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Cain
QUOTE
The ignition temp of thermite is pretty high though, usually you use powdered magnesium to get it started.


You don't need powdered magnesium; you can ignite a strip of it with a lighter. Use a strip of magnesium like a dynamite fuse.

QUOTE
Your statement runs counter to everything I've heard about the stuff, including from first-hand accounts.

My recollection is that the stuff is highly unstable and reactive, but not necessarily powerful. Ammonium tri-iodide, aka Nitrogen tri-iodide, is ultra-touchy stuff-- when dry, you can literally breathe on it funny, and set it off. Since it's so touchy, it's very hard to get a large enough crystal to make more than a loud bang.

You know the "pop-it's" you throw on the ground? Those are primarily NI3, in a stabilizing medium. It doesn't take much to set those off, so imagine how unstable it'd be without the stabilizers.

NI3 is classified as a high explosive, since it detonates fairly rapidly; but that does not always equal explosive force. TNT and Octanitrocubane, for example, are a lot more powerful-- basically, the nitro groups are what does it. Ammonium tri-iodide only has one nitro group, which means its yield is likely to be far less than the others.
Zazen
When I was a kid I bought a bunch of those Pop-It things, opened them up, seperated the white crystals from the dark ones, and filled empty gelatin capsules with them to shoot out of a straw. They really hurt when they hit you and would take chunks of paint off the wall.
Siege
Imagine living in a state that doesn't allow fireworks. Imagine you're 12 and you load up on those things on your way back home.

Now, somehow, the damn things get scattered all over the tile floor of the bathroom before you go to bed.

It's 03:00 and you're staggering into the bathroom, reach for the lightswitch, and lots of little explosions go off under your feet.

I am not too ashamed to admit it was one of the few times I shrieked like a girl and dove for cover.

-Siege
Nikoli
Some kids I knew in highschool had tons of fun using 2-liter bottles with about a cup of water duct taped to the side of a house. Drop in a small chunk of Dry ice, screw the cap on really tight and run like hell. Sounds like dynamite going off and can oocaisonally blow a good sized hole in cheap housing material.
Siege
QUOTE (Nikoli)
Some kids I knew in highschool had tons of fun using 2-liter bottles with about a cup of water duct taped to the side of a house. Drop in a small chunk of Dry ice, screw the cap on really tight and run like hell. Sounds like dynamite going off and can oocaisonally blow a good sized hole in cheap housing material.

Same problem in college -- except the silly bastards did the same trick with vodka bottles.

The things exploded, spraying glass into the lobby and blowing out the lights in the elevator.

-Siege
Nikoli
Nasty. but it makes a hell of a cheap distraction.
Siege
QUOTE (Nikoli)
Nasty. but it makes a hell of a cheap distraction.

The poor girl working the front desk and the campus cop she was chatting with at the time didn't think so. grinbig.gif

-Siege
Nikoli
True.

Stupid gets shoulda realised that you don't use that stuff around cute girls, they might end up not-so-cute girls
Austere Emancipator
Yep, WP does not burn underwater. My FDF NBC-manual says that it is stored underwater for this reason. The manual also says that it can be put out by water, but it ignites again once it dries out. Which is somewhat interesting.

The stuff in AN-M14 TH3 incendiary grenades -- often called thermite grenades -- is actually ~60% thermite mixed with stuff (stupid chemist lingo) that includes, among other things, barium nitrate, aluminum, solid carbon acid, rosin, sulphur, and other stuff I can't translate.

Might have already been mentioned in this thread, but burning thermite and thermate have the funny bonus effect of forming lots of hydrogen when brought into contact with water, so trying to put them out with water will result in a few loud explosions and the burning thermite/thermate spread over a larger area.
Frag-o Delux
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
QUOTE (Frag-o Delux @ Mar 5 2004, 02:38 PM)
QUOTE (Kagetenshi @ Mar 5 2004, 02:26 PM)
If you're careful enough, all you need is a lot of ammonia and large amounts of iodine crystals.

"Careful enough", in this case, being more or less superhumanly careful.

~J

You don't need to be that carful, that stuff is weak. I made about 1 pound of that once. It didn't do anything except a loud bang and threw purple staining gas all over the place. Stunk like hell, but generally not a good explosive. Unless tht is what you are looking for. Ammonia Tri-Iodide is not a destructive device.

Your statement runs counter to everything I've heard about the stuff, including from first-hand accounts.

~J

I have a very first hand account of it, so I'll believe myself.

When the stuff drys it is very dangerous, but not very destructive from my experiences. The most this stuff did was stain my yard purple for few weeks and scare the hell out of my family when it went off. Unintentionally I might add. Lesson number one to any home brewers, don't smoke weed while waiting for your bomb to dry out. You will forget what you are doing and bad things can happen.
Firewall
Just this last page is enough to make me wonder what government agencies might make of SR players. Think about the topics we discuss openly here; hacking, arson, explosives, drugs...

And they thought D&D was bad?
Kagetenshi
Well, all you really need is some lysergic acid and a high school chemistry lab...

I'm sorry, what were you saying?

As for triiodide, no doubt it's not the best of explosives, but I'm still inclined to believe that if used properly and in sufficient quantity you can do quite a bit of damage. Maybe not as much as in, say, Vertical Run, but enough to be worth consideration.

It also might be good used as a trigger for some less sensitive compound.

What's really fun, though, is astrolite. I love that stuff.

~J
Ghostly Enigma
umm actually nitroglycerin is dame easy to make as theres only 3 ingredients only hard part is now blowing it and your self up makeing it hehehehe. As to the Home Sec. guys YO!!! we have you poor saps sweeting yet rotfl.gif rotfl.gif smokin.gif
Siege
QUOTE (Ghostly Enigma)
umm actually nitroglycerin is dame easy to make as theres only 3 ingredients only hard part is now blowing it and your self up makeing it hehehehe. As to the Home Sec. guys YO!!! we have you poor saps sweeting yet rotfl.gif rotfl.gif smokin.gif

Oh please, the number of people blowing themselves up by trying to mix nitro has got to be insignificant compared to the number of idiots running meth labs or trying to.

-Siege
Foreigner
Siege:

This is a little OT, but I recall reading about a situation like that in a novel once--THE DESCENT OF ANANSI, by Steven Barnes and Larry Niven, I think it was.

Without giving away too much of the plot (I hope! smile.gif), during the course of the book, there was an attempted takeover of an orbiting private (essentially it was owned by what would, in SHADOWRUN terms, be considered a Megacorporation) space station by terrorists in the employ of a rival Megacorporation, who had literally highjacked a resupply shuttle on the launching pad.

Upon discovering the deception, the occupants of the space station decided to make a fight of it. Unfortunately, they had NO weapons.

After a MacGyver-esque improvisation involving a few CO2 fire extinguishers, Flare cartridges, and some duct tape (believe it or not! biggrin.gif ), they had a couple of operational weapons.

They removed the spray nozzles from the fire extinguishers, exposing the thin steel safety seal (which is normally punctured when the handle of the extinguisher is squeezed). They then positioned a flare cartridge over the seal, with the open end of the cartridge (flare cartridges contain magnesium and aluminum powder, BTW) against the seal, and taped it into place. Then they improvised a simple percussion firing mechanism using a nail or screw whose point had been filed off (using the nail file of the lone female crew member, IIRC), positioned inside a piece of tubing made from the cut-off antenna of a portable radio. The ignition mechanism was a hammer. smile.gif

The idea was that the flare cartridge, when ignited, would discharge its contents against the thin metal seal of the fire extinguisher, and eventually melt through said seal.

Now, if this doesn't sound like much, remember that they were in SPACE, which means (a) ZERO GRAVITY, and (b) VACUUM.

As anyone who's been through basic science class (or studied the Space Program in detail) could tell you, ANY liquid inside a pressurized container will BOIL INSTANTLY in a vacuum if the seal on the container is broken.

Since a fire extinguisher has only one opening (the nozzle, or in this case, the opening where the nozzle was once attached), under the conditions I've described, you would essentially end up with a primitive rocket.

The guys who attempted an EVA assault against these folks never stood a chance. At least one suffocated (to put it delicately smile.gif) when the faceplate of his helmet was shattered after a straight-on hit by one of the improvised rockets, and another died when one of the weapons smashed the thruster pack he was wearing, and then propelled him first into Earth's gravitational pull and then into the upper atmosphere.

--Foreigner
Kagetenshi
Ray Bradbury had one wonderful short story about a group of spacefarers whose ship had broken up between the earth and the moon. I love the way he captured the feeling of people who were coming face-to-face with the fact that their odds of survival weren't just very low but in fact were actually zero.

~J
Frag-o Delux
Just go to your local electician shop pick up a few dozen mercury light switches or HVAC thermostats with mercury switches. Carefully break the glass and colect the mercury. Then go to your plumbing shop and pick up some special drain cleaner (I'll let you figure that one out) it is amost 100% pure nitric acid. Just mix the 2, carfully. When it turns green you are ready. smile.gif
Kagetenshi
Here we go. Anhydrous hydrazine plus ammonium nitrate plus some aluminum, triggered by a compound detonator.

Boom.

~J
Frag-o Delux
I am not saying any more, I have a government job starting in a few weeks and they already had to do a background check on me, and I passed, so I am done here. Have a good day. And if my friend at the NSA is watching are you free Monday for lunch?
John Campbell
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
As for triiodide, no doubt it's not the best of explosives, but I'm still inclined to believe that if used properly and in sufficient quantity you can do quite a bit of damage. Maybe not as much as in, say, Vertical Run, but enough to be worth consideration.

I've used it in small quantities for pranks and the like. It stung, stained things purple, but didn't do much beyond that. This is fortunate, because I had premature detonations more often than not. In large quantity, it can be dangerous, especially given potential shrapnel, but I have no first-hand experience with that, because I'm not stupid enough to attempt to produce large quantities of an explosive that will detonate if you look at it funny.

QUOTE
It also might be good used as a trigger for some less sensitive compound.

Trying to use ammonium triiodide as a trigger for something less sensitive and presumably more potent falls into the Darwin Award Candidate classification. The key to a good trigger is that it'll explode when you want it to, and, even more importantly, not explode when you don't want it to. Ammonium triiodide, on the other hand, will explode when you want it to, explode when you don't want it to, explode given any excuse or none, basically explode whenever it feels like it. It's really good at exploding. Not so much at not exploding. And if you're not out of range yet, well, sucks to be you.
Kagetenshi
Well, the stuff is pretty good at not exploding while it's still wet IIRC, so it's the kind of thing you'd set somewhere no one would stumble across it, and then run before it dries.

Or maybe I just don't know what I'm talking about. That's a possibility, too.

~J
John Campbell
Yeah, but see, the thing is... "when it dries" isn't exactly precision timing. There are plenty of other ways to set off a bomb that'll do it reliably, when you want it to go off, and with far less risk of the thing blowing up in your face.
Nikoli
QUOTE (Firewall)
Just this last page is enough to make me wonder what government agencies might make of SR players. Think about the topics we discuss openly here; hacking, arson, explosives, drugs...

And they thought D&D was bad?

Just ask Steve Jackson what the government thinks of RPG's.
Kagetenshi
Then, of course, there's intimidation factor. You get a lot of triiodide, spread it around in some enclosed area, and then when people get near you pop out, be shadowy and mysterious, and then when you start shooting at them explosions start going off and spreading purple stuff all over the place.

No, it's not very practical or precise, but if you were lucky it could be quite cool smile.gif

~J
Frag-o Delux
When I was shown how to make that stuff, I was lead to believ that is all it is really for, distractions. You can basically roll it in paper or foil and just drop it every where, so if someone s trying to sneak around they step on a piece of paper and thisd thing bangs an smokes, they jump back giving youa chance to jump them.
Cain
QUOTE
It also might be good used as a trigger for some less sensitive compound.

eek.gif eek.gif eek.gif

NI3 is so damn sensitive, it'll go off if you stare at it funny-- and I mean that literally. When dry enough, a light breeze can set it off. It's touchier than unstabilized TNT! There are more reliable things to use as triggers... like pure Flourine gas.

And sure, you use enough of it, you can cause damage... but the same's true of black powder, which isn't technically an explosive at all. Per pound, TNT is about as easy to make and causes a lot more damage.
Kagetenshi
I know. About 60 PSI sets it off, IIRC. It'd be for one of those "set it and leave and then quickly set up a betting pool for when it'll go off" kinds of things.

~J
John Campbell
QUOTE (Cain)
And sure, you use enough of it, you can cause damage... but the same's true of black powder, which isn't technically an explosive at all.

Black powder actually is an explosive. It's a "low" explosive (subsonic rate of detonation), though, not a high explosive. Modern smokeless powder, on the other hand, isn't an explosive; it just burns very, very quickly. Black powder guns actually have higher peak pressures than smokeless powder guns, but it's a short spike... smokeless powder produces lower but more constant pressure, so it gets higher muzzle velocities when all is said and done.

And I've never actually measured, but 60 PSI sounds awfully high for the necessary threshold to trigger ammonium triiodide. I've seen the stuff just explode for no apparent reason... air currents or something.
Kagetenshi
Maybe I'm thinking guncotton.

~J
Traks
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator @ Mar 5 2004, 06:01 PM)
Well, like I said, I'm pretty sure WP can't just be brushed off even if it hasn't burned into to you yet. It's just that in addition to being pretty difficult to brush off, it can also burn right into your skin, so that it's almost impossible to get rid of. And like it says in the CC entry for WP grenades, it will burst violently into flames whenever there is oxygen present, so it's a real bitch to put out too -- basically only possible by keeping the WP sealed under a cloth so it can't get any oxygen, or with special chemicals for just that purpose.

In our country (We were in USSR) they were using WP bombs at sea for testing. Years after that we still have problems with it.

Bomb fragments, when found on seashore look exactly like amber pieces. Our country have quite large number of ambers pieces found at seashore. And smallest rubbing or just some time in pocket - Bang! they react, burning people. Every year there are few cases of this happening, usually to kids. So it is a really volatile and dangerous thing.
Austere Emancipator
You'd think someone would have thought of the possible problems beforehand. It's safe to assume they knew it would never dissolve, and because it's so light (1.83g/cm^3) it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it might eventually come ashore.
Traks
QUOTE (Austere Emancipator @ Mar 8 2004, 09:43 AM)
You'd think someone would have thought of the possible problems beforehand. It's safe to assume they knew it would never dissolve, and because it's so light (1.83g/cm^3) it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it might eventually come ashore.

Ah, in USSR no one cared about people much, they were just tools.
Most people from western countries can't get this concept, but that's how it was.
That's why nobody cared about this stuff happening later.
And now when we are independent country, no one helps to solve problems.
Only thing is being cautious, but kids are rarely cautious picking up innocent-looking amber.

Also in Baltic Sea there are many containers from WW2 with chemicals.
One day they will rust completely, and there will be dead sea.
Siege
Hardly a phenomenon limited to the USSR, the "people as tools" approach to life.

-Siege
Shockwave_IIc
QUOTE (John Campbell)
And I've never actually measured, but 60 PSI sounds awfully high for the necessary threshold to trigger ammonium triiodide. I've seen the stuff just explode for no apparent reason... air currents or something.

Isn't that the stuff that can explode by someone shouting near it or by a fly landing on it?
Diesel
Yes.
Foreigner
Don't forget alkali metals, folks.

Potassium, sodium, and the like.

They explode if immersed in water.

I remember a story from my youth. Some guys looking for valuables to sell (possibly to buy drugs) raided a school chemistry lab, and made off with a sealed glass jar of metallic sodium.

While attempting to escape by car, they somehow attracted the attention of the police. Evidently deciding to dump the loot, the passenger threw it out the window.

Unfortunately, it landed in a large mud puddle between two parked cars and the jar shattered on impact.

The aforementioned chemical reaction took place, and the resultant explosion totalled both vehicles.

--Foreigner
Zazen
My middle school had a big duck pond in front of it, and one day some kids got a big hunk of sodium from the lab and chucked the whole kerosene container thing into the pond. The story goes that it exploded, then the pieces fell back into the pond and exploded again, and again, and again, for a minute or more.

It might just be an exaggerated tale, but it did come from my teacher who claimed to have seen it out the window.
Kagetenshi
What happened to the ducks?

~J
Zazen
Shit themselves, I imagine!
Foreigner
Siege:

Here's another idea. I found it in a book on espionage I bought several years ago.

(Don't ask; I collected some WEIRD books in my youth, under the impression that the information found in them would make my role-playing experience with TSR's TOP SECRET more interesting.)

Take about one-half cup (4 ounces) of ordinary water.

Get a couple of those gelatin capsules that health-food stores and pharmacies sell by the bushel to people who, for whatever reason, can't swallow pills.

Put a few grams of metallic sodium (see my earlier post) in one capsule.

Put a few grams of calcium carbide (that's the stuff they used to put in miner's lanterns--it makes ACETYLENE GAS, the same stuff used by welders everywhere, when mixed with water) in the other capsule.

When time comes to use them, drop the capsules into the water-filled glass, and pour the entire contents of the glass, INCLUDING the water, into a (gasoline-powered) car's fuel tank.

Gasoline being lighter than water (6 pounds to the gallon versus water's 8 pounds to the gallon, IIRC), the water will go to the bottom of the tank.

When the capsules dissolve, the chemical reactions start.

As I said, calcium carbide makes acetylene gas when immersed in water.

Sodium, like other alkali metals, liberates HYDROGEN GAS when immersed in water. The chemical reaction that does this also liberates quite a bit of HEAT.

The heat released by the reaction of the sodium and water ignites the acetylene, and the gas tank explodes--KA-BLAM!

It's possible that any gasoline fumes present in the fuel tank would also add to the resulting conflagration, but I'm not certain, because for some strange reason, the stuff I read didn't take the presence of gasoline fumes into account.

Essentially, what you have is a simple time bomb, with no moving parts to fail. The difficult part is estimating the time interval between pouring the stuff into the car's gas tank and the ensuing explosion.

--Foreigner
Nikoli
If I remember corecctly yo'll have less than 2 minutes. Gasoline is hell on things like gelatin and certain plastics, even with the water.
Siege
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
What happened to the ducks?

~J

Pate.

-Siege
Nikoli
Siege, you're my kind of sicko
Siege
QUOTE (Nikoli)
Siege, you're my kind of sicko

They should've learned to duck, otherwise they're gonna quack up.

-Siege
Kagetenshi
Fowl! Fowl!

~J
Siege
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
Fowl! Fowl!

~J

Well, they did get flocked...

-Siege
Nikoli
Now you've gone too far.
Someone tar and feather this quack.
Siege
QUOTE (Nikoli)
Now you've gone too far.
Someone tar and feather this quack.

You're not gonna goose this duck!

-Siege
Nikoli
I dunno, that'd be as easy as Duck Soup.
Zazen
QUOTE (Foreigner)
Get a couple of those gelatin capsules that health-food stores and pharmacies sell by the bushel to people who, for whatever reason, can't swallow pills.

Put a few grams of metallic sodium (see my earlier post) in one capsule.

Be sure to get all of the kerosene off of the sodium before putting it in the capsule, because otherwise it'll dissolve it. No, don't worry about moisture in the air, it's really no big deal. It won't react or anything.

And use your bare fingers for even more zany fun.
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