2, but Biological-Imperitive-Glytch and Self-Preservation-Glytch and Common-Sense-Glytch overrule him.

It makes a great mixer with pentaborane

Goes well with the quark-gluon soup with heptanitrocubane crackers and a nice glass of fluoroantimonic acid to wash it down with.

[AnotherFairportfan]

In one of E.E. "Doc" Smith's space-opera novels, the protagonists (from Earth) ended up spending some time with a race of intelligent humanoids who lived on one of Saturn's moons (Titan, I believe). These folks had evolved to live at extremely low temperatures (their body fluids were laced with fluorine) and would "burn up" if exposed to the heat of a human body.

Their primary military weapons were radio-steered torpedoes, coated with a highly reflective shielding (against their enemy's high-energy-photon weapons).

The explosive was quite simple... N26, or (as the protagonist described) "pure, crystalline, pentavalent nitrogen. No wonder it's unstable!"

Not the kind of stuff you can get Dow to turn out by the truckload. Or even by the microgram. It really doesn't like any temperatures you'll find on our planet, except in a specialized laboratory.

According to The Universes of E.E.Smith (i used to have a copy; it may still be in storage) that is also the formula for duodec {duodecaplatylatomate} - the next-best-thing (or next-worst, depending on which end of the missile trajectory you find yourself on) to an atomic bomb.

Doc really love "frigid-blooded poison breather" races.

[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. . . .

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.
--FreeFlier

Perhaps, but somehow I don't see them wanting to under powder their bullets given what they were up against and it's unlikely they did since they punched holes in the safe room.

[Dave]

According to The Universes of E.E.Smith (i used to have a copy; it may still be in storage) that is also the formula for duodec {duodecaplatylatomate} - the next-best-thing (or next-worst, depending on which end of the missile trajectory you find yourself on) to an atomic bomb.

Interesting! I always wondered about duodec, since Doc never seemed to describe its chemistry in detail in the canon. Have to dig up my copy of The Universes and give that a read.

Octaazacubane looks as if it would come close to N26 in nastiness, and might even be (meta)stable at our temperatures if somebody could figure out how to synthesize it without being repeatedly killed to death by the intermediate work products. It does seem to meet Glytchmeister's criteria for "too many nitrogens and not enough carbons and hydrogens".

[Catawampus]

Octaazacubane looks as if it would come close to N26 in nastiness, and might even be (meta)stable at our temperatures if somebody could figure out how to synthesize it without being repeatedly killed to death by the intermediate work products. It does seem to meet Glytchmeister's criteria for "too many nitrogens and not enough carbons and hydrogens".

Some cosmologies suggest that there's actually only one of each type of thing in the universe. There's only one nitrogen atom, for example, and all "other" nitrogen atoms are either imperfect reflections of it or else are that same atom simply reappearing constantly through all of time and space. So you could maybe just convince that one nitrogen atom to really express itself in one place at one time. . .

[AnotherFairportfan]

According to The Universes of E.E.Smith (i used to have a copy; it may still be in storage) that is also the formula for duodec {duodecaplatylatomate} - the next-best-thing (or next-worst, depending on which end of the missile trajectory you find yourself on) to an atomic bomb.

Interesting! I always wondered about duodec, since Doc never seemed to describe its chemistry in detail in the canon. Have to dig up my copy of The Universes and give that a read.

That's how i remember it - i bought my copy at the 1966 WorldCon and it's been years since i saw it.

Incidentally - Ron Ellik, one of the authors of that work, who died in the 1968 at age thirty, also co-authored a "Man from UNCLE" novel, The Cross of Gold Affair which was stuffed full of SF fannish references (with Bill Ellis, as by "Frederick Davies"); i think it came out after his death.

[Dave]

Just checked my copy, and it describes duodec as being 27 atoms of heptavalent nitrogen per molecule, with twelve of these molecules being linked together to form a complex of 324 atoms of nitrogen. They don't cite a canon reference for this, so perhaps it may have been via private communication with Doc.

Would definitely go boom. Scary-go-boom.

[FreeFlier]

. . . A few times with old metal-cased ordnance I've seen them heat the thing up a bit to the point where the explosive melts, then just drain it out. I think that the times I've seen that done was always when it was in a place where simply making the thing go boom wasn't really an option, and moving it was not that great an idea either.

That can be done, if you know what the main charge is made of, and have removed the fuze and detonation train . . . otherwise, heating it is liable to cause an uncontrolled detonation.

It works best with TNT or Amatol, which can be melted by steam.

Try that with Lyddite, aka Picric Acid, and the whole works will most likely blow . . . especially if it's in an inadequately protected metal casing. Metallic picrates are nasty stuff . . . slightly more stable and somewhat more predictable than nitroglycerine.

Water gels have odd properties . . . they slowly become more and more stable until they can't be made to detonate at all.

Not to be confused with liquid explosives, which are often the very opposite. Liquid explosive land mines are really obnoxious that way: they start off with you having to step on them for them to detonate, then later if you step near them they'll detonate, and eventually you'll be sitting somewhere listening to all of the mines spontaneously blowing up.

Almost all explosives destabilize over time, which is what makes water gels so odd and nifty.

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.

So, no funding your college lifestyle with an illicit meth lab?

Only if someone is offering rewards for them . . .

--FreeFlier

[scantrontb]

In one of E.E. "Doc" Smith's space-opera novels, the protagonists (from Earth) ended up spending some time with a race of intelligent humanoids who lived on one of Saturn's moons (Titan, I believe). These folks had evolved to live at extremely low temperatures (their body fluids were laced with fluorine) and would "burn up" if exposed to the heat of a human body.

Their primary military weapons were radio-steered torpedoes, coated with a highly reflective shielding (against their enemy's high-energy-photon weapons).

In John W. Campbell's "Arcot, Morey, and Wade" stories: "The Black Star" Series, he had one of the alien races using LIQUEFIED LIGHT as a weapon... they coalesced it from solar panels on the top of their plane, then pumped it into bomb casings and dropped them off the plane, the process for liquefying it lasted for a bit of time before the light instantly reverted to its non-liquid form and devastating the target...

[AnotherFairportfan]

Actually, as i recall it, the condensed light powered their ships, or they were able to make it into a perfectly-transparent substance that wasalmost indestructible and could be used for windshields and ports.

It was AW&M who figured out how to decompose that to make weapons and power supplies.

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

Which one was The Pirate?

[scantrontb]

Actually, as i recall it, the condensed light powered their ships, or they were able to make it into a perfectly-transparent substance that wasalmost indestructible and could be used for windshields and ports.

It was AW&M who figured out how to decompose that to make weapons and power supplies.

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

Which one was The Pirate?

nope, that was yet another race that figured that trick out... the first race i mentioned (the Venusians i'm pretty sure), DID use it to power the "aircraft" that they used as the bomber, as well as to provide the payload for those bombs, but they were unable to get it fully condensed into SOLID light, i believe their tech wasn't as efficient so as to be able to do so, or maybe that it was just a prototype tech for them and was in the early stages of use... i think it was the Arcturan's ?? that were the ones that used SOLID light as energy conductors and windows, as well as the perfect insulation for those conductors... Lux was the ultimate superconductor, and Relux the perfect insulator...

and it's been a few years since i read it, but i Preferred to say Wade... Arcot and Morey were the two Sparks that caught him...

[AnotherFairportfan]

nope, that was yet another race that figured that trick out... the first race i mentioned (the Venusians i'm pretty sure), DID use it to power the "aircraft" that they used as the bomber, as well as to provide the payload for those bombs, but they were unable to get it fully condensed into SOLID light, i believe their tech wasn't as efficient so as to be able to do so, or maybe that it was just a prototype tech for them and was in the early stages of use... i think it was the Arcturan's ?? that were the ones that used SOLID light as energy conductors and windows, as well as the perfect insulation for those conductors... Lux was the ultimate superconductor, and Relux the perfect insulator...

and it's been a few years since i read it, but i Preferred to say Wade... Arcot and Morey were the two Sparks that caught him...

Yep - you're right. I remembered wrong.

My dad had that and all of Doc Smith's books in Fantasy Press editions - the Smith books were signed and numbered.

{Well, actually, he didn't have the FP edition of the first "Skylark" - he had the original first edition from the Twenties...}

Let's just say that those books had a lasting effect on me and my younger brother...