Skip to main content
Worldbuilding

Return to Answer

Responded to comments with non-technical explosives theory
Source Link
KerrAvon2055
KerrAvon2055
  • 29.7k
  • 1
  • 49
  • 116

EDIT: In response to a few comments, adding some very non-technical, oversimplified information about how military explosives are sometimes used. Research online further if you are interested in the subject, try not to end up on any watchlists and obviously do not try this at home (yours or anyone else's).

  1. While a "shaped charge" is any explosive that is in a particular shape, most often this is used to refer to charges shaped to take advantage of the Munroe Effect, especially for armour piercing use. This type of charge is used in low velocity anti-armour weapons, including mines and in both prepared and some improvised demolition charges. For demolitions required to make a long cut instead of a single hole, linear charges ("hayricks") can be used in place of inverted cones. These charges need to be placed with some separation from the target in order for the penetrator to have room to form, as per the linked article. This can be achieved relatively easily by putting "legs" on a charge designed to fire vertically down, but can be difficult or impractical to achieve when trying to set charges on the side of or underneath some targets.
  2. Due to the difficulty and/or time required for placing shaped charges, hasty demolitions will often use bulk explosives placed directly in contact with the target. There are tables that say how much explosive is required to confidently penetrate various types of targets, my recollection of these is that the quantity in a Claymore is overkill for penetrating a steel beam it is in contact with. In this situation the explosives must be directly in contact with the target surface, even a small air gap will massively reduce the penetration due to air transmitting the shock wave much worse than a solid medium. This explains how an EOD suit (although maybe not its occupant) can be rated to survive a significant charge at a distance of as little as one metre, where there is no chance of survival with it strapped to the chest.
  3. The Claymore is a shaped charge, but only in terms of the explosive being shaped to scatter ball bearings in a particular arc. It is not an armour-piercing shaped charge and the only effect its shape has in this situation is that the curve probably lets it make slightly better contact with the contoured chestpiece of an EOD suit than a flat slab would.

EDIT: In response to a few comments, adding some very non-technical, oversimplified information about how military explosives are sometimes used. Research online further if you are interested in the subject, try not to end up on any watchlists and obviously do not try this at home (yours or anyone else's).

  1. While a "shaped charge" is any explosive that is in a particular shape, most often this is used to refer to charges shaped to take advantage of the Munroe Effect, especially for armour piercing use. This type of charge is used in low velocity anti-armour weapons, including mines and in both prepared and some improvised demolition charges. For demolitions required to make a long cut instead of a single hole, linear charges ("hayricks") can be used in place of inverted cones. These charges need to be placed with some separation from the target in order for the penetrator to have room to form, as per the linked article. This can be achieved relatively easily by putting "legs" on a charge designed to fire vertically down, but can be difficult or impractical to achieve when trying to set charges on the side of or underneath some targets.
  2. Due to the difficulty and/or time required for placing shaped charges, hasty demolitions will often use bulk explosives placed directly in contact with the target. There are tables that say how much explosive is required to confidently penetrate various types of targets, my recollection of these is that the quantity in a Claymore is overkill for penetrating a steel beam it is in contact with. In this situation the explosives must be directly in contact with the target surface, even a small air gap will massively reduce the penetration due to air transmitting the shock wave much worse than a solid medium. This explains how an EOD suit (although maybe not its occupant) can be rated to survive a significant charge at a distance of as little as one metre, where there is no chance of survival with it strapped to the chest.
  3. The Claymore is a shaped charge, but only in terms of the explosive being shaped to scatter ball bearings in a particular arc. It is not an armour-piercing shaped charge and the only effect its shape has in this situation is that the curve probably lets it make slightly better contact with the contoured chestpiece of an EOD suit than a flat slab would.
Source Link
KerrAvon2055
KerrAvon2055
  • 29.7k
  • 1
  • 49
  • 116

Not survivable

Imagine you removed the plastic body and ball bearings from a Claymore, so that all that is remaining is a layer of about 700 g of explosive. The quantity of explosive is several times more than that required to cut a line through a typical (unloaded) I-beam / rolled steel joist. At a minimum it would blow through the chestplate of the EOD suit and the ribcage, heart, lungs and spine. Possibly a really good EOD suit would have a strong enough back plate to keep the remnants of the body in basically the one spot, but I wouldn't count on it.

That's just worrying about it cutting through the material of the EOD suit, without even considering:

  • the overpressure from a detonation occurring only a few centimetres away from the heart of the person wearing the suit
  • the wearer's arms being either vaporised or torn off and flung into the next local government area, depending on their exact positions at the moment of detonation
  • the wearer being blasted through the air with an unsurvivable G-load. Hollywood shows people being unrealistically thrown through the air by hand grenades going off, but this is an order of magnitude more explosive mass than a grenade filler in direct contact with a relatively durable (thanks to the EOD suit) body.

People definitely have survived being within the 16 m exclusion zone all around a Claymore, but the closest I am aware of (from reliable second-hand accounts) is about 5m away below the lip of a concrete wall. Even that close a soldier is likely to be disoriented by the blast, although an EOD suit's blast dampening qualities would help. (No need to respond with lots of competing war stories, just acknowledging that inside 16 m is not an automatic death zone.)

Finally, I suggest you need to consider what a Claymore will achieve that an alternative weapon system will not. If the fragmentation from hundreds of ball bearings is important then the monster(?) - which is somehow immune to the artillery barrage mentioned - only needs to avoid a tiny danger zone directly in front of the chest of the wearer. This means that the wearer needs to, while wearing a very heavy suit of armour, aim by moving their entire body.