Questions tagged [explosions]
For questions that refer in general to the violent expenditure of energy in a specific area that is typically referred to as an explosion.
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How much do tunnels extend blast waves from explosives?
Someone recommended this SE for this question, since I'm asking it to help a friend's setting, where dwarves and goblins fight underground with explosives. After asking if it was OK, I cross-posted ...
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Could vacuum armour protect vehicles and people from explosions? [closed]
If you have a <1mm thick layer of vacuum inside an armour plate, be it for vehicles or body armour, wouldn't it stop explosive shockwaves from penetrating through the armour? This is, of course, ...
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Would the backblast of a rocket launcher be damaging to robotic soldiers?
So in the future, we have robotic (humanoid) soldiers that do the fighting regular human infantry used to do. Now, the backblast of a rocket launcher in real life can definitely kill someone. If there ...
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Would the "Rods from God" satellite actually create an explosion?
The "rods from God" satellite. Its a satellite that contains these long darts, presumably made of a very heavy material like tungsten, that are dropped into the atmosphere. By the time they ...
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Defending against dinosaurs with an automatic shotgun that fires miniaturized anti-tank munitions
Like any reasonable billionaire, I want to breed dinosaurs on my private island - big ones. Like, T-Rex big. Of course, one needs a well-armed security force to guard such an endeavor, lest the ...
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How would an active Alcubierre Drive effect the shape of an ship's explosion?
I have a scene where a fleet of ships activates thier Alcubierre Type Warp Drives to flee from an enemy fleet, but unlike many sci-fi settings where a warp drive instantly pushes you up to ...
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How much should a nuclear explosion be slowed for its energy to be safely converted to electrical energy?
Harvesting explosions by containing them in a time bubble.
Here's an interesting sci-fi concept, which involves generating a time bubble in order to slow a nuclear explosion to the point where the ...
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If you were wearing a bomb suit, would it be safe to set off a Claymore mine strapped to your chest?
The M18A1 Claymore mine is a directional fragmentation anti-personnel mine. It is designed to kill by projecting a lethal hail of steel balls within a 60-degree cone in front of itself.
It seems ...
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What sort of explosive detonators could be made without modern technology?
This is a very society in the style of the 1730's Europe long before the advent of modern electronics.
While I expect wick-style fuses to still easily be made (as they were then), could anything like ...
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What kind of substance that existed in the Middle Ages could, when ignited, potentially destroy everything within several miles?
I am a DM for a homebrew D&D 5e game. In terms of technology, the time period loosely takes place somewhere between 1100 and 1400 CE (so High Middle Ages to Late Middle Ages).
The villain of my ...
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What would armor designed to withstand a grenade blast in an enclosed space look like?
Let's say that someone throws an M67 hand grenade into a completely enclosed room - i.e. the door is the only entrance/exit.
How would someone build a suit of armor to functionally negate the ...
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What natural material shatters when thrown like a grenade?
Our intrepid wizard protagonist realizes there is only one of him and an army of baddies. He has a band of some 50 people with him, but only a dozen have combat training and he is the only spellcaster....
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Soldier hit unconscious [closed]
A character who is close to the explosion of a mortar shell has a concussion and his lights go out.
In this situation would it be possible to lose consciousness without a loss of blood?
If so how ...
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What's the safest way to carry and throw marble sized high-explosive grenades?
Pull the context and count to three sentences
Let's imagine an army has created a kind of explosive similar to grenades, but much smaller in size while maintaining a good chunk of offensive output.
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Making minefields with potash
Many modern explosives would have changed the history of sieges and raids.
A modern phoenix bomb (american claymore) can injure and entire shieldwall of soldiers.
A field of mines and phoenixes and ...
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Would a pool of petroleum explode if lit on fire?
A large pool of crude oil 60 feet in diameter and about 10 feet deep. It sits atop a 100ft. tall stone pillar with a 5ft radius hole that leads down into the earth. If the oil on top is exposed to a ...
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Damage estimate for a large acetylene explosion
In a laboratory in a university building, a gas tap is accidentally opened at the end of the working day. The gas tap is connected to a bank of large acetylene cylinders. The gas tap is ejecting 0....
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Swallowing Multiple Grenades
Okay, there's a character who is force-fed multiple grenades. The resulting explosion does severe damage to their body, but doesn't completely destroy them, and their healing factor fixes all of the ...
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Could a dyson sphere survive a supernova?
So, a civilization built a massive Dyson Sphere around a supergiant star. As the star ages, it begins to fuse iron. At this point, the force of radiation pressure cannot prevent core collapse, and ...
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What would a scientific accurate exploding Krypton look like/be like for anyone standing on the planet?
I like superhero movies and Superman is one of my absolute favorites.
And one stable thing in that universe is always that Krypton goes kaboom, the reasons for this are multiple: from the original one ...
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chance of surviving a planet killer explosion
Our main characters have just arrived at the brand new SpaceStation2™ (now with geostationary orbit!) soon they get settled in with the other characters already there, then the planet explodes, no ...
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Lava projectiles
I have a civilization that lives near an active volcano. For battle, they use the lava to their advantage, and one of their projectile weapons is a small sphere with lava inside. When thrown, it ...
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Could a bug sting induce a human body to explode?
The setup is similar to a funny horror movie or like Troma movies. Deaths only happen to insignificant, unnamed characters.
However, I would like to have some plausible science back-up (maybe slightly ...
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Smallest amount of conventional explosives required to create a crater 7m wide and 4m deep [closed]
What is the smallest amount of conventional explosives possible to create a crater that is roughly 7 meters in diameter and four to five meters deep?
Bob needs to know this in order to successfully ...
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How strong is the "explosion" of a bubblegum?
This is for a fantasy/fiction story. I have a character who can manipulate her gum bubbles (so make them strong or bigger, blah blah...), that's why I wanted to know if the explosions of her bubbles ...
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3 Asteroids hit the planet - What happens next? [closed]
3 Large Asteroids, each the rough size of London, UK, in diameter. The Asteroids are rocky, with bits of water and ice in them as well.
They impact the Earth, at 57km/s, in South America, East Africa, ...
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How easily can a medieval granary explode?
The villainous gremlins are attempting to cause as much damage to the lands of the Empire as possible with as little effort as practical. They have numerous plans to this end. One such plan is to blow ...
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How can I describe an incredible release of power, realistically [closed]
In my writing, a goddess is removed from her position as a god and reduced to a human. (See my question on writing.SE) At the moment of the loss of power huge amounts of energy would be released into ...
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How to prevent ship's AI from initiating self destruct sequence regardless of captain's permission?
Set in a distant future, every interstellar spaceship runs on antimatter propulsion which can achieve fractional speed of light travel. There is a doctrine stating that all spaceships with mass ...
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Are "Bomb Catapults" actually feasible?
I was recently thinking about which technologies an Isekai-Protagonist could give his allies in a medival fantasy world. For all those who don't know, Isekai is an anime genre where the protagonist is ...
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Feasibility of making a imploding bomb
In a dystopian story I’ve created, humanity is in a near constant war, but is still more advanced than modern day humans. One weapon that is used in this war is called the “I.N”, short for imploding ...
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What adaptations should a utility fog, that's meant to be an air-fuel explosive, have?
I found a way to ensure that even if either the Japanese Self-Defense Force or the U.S Army invades my fantasy world, its inhabitants would still have a fighting chance.
Utiltiy Fog
Hall thought ...
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How big of a wave would this falling cliff create?
I'm running a D&D campaign and, well, the players had blown up a cave filled with explosives under a 40-metr cliff. I told them the cliff cracked and fell into the ocean. 40 meters tall, 30 meters ...
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What Kind of Bolide Would Chicxulub Be to Create the Bigger Airburst--Asteroid or Comet?
66 million years ago, something brought an end to the long-established dinosaur empire. The pendulum just kept shifting between an asteroid and a comet, astronomical bolides that actually have ...
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The students have blown up the school using stuff that looks like snow. How?
In Hungarian, there is a new-ish folk-song sung by school-children who dislike school whenever it snows to the tune of Twinkle, twinkle, little star:
Hull a pelyhes dinamit,
Robbantsuk fel a sulit!
...
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Consequences of an Earth-size object hitting the Sun?
Suppose an extra-solar object the size and mass of the Earth, travelling at a speed of $26\ \mathrm{km/s}$, the same of ʻOumuamua (the first known interstellar object crossing our solar system), hit ...
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Feasibility of H.G. Wells' Continuously-Exploding Atomic Bombs
I came across this interesting weapon by H.G. Wells, from his novel, The World Set Free, about a special type of atomic bomb that will explode indefinitely.
Here is a description on Wikipedia:
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What would be the effect(s) of this asteroid?
"At this very moment we face a threat insurmountable to Man. We are faced with two options. Stay on Earth and die, or leave Earth to space." - UN Preservation Council, CE 2047
Earth, year CE 2047
An ...
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Could a robot that can survive at the center of the Earth also survive a nuclear explosion?
The robot in question is a very large, worm-like mining robot with a huge drill on its front end, built to survive staggering levels of heat and pressure. It's so resiliant, in fact, that it can ...
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Is it Possible for a Biological Creature to Spew/Breathe an Explosive Instead?
I want to make my dragon spew/breathe an explosive mix with gizzard stone fragments/shrapnel, more like a shotgun than the common flamethrower-like fire breath.
So is there any explosive chemical that ...
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Drawbacks of my Catastrophe Inhibitor
Warning lots of text ahead.
The fluff:
The story uses a Catastrophe Inhibitor (CatIn) to stop nukes, orbital bombardment and other such weapons from being the go-to method of defeating everything on ...
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How could a charge-type breath weapon work?
Charge-type breath weapon: Creatures with this type shoot singular, high-damage, high-precision "charges" of (insert dragon's element here) that explode upon contact. Examples: Toothless from the ...
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Is antimatter boosted nuclear weapon theoretically possible?
Are there any fundamental obstacles to using a nuclear explosion as a trigger for antimatter generation and thus considerably increasing the yield?
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How would a character build an explosive from natural elements?
A character is on an alien planet that is very much like any one of our large deserts. Sort of a Tatooine like on Star Wars.
He needs to cause a diversion. There aren't any explosives on planet of ...
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Would conventional explosives work differently under denser atmosphere?
Would conventional explosives work differently under denser atmosphere? (If yes in any noticeable way, then how to roughly calculate the difference)
Possible clarifications:
normal, conventional ...
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Is there a formula for scaling explosive detonation velocity? (Supernova level) [closed]
For context, I’m planning a novel with as much ridiculous magic as ridiculous science so, yes I know, it’s impossible but bear with me.
There is a supermassive black hole that weighs 1 trillion solar ...
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How would an energy-based "projectile" blow up a spaceship?
I have noticed this in many fictions: during a battle between spaceships exchanging fire in empty space, a pulse of laser fire hits the hull and the entire spaceship explodes into many pieces.
Is ...
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Fortifications capable of withstanding atmosphere-clearing blast
On the Atomic Rockets site, there is a series of handy tables, the first of which is aptly named "The Boom Table", providing examples for a wide range of energy releases (in both Joules and TNT ...
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Does a grenade kill you the same way a gun does?
Disclaimer
This seems a particularly stupid question, but the more I think about it, the less trivial I find it. Worldbuilding possess the most appropriate tags. It does not fit in physics-network ...
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Let’s say a 1 ton (US) sphere of tungsten moving at 99.99% the speed of light hits earth, what happens? As specific as possible
What kind of destruction would it cause? I’m assuming it’d be rather significant, could it shatter a tectonic plate? The crust? How would the oceans fare? Would the planet be able to catch the ...
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