I am part of a team that, in a recent plan for how to create a distraction, came up with the idea of using 2000 kilograms of C12 to pull it off. This would have worked, except for two problems: 1) Not enough money; and 2) The GM threatened to have our characters learn first-hand how dragons reproduce (not a pleasant summary...)

This has left me wondering: Is there ever a case where there is too much C12 being used?

my first game ever of SR, the team had to do a search and destroy mission. we had to blow up an apartment complex. so the team decides on a decent amount of c12, i forget the exact amount we agreed on. so we pool our money, and the Demo expert calls a contact and orders some. well he left the room to call, which was kinda wierd now that we know what he did, but we didnt worry at the time, thought he was being secretive.

but anyways the mission goes well, we get in and plant the c12, we all were watching exits and other things while the demo guy was left alone planting the c12, so he eventually comes out and tells us to get out of the area, so we leave and head off to redmond, as we were in Puyallup. He had set the timer for 1 hour, and we setup a remote feed to watch where the c12 was. so we are all waiting and when the timer expired, the blast could be felt all the way here. he somehow had planted enough c12 plus some other catlyst to make the damage more, and destroyed 80% of Puyallup and killed most of the area.

maybe thats too much?

later we got busted by lonestar and locked up for life, as the PC bragged about it to the wrong person. lol.

How large an area is Puyallup?

If you're a stickler for canon and you want to blow up a large area, you're better off with Commercial Explosives than C-12. Because of the weird way the Blast rating is handled with straight explosives, the blast radius depends only on the mass of the explosive charge, not at all on the explosive it's made out of. 1000kg of any conventional explosive will be quite lethal at 30 meters but completely harmless at 32.

100,000 worth of Commercial Explosives:
1,666kg, 122D, Blast -3/m. Lethal (8D) at 38 meters. Will break through 5 sturdy concrete walls spaced 5 meters apart, 1st one 1 meter away from the blast -- the 5th one 21 meters from the blast breaks, the blast never reaches the 6th one at 26 meters.

100,000 worth of C-4:
1,250kg, 212D, Blast -6/m. Lethal (8D) at 34 meters. Will break through 6 sturdy concrete -- the 6th one 26 meters from the blast breaks, the blast never reaches the 7th one at 31 meters.

100,000 worth of C-12:
250kg, 189D, Blast -12/m. Lethal (9D) at 15 meters. Will break through 3 sturdy concrete walls -- the 3rd one 11 meters from the blast breaks, the blast never reaches the 4th one at 16 meters.

For pure lethality in an open area, Commercial Explosives get you by far the most bang for your buck. For demolishing effect in a built-up area, C-4 is the best. C-12 should only be considered if you want to break through a single, very thick structure with the smallest possible explosive charge and cost isn't an issue.

As something of a side note, I would imagine especially in the SR days of penny-pinching and number crunching from corps and stuff, I figure in the long run its better to critically damage something with explosives (especially property) rather than obliterate it. Since then you make whoever owns the stuff have to pay a bit more to finish demolishing the place, cleaning it up and rebuilding. If you totally wreak it for them, they just have to worry about cleanup and rebuild

2000kg of C12?!?

That is 2 TONS of high explosive.

You planning to blow up the Great Wall of China?

Tot just summed up my reaction.

But if you have no practical experience with explosives and go strictly by the SR canon, I suppose it depends on what the overall objective is.

If you're to the point of 2 tons of conventional explosives, you might need to find an alternative manner in which to accomplish your objective.

-Siege

RL "shadowrunners" use tons of high explosives all the time, for quick, destructive attacks against large buildings or areas. Plus explosives in the couple-of-tonnes range are a damn sight more effective IRL than in SR -- 2,000kg of TNT would demolish concrete structures much further than 25 meters. So you'll need more to accomplish the same in SR.

I realize this goes heavily against how most people view shadowrunning, and that's fine by me. Huge amounts of explosives tend to get a lot of attention, and draining all the fixers you can get your hands on of high explosives will probably get the 2060s equivalent of BATFE knocking on your door pretty soon.

Real-life shadowrunners?

The only people who use tons of explosives are people demolishing buildings, as far as I know.

Criminals in the States typically use arson to damage or destroy buildings.

Domestic terrorists have been limited to pipe bombs and similar "personal" explosives, although Tim McVeigh was perhaps ahead of his time.

Military spec-forces tend not to do major demolition work - such jobs are usually left to engineers or heavy artillery.

Terrorists abroad use carbombs for effect, although the "payload" isn't usually measured in tonnage, although I haven't made a comprehensive study on the topic.

-Siege

Terrorist attacks in Russia, in the -stan regions and near Chechnya, often consist of hundreds of kgs or tonnes of TNT or similar explosives and a truck. The -93 WTC bomb weighed in at several hundred kg. Hundreds of kilograms of explosives belonging to ETA have been confiscated by the Spanish police on several occasions. In the Middle East region (other than Israel), car bombs weighing several hundred kilograms or even tonnes are not uncommon. Same goes for South-East Asia.

Didn't the recent school bombing also involve a large amount of dynamite (or the like)?

Not sure, do you mean the Afghanistan school bombing on August 28th? The Bali bomb of '02 was (officially) 1,000kg of TNT. That ripped apart most of the buildings in the surrounding blocks and killed 202, woundings hundreds more.

Got it - so terrorists using car bombs and larger payloads qualify. I was thinking local street scum and military covert ops.

But you're absolutely right, I overlooked the other forms of pond scum that round out the happy bunch of merrymakers.

-Siege

The Beslan (Sep 1st-3rd) bombs were rather small, it seems. Probably under 100kg total. It's usually the car bombs that are biggest. It's rather surprising that there haven't been huge car bombs in Iraq yet.

The military doesn't use large amounts of high explosives -- at least in the same way as discussed here -- beause it doesn't need to. Instead of a platoon of SF operators carrying 10kg of C-4 each, one can just carry a laser target designator and call in a few tons of tritonal explosives. I consider street scum to be a few steps below shadowrunners. Organized crime usually needs to keep a very low profile and blowing up a city block is hardly ever necessary for them.

Of course, the GM should probably not be giving his group jobs which require them to demolish huge areas. That's hardly ever a preferable outcome for their employer.

In Canada, blowing up a rival's house is a popular passtime among the (bike) gang community.

As to the bombing (probably the second you mentioned), I heard that nowhere near all of the explosives went off. They not only packed the stuff in with them, but they also hid it in the walls and stuff during the summer break.

Only a part of the bomb(s) went off in Bali as well. There was supposed to be another one, but it didn't explode. The timing was also just a little off, or there might have been double the casualties.

The Finnish DF NBC manual claims 100kPa should be enough to tear apart most concrete structures. That's about 8km radius around a 10 megaton nuclear device, about 3.5km radius for a 1 megaton device (~6km for 5Mt) . That's about equal to the casualty radius for dug-in (reinforced, covered fox-hole) for the same weapons.

Interestingly enough one thousand tonnes, ie one million kilograms (1,000,000kg) of TNT would totally destroy buildings only up to about 350 meters away, with nothing reinforced concrete and steel supports left standing up to ~700 meters away.

Given that the Arcology is amazingly reinforced and amazingly large horizontally (650 by 750 meters, give or take, IIRC) for under a kilometer of height, I doubt that would do the job.

You'd take out a few dozen floors just fine, though.

~J

blowing up the renraku arcology... brrr..

one thing I have learned in srun is that IF a corp or government spends enough resources they can always find you, there are just too many ways, technological and magical, to find the culprit.. the issue is one of extreme cost.. that is , unless you then go and secret yourself somewhere faaaaar away for the rest of your life.
and spend a HUGE amount of resources secreting yourself away..

I think blowing up the arcology would give renraku kind of a good incentive... planting all those bombs inside would be an interesting run though

btw, 2 tons is a **lot**, when I was little I saw a TNT explosion <industrial accident, some guy smoking in a tnt warehouse.. oddly enough though the warehouse was flattened the guy actually survived..>, there was a blue flame like a VERY tall building, followed seconds later by a roar that shook the windows.. and I lived miles away, on a 4th floor.

-the bali bombing was done with fertilizer, 50 to 100 kg of it and ONE kg of tnt, according to USINDO.. it was small fry compared to two tons of C4.

in SRUN seattle, causing something like that would get all the swat teams that can be mustered after you... and that is before corps got involved.. that run better pay a lot

DS

There seems to be much more contradictory information about the sizes of the bombs used in Bali than there is of just about any other major bombing, including the OK one. Several sources say 50-200kg of fertilizer + some TNT/RDX/PETN, several say up to around 1000kg.

Still, you can see plenty of 1000kg+ explosions in southern Russia. ~3 meter deep, 10 meter wide crater, large reinforced concrete buildings flattened up to a hundred meters away, that sort of thing.

The answer as given by notorious shadowrunner and expatriate SAS demolitions expert Mias - never.

The answer as given by the poor fragger who was riding shotgun in Mias' van when a go-ganger popped a cheap and cheerful disposable LAW through the windscreen - ANY amount of C12 is too much (Mias made his perception check to spot the ganger up ahead. Poor old Joe didn't. Shoulda bought some more Intelligence, Joe...)

Damn, that was one silly but fun evening (12 runners on a sprawl-wide scavenger hunt set up by two bored OAP corp execs. It was a real Blues Brother moment when they finally brought the trophies back with half the sprawl pursuing them )

A picture and an animated gif of 450kg of some military HE going off. For scale, the missile itself is about 6 meters long. It is a partly shaped charge for penetration, but still. Doesn't look too bad...

Heh, this thread begs for good quotes... But honestly, the REAL question is how good are you with it. When it boils down to it, 1k of C4 in 10 places is going to do a lot more good then 20k of it in the wrong place.

Your suggested detonation would have had a power sufficient to kill at a radius just under 2 KM. Buildings would be damaged or destroyed over a 3.5KM diamiter if not greater.

I THINK IT WOULD HAVE BEEN TOO MUCH!!!

By my understanding of the rules for explosives it would gut the arcology destroying most of the internal walls if placed in the centre. how are you going to get it there.

Of cause I was assuming your using the canon explosive rules

Edward

Due to the interesting properties of SR explosives, 2000kg will only have effect for 45 (44.7ish) meters. Anything more than 45 meters away will be undamaged by the explosion itself.

This is why as a GM I differentiate between tactical and cinematic explosives....

Thanks for your replies so far. And, quotes from games (whether to prove a point or not) related to this are not opposed by myself.