Explosive Situations

[Cricket]

I finally found the title of this show on the Discovery Channel. Explosive Situations. It shows demolitions, shaped charges, FAE's, nukes, blastings, and more. It is a really great show. Go here for more info and playing times. <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?episode=22811000" target="_blank">http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?episode=22811000</a> Just thought I would share, although I am sure many of you have probably seen it already.

[endotherm]

Yeah, i caught it last night. Taped it too.
It really was preety accurate, without the typical media mistakes and exaggerations. The only mistake I caught was that they described shaped charges as extremely difficult to make, almost impossible. Which is untrue because of seen members with some makeshift shaped charges that worked reasonably well.
I watched it twice already. The beginning is the best part because they showed some good medium size (100 -2000 grams)charges, discussed them, and then detonated them inside structures(cars, trailers).
There was this one charge which resembled a folded (camo green colored) sheet, similiar texture and size to a fruit roll up(fruit leather, candy like food), that was no more that 100 grams. This was detonated in the center of a car tire, resulting in a 50 foot black fireball and a flaming tire flying well over 100 feet in the air. What the hell was that stuff, probably some plasticized RDX, anyone know? And where can i get some!!!! Haha :)

[CyclonitePyro]

On TLC (the learning channel) they had a series called Blast Masters, it was a couple shows long. My uncle taped me one of the shows, it was awesome I only watched it about 5 quintrillion times. I qould love to have the whole series on tape. We love to see low quality videos of small charges, well they were having fun with massive 100kg+ charges and you get to watch them in slow motion as well, freakin awesome!
They had that sheet explosive you talked about, they went into more detail on that same clip that was in the Blast Masters video, it was plasticized PETN, 100g, they probably had gasoline in the hollow of the tire for added "movie effects." God forbid people find out HE's don't make giant fireballs like in movies. They also had a gallon of gasoline wrapped in det cord, huge fireball!

Wait, now that I think of it, this new show is probably a re-edited version Blast Masters, made to fit in one show. Still sounds great though, I'll be sure to see it Saturday 3pm eastern time.

<small>[ May 21, 2002, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: CyclonitePyro ]</small>

[Cricket]

Hell yea, this is about the only show I have seen that is actually accurate (mostly, we all make mistakes :) ). Member the part where that lady is working in the lab? Well, my dad happens to work there (not the explosives part, damnit!). Really cool place. They even offer tours <a href="http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news/NewsReleases/2002/NR-02-04-06.html" target="_blank">http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/06news/NewsReleases/2002/NR-02-04-06.html</a> for free. Maybe I can get a special tour because of my dad :) (hell no, its all secure and everything). Back to the movie, I liked the part where they had all the 1 gallon jugs strung up with duct tape and det cord :) . It burned a lot faster that I would of thought. And that guy talking, he sounds like a stoned hypnotist. Makes me feel wired. Another good part was where they were filling the blast holes with that ANFO truck. They just sloppily poured it in there. How cool is that, to have an explosive dispensing truck? And I remember that green stuff they blew up the tire with, it looked like military face paint kinda. They blew the hell out of that poor tire <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="eek.gif" /> . And the car, and the trailor house, boom! Have to go, bye.

<small>[ May 22, 2002, 06:00 PM: Message edited by: Cricket ]</small>

[PYRO500]

I watched that special too, I found it much more imforming than novas "Kaboom" I liked seeing the nuclear tests on the Yucca flats, as a matter of face my old desktop wal paper was a picture of the cratered flats (now it's a cool picture of Io) some of the videos of the explosives tied to trees were pretty cool too I like to see live wood shatter like that. nothing really looks the same as that.

[endotherm]

Soldier F-
It's an hour long, and I have no video capture card or any way to get it on my PC.

[ENGINEERKILLER]

Charge demolition m118 (commonly called fex-x or sheet explosives)consists of four 1/2 pound sheets of of flexibe explosivepacked in a plasitic envelope.*each sheet of explosive is 3x12by 1/4 inch thick.Its relative effects are 1.14 that of tnt.
NOTE
Exact explosive contained in charges m118 will vary with manufacturer.
At present.some manufacturers use PETN as the basis of the explosive while others use RDX.Charges of future manufacture may include still other explosives.


That is verbatem out of the army ammunition data sheet for it I believe that the plasticizer is beeswax. Cyclonite the gas in the tire is exactly what they use you have to get the charge size right or you blow the tire into to pieces.

<small>[ May 22, 2002, 10:48 PM: Message edited by: ENGINEERKILLER ]</small>

[green beret]

Has anyone in aust. got this on tape?

[cutefix]

Hello Engineer,do you mean Flex-X – amilitary grade sheet explosive ,which is olive drab colored .Its explosive content is about 63% either RDX or PETN.bound with some nitrocellulose.The RDX used may contain 7.5% HMX
Qoute:
----------------------------------------------------------------
That is verbatem out of the army ammunition data sheet for it I believe that the plasticizer is beeswax
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Because of its plastic appearance you may think it contain beeswax.,however its unlikely to contain it, because it will not make a stable sheet.The sheet needs some kind of ” fiber” for a stable and flexible sheeted structure.Therefore Its definitely a polymer with some similarity in characteristics to the binder used in making C-4.

Typical composition of Flex –X is like this:
RDX/PETN ------------------------------- 63%
Tributyl acetyl citrate-----------------------28.20%
Nitrocellulose--------------------------------8.00
Pigment(lampblack-chrome yellow) -----0.8

<small>[ May 23, 2002, 01:30 AM: Message edited by: cutefix ]</small>

[CyclonitePyro]

Yeah, I set off 100g of ANNM/Al (in a dream),in the center of a similiar tire and it ripped the tire in half. They seemed to position it very carefuly in the video.

[mrloud]

I have 'Kaboom' on tape. I've tried to find someone with a video capture card to digitise it for me but couldn't find anyone. It's a good quality recording but magnetic tape only lasts so long <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="frown.gif" />

[DBSP]

If the info is correct the show is today some time, the 25/5 at 3PM.
I don't know when it goes here in sweden because they have translated the title to swedish in the newspaper, has anyone from here any idea of when it's on TV, I'd like to know so that my friend can record it for me

[nbk2000]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">
...they described shaped charges as extremely difficult to make, almost impossible.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">They probably did that to discourage people from trying their hands at replicating them for "nefarious" purposes. But they're actually pretty simple to make if you understand the mechanics and basic principles behind them (as detailed in NBKv2).

[Microtek]

DBSP: I think the European program is different from the American. I looked for the program in the paper as well, and not finding anything I looked on the net, and there's site called discovery.com and one called discovery-europe.com.