Is it that easy?
Probably not, anybody wanna talk about how to best go about this?
Preferably SR3 oriented, but not neccessarely limited to that edition.

Ha! Carbonated gasoline?

AFAIK, you just need to release a fuel vapor, then set off an ignitor charge; it's basically a gas leak at your house, on purpose. Obviously, the devil's in the details: ignition temperatures, air-fuel mixes, etc.

Get enough flour into the air in an enclosed space and you've got the gas leak without the gas.

Right, and the CS/tear gas explosion at Waco was the same principle, except with the bonus product of cyanide, IIRC? Anyway, read the wikipedia page on FAE and stat up something *reasonable*.

Abandoned grain silos make great FAEs

I bet Stahlseele would prefer something more… portable.

No, they make BIG FAE's . . slight but important difference there ^^

Preferably, but with Trolls, portable is a pretty wide area of description ^^

Great and big are interchangeable.

But best when used in conjunction. Great Big FAE's are best.

Personally I'd go for something like powdered magnesium or aluminum. If you're dead set on using petrochemicals I would go for something with more oomph that straight gasoline. Maybe high octane jet fuel or something.

By the way we are talking about thermobaric weapons, right?

Yes, but if you're talking powdered magnesium/aluminum, you're talking a thermite bomb.

Well, basically i want something like the big brother of the old mollotow cocktail . .
throw one of the big bang ones, throw a mollotow cocktail, watch earth shattering KA-BOOM.
preferably from far enough away ^^

Then let's try one of the prepackaged Coleman LP Camp Stove fuel canisters, opened to a slow leak, inside a plastic cooler sealed with duct tape and some sort of remote detonating or timed detoanting device.

Yes, FAE = thermobaric. Honestly, you should be using a vapor, but a powder *is* possible. Less fun, though. It does have to be *fuel*, though. Elemental aluminum does not count, cheater.

That sounds reasonable. LP should be an acceptable fuel, easy to acquire, reasonably strong.

The explosion isn't as much as you think it would be under those circumstances, although it would turn the cooler into shrapnel. I used to bullseye them with a 30/30 prepped like that.

Use something larger, like an actual 5gal propane tank and a high-velocity round.

Well, that's pretty much hollywood there . . shooting these containers will make them explode because they rupture FROM THE PRESSURE . . but there will be no explosion of the gas inside . .

I wouldn't expect this to be all that effective, but it would be a good noisy distraction for an investment of maybe 50

All depends on the goal I suppose

Right, that's the *whole* point of dispersing a vapor and using an appropriate ignitor. A bullet to the can does neither. Didn't they do a Mythbusters of this?

You'd get your vapor-air mix, and you'd use something like a magnesium flare (same camping store, convenient!).

Well . . with incendiary ammo or ex/exex ammo maybe . . perhaps even SnS if the load in there is big enough to spark . .
Mythbusters did one show once on someone having been sprayed with pepperspray wearing a certain kind of shirt and then when he got hit with a tazer the little lightning arcs from the needles made the shirt soaked in easyly flammable pepper spray spontanously combust . .

But it's so much fun!

And yes, they did. They were doing the Jaws myth. The damage it did to the shipping container...*cackle*

Get...three five gallon propane tanks. Open them all up in a small room, and set a tripwire to a safety flare.

"Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction. Most varieties are not explosive, but can create short bursts of extremely high temperatures focused on a very small area for a short period of time.

The aluminium reduces the oxide of another metal, most commonly iron oxide, because aluminium is highly reactive:

Fe2O3 + 2Al → 2Fe + Al2O3 + heat

The products are aluminium oxide, free elemental iron [2], and a large amount of heat. The reactants are commonly powdered and mixed with a binder to keep the material solid and prevent separation.

The reaction is used for thermite welding, often used to join rail tracks. Other metal oxides can be used, such as chromium oxide, to generate elemental metal. Copper thermite, using copper oxide, is used for creating electric joints in a process called cadwelding:

3CuO + 2Al → 3Cu + Al2O3 + Heat

Some thermite-like mixtures are used as pyrotechnic initiators such as fireworks."

"Nano-thermite or "super thermite" is classed as an explosive. A mixture of thermite and sulfur produces thermate which lowers the melting point of the iron it contacts when reacting by forming a eutectic system. This is useful in cutting through steel."

"Metals are capable of burning under the right conditions, similar to the combustion process of wood or gasoline. In fact, rust is the result of oxidation of steel or iron at very slow rates. A thermite reaction is a process in which the correct mixture of metallic fuels are combined and ignited. Ignition itself requires extremely high temperatures."

"Ignition of a thermite reaction normally requires only a simple child's sparkler or easily obtainable magnesium ribbon, but may require persistent efforts, as ignition can be unreliable and unpredictable. These temperatures cannot be reached with conventional black powder fuses, nitrocellulose rods, detonators, pyrotechnic initiators, or other common igniting substances. Even when the thermite is hot enough to glow bright red, it will not ignite as it must be at or near white-hot to initiate the reaction. It is possible to start the reaction using a propane torch if done correctly. The torch can preheat the entire pile of thermite which will make it explode instead of burning slowly when it finally reaches ignition temperature." Thank go I never actually tried to play with this stuff. Sounds like an easy way to get horribly maimed.

"Often, strips of magnesium metal are used as fuses. Because metals burn without releasing cooling gases, they can potentially burn at extremely high temperatures. Reactive metals such as magnesium can easily reach temperatures sufficiently high for thermite ignition. Magnesium ignition remains popular among amateur thermite users, mainly because it can be easily obtained."

"The reaction between potassium permanganate and glycerol or ethylene glycol is used as an alternative to the magnesium method. When these two substances mix, a spontaneous reaction will begin, slowly increasing the temperature of the mixture until flames are produced. The heat released by the oxidation of glycerine is sufficient to initiate a thermite reaction. However, this method can also be unreliable and the delay between mixing and ignition can vary greatly due to factors such as particle size and ambient temperature."

"Apart from magnesium ignition, some amateurs also choose to use sparklers to ignite the thermite mixture. These reach the necessary temperatures and provide enough time before the burning point reaches the sample. However, this can be a dangerous method, as the iron sparks, like the magnesium strips, burn at thousands of degrees and can ignite the thermite even though the sparkler itself is not in contact with it. This is especially dangerous with finely powdered thermite."

"Similarly, finely-powdered thermite can be ignited by a regular flint spark lighter, as the sparks are burning metal (in this case, the highly-reactive rare-earth metals lanthanum and cerium). Therefore it is unsafe to strike a lighter close to thermite."

"A stoichiometric mixture of finely powdered iron(III) oxide and aluminium may be ignited using ordinary red-tipped book matches by partially embedding one match head in the mixture, and igniting that match head with another match, preferably held with tongs in gloves to prevent flash burns."

I added all this extra stuff because I would hate someone to do something stupid and get hurt. All this is from Wikipedia.

"Thermite hand grenades and charges are typically used by armed forces in both an anti-materiel role and in the partial destruction of equipment, the latter being common when time is not available for safer or more thorough methods. Because standard iron-thermite is difficult to ignite, burns with practically no flame and has a small radius of action, standard thermite is rarely used on its own as an incendiary composition. It is more usually employed with other ingredients added to enhance its incendiary effects. Thermate-TH3 is a mixture of thermite and pyrotechnic additives which have been found to be superior to standard thermite for incendiary purposes. Its composition by weight is generally 68.7% thermite, 29.0% barium nitrate, 2.0% sulfur and 0.3% binder (such as PBAN). The addition of barium nitrate to thermite increases its thermal effect, produces a larger flame, and significantly reduces the ignition temperature. Although the primary purpose of Thermate-TH3 by the armed forces is as an incendiary anti-materiel weapon, it also has uses in welding metal components."

So basically Thermite is just used for destroying stuff. I guess a shadowrunner could park a truck full of it on a bridge and watch it melt through the bridge and keep on burning till it is trying to burn a hole through the river bed bellow.

I knew most of this stuff allready.
I'm allways astonished again, what can be achieved with simple legal and easy to obtain stuff ^^

Most of what is controlled is just more efficient or more refined versions of things that can be duplicated with time and effort. There are some things that cannot be duplicated obviously but there is a lot that is controlled simply to prevent things from being done on a large scale quickly.

Export Administration Regulations I have to use this link for work periodically, it's alternately dull or fascinating depending how much you care about export restrictions from the US, but it can be interesting because it gives an idea of what is restricted and why.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite
I thought I got all the safety stuff posted but there is a whole section further down the page. The more you read about it the more you really don't want to mess with the stuff.

Also there is white phosphorus. Another simple chemical composition. But i doubt it is easy to make.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_phosphorus
It is also extremely poisonous. As little as 2mg can kill you by destroying your internal organs. Namely the hart and lungs. It can also cause "smoking stool syndrome". I kid you not.

But one interesting thing about is this.

"Weight-for-weight, phosphorus is the most effective smoke-screening agent known, for two reasons: first, it absorbs most of the screening mass from the surrounding atmosphere and secondly, the smoke particles are an aerosol, a mist of liquid droplets which are close to the ideal range of sizes for Mie scattering of visible light. This effect has been likened to three dimensional textured privacy glass—the smoke cloud does not simply obstruct an image, but thoroughly scrambles both visual and infrared radiation, interfering with infra-red optics and weapon-tracking systems, serving as a protection for military forces from guided weapons such as anti-tank missiles."

I could see a shadowrunner rigger loading some of this into a drone for when it does not plan on being around humans when firing. White phosphorus if properly stated would be probably to good. Smoke grenade, heat damage, and poison all in one.

'Cept Willie Pete doesn't kill if you inhale a bit of it. You have to be sucking it in next to the source for it to get lethal.

My point was that thermite isn't fuel-air or thermobaric, or really a blasting agent like we're discussing. Not that it doesn't *exist*.

Look up "dust initiator". Virtually any finely powered flammable substance can be made to explode. You can also make a very effective bomb with gasoline that has evaporated as long as you are in a closed space. The IJN Taiho is a particularly spectacular example of this.

It's actually hard to get an FAE bomb to work right. There is a fairly narrow range of percentages that it will explode, and dispersing the chemical so that this is achieved over a large area and for a large amount of fuel very fast takes someone who knows what they are doing.

But it totally works when you do. And there's the internet now, and the Matrix then.

Like kzt says, how you make a therm bomb really depends on where you plan to use it.

But, if you've got the resources to make it happen, the best method is just to make a two stage FAE. You have your fuel in a container with a small nitro-based bomb in the center to provide dispersal, since liquid kerosene (or gasoline if you're feeling frisky) is difficult to ignite with concussive force alone, which is basically all the TNT (or whatever) will transfer after bursting its container and the container which houses the fuel. Then you have a 2ndary thermal detonation about 2 seconds later which ignites the vapor cloud into a fireball, creating that nice, slow distributed concussive blast which rocks a body (and most especially a building,) so hard.

I know 3rd Ed had rules for FAE bombs, but I don't remember if they were scaling. It's... been a while.

Note however that the blasting power of a thermite "explosion" is rather limited, because the thermite reaction itself does not produce a single gas molecule. So no IEDs from thermite bars, although they are still good for some serious damage.

"Listen to this dude, Rufus. He knows what he's talking about!"

-Bill S. Preston Esq.

Just because we haven't done this in a while...

<waves to the nice government men reading this>





-karma

Well, seeing how you can find out how to grow anthrax or build a nuke in your cellar, they really should stop worrying about our harmless little kablooie . .

Pff. You read the Washington Post's report? There's so much data going to so many agencies that it's all jammed into the doorway. Shadowrun has come to real life re: data balkanization.

Seeing how i live in germany . . no, been some weeks O.o

My apologies!

Here, have a delicious link.

*tips hat*
much obliged old chap

52 agencies all tracking terrorist money trails, not talking to each other? What could possibly go wrong and how could we possibly be more efficient?

Can I have some money now? Or should I go to one of the other 107 Congressional committees overseeing this?

52 agencies are listed in public government records, shareholder factsheets and the like. And we all know how much the government likes to rubber-stamp everything regarding this topic as "state secret"...just to tingle everybody's conspirationist senses

Just load a full clip of traces not every 3rd but every round. Shoudl ignite a gas cloud with a burst even if one shot might not do it.

[quote name='Stahlseele' post='960740' date='Jul 20 2010, 11:07 PM']I knew most of this stuff allready.
I'm allways astonished again, what can be achieved with simple legal and easy to obtain stuff ^^[/quote]
That is why IEDs are lethal.


I know red-phosphor isn't that hard to make white is just a further process to it. IIRC its heating past its burning point without letting it burn. It then iginets on contact with oxigen. But yeah bombs are surpisingly easy to make. To make them good is a different science.

I stand corrected it the heating in its own vapour that makes white phosphorus red sunlight works too heating even high will make violet. And if put in certain conditions it turns back to its highly reactive white form. Both are controlled substances in the US though makable from urine. In fact how to make it is a point in the history of chemistry being made in 1669 in an attempt to make the philosopher's stone..

Heheheh... I actually prefer Honking Big FAE's myself...

I had an ingame idea once for a gas can filled with packing styrofoam, explosive rounds, a bit of high octane gas, with a remote wireless detonator(s) glued to the insides, then gift wrapping it boxes of fasteners (screws/nails/etc) and some cheap flash bang nades as a sort of parting gift that one activated from their comm unit. Character would get the idea from watching action movies and browsing the matrix for a while.

What would that be stated as, IYHO? What rolls could the GM possibly make the player roll for the character (I would think the player would roll edge on this as well)?

I don't think that would even explode, but a proper version would just use the normal IED rules.

Demolitions and electronics. If you don't get success on both it doesn't work. If you glitch either you die. There is a reason why terrorists prize effective bombmakers.

Is it because they like bombs?

Probably...

If size isn't really an issue, there's always foo gas. Nothing quite like a 55 gallon drum full of a variation on the theme of napalm backed by a lump of plastic explosives to get it going in the direction you want burned.

Er, why wouldn't it explode and where do I find normal IED rules (don't see em in my SR4A)?

Because it's not a movie. Gas, for example, is actually really hard to ignite. Relatively speaking. So are bullets.

It's Arsenal, p95.

Incidentally, Arsenal also has Atomized explosives rules (i.e., fuel-air bombs). Just use those, OP. You don't *quite* get the thermobaric effects of a BLU-whatever, but you get the nice even DV (like in SR3), and then the blast kicks in for greater radius.

They only want the suckers they hire to get blown up, not themselves. And while anyone can make bombs, someone who can routinely make bombs usually that go off when you want them to and don't ever go off when you don't want is a lot harder to find.