So I have a 2 pound slab of C4 coated in wax and surgically implanted in my abdomen about 1/2 inch below the skin. Gold wire leads run from the blasting cap (in the C4) through my skin. The look like hairs. I’m on the airplane. Using my laptop battery I run a charge through the blasting cap and detonate 2 pounds of C4 at the rear of the plane.
We used to “cat and dog” dud firecrackers by breaking them in half, setting them on fire, and them stomping on them. They would explode. Maybe the C4 works similarly.
The only way an explosive can detonate is due to heat. If you get it hot enough, it will detonate. Any time an explosive is detonated due to shock or friction, it is getting the material hotter than its critical temperature. Friction is easy enough to understand without explanation. Shock is explained by what’s known as the hot spot theory. Basically, explosives are not completely heterogeneous. They have imperfections and/or air bubbles. If an air bubble is compressed, the air inside will heat up due to ideal gas law. If an imperfection is the point where a hot spot originates, friction will be the heat initiating factor.
Remember that explosives create a lot of gas. If even a small amount of energetic material at the hot spot decomposes, it will create gas. This gas will be under confinement of the explosive itself, leading to more heat, more pressure, and a chain reaction.
The reason a rifle shot won’t detonate it is because the bullet is smaller than the critical diameter of the material. The critical diameter has two meanings. One is the minimum diameter a material in a confined tube must be to sustain the propagation of its shock wave. The other is the minimum diameter a flyer plate (the bullet, in this case) must be so that the conical wave imparted into the medium is not dissipated before the explosive event can occur.
I only have limited experience with C-4, but I can see how heating it up could keep it below its critical temperature, as would hitting it with a hammer. However, once the ambient temperature is raised to its burning temperature (I’m not sure what that is, but its melting temperature is about 200°C) I can see how that would be sufficient for a hot spot to be initiated by a hammer.
I wouldn’t be afraid to try it with a BB sized sample of C-4. I’ve set off similar amounts of nitroglycerin with a hammer on a vice, and it’s about as tame as a firecracker. I’d wear ear plugs, though, just in case.
It can’t be too difficult to injure yourself enough to need a hip pin (or other metallic reinforcement). I mean, if these guys are gonna commit suicide anyway they might as well be thorough about it.
I hope you continue to use your genius for good and not evil! :dubious:
There is such a thing as “explosive diarrhea”… Okay, the detonation power itself isn’t all that great, but I bet an entire plane could brought down with the shrapnel alone.
My scenario is breast implants of C4 connected with wire to nipple piercings. Dolly Parton could sink a ship.
Didn’t the Airplane People make some woman remove her nipple piercing a while back? With Pilers?
continue?
Like bags of sand.
Hmmm… what if a terrorist were to have C4 in their rectum, expel it the normal way during the flight, then detonate it?
Rectum, [del]nearly[/del] killed 'im!
Yes. CBS Chicago - Breaking News, First Alert Weather, Exclusive Investigations & Community Journalism But the TSA did change its procedures regarding body piercings since then, so your schemes may yet succeed.
Hmmm…if you dropped the pen bomb…or the rectal bomb…down the plane’s loo, might that provide the shrapnel needed to breach the plane’s fuselage?
Is the plumbing a weak spot?
And that is the problem. You can get your main charge up your ‘main arse’, but you’d need a way to command detonate it. Either an electric blasting cap (which would require wires hanging out of your arse to a power supply–both of which would be noticed), or a non-electric cap with det cord or time fuse (again, both would be detected). You could try to swallow a blasting cap, however those are really sensitive and would most likely go off inside the bomber, rendering the whole shebang kinda moot.
Now, in theory, a terrorist could hide a shaped charge (i.e. a Mod 2 or 3 container), but then again you have the problem of how to initiate it. Also, as others have noted, you’d have to pack quite a bit to snap the airframe in half. I was surprised how mediocre of a bang a stick ‘o’ C4 made during my Demo class a few weeks back. I mean, it was good size, but thinking of that on an airplane, it’d be A) difficult to smuggle on that big a charge, and B) less would most likely poke a good hole in the airframe, with decompression, but survivable.
Tripler
But, give the terrorists enough time, and they’ll try to figure it out.
Do you remember the size of the charge and your standoff distance? It’s been a couple years since I saw C4, but IIRC, it was a one pound charge and we were allowed to stand about 15 yards from it. It was suspended in the air, so there was no danger of any rocks being kicked up and hitting us. The pressure wave wasn’t much bigger than being next to a .30-30. Again, it’s been awhile, but you’re right, it’s quite anticlimactic.
The Lockerbie bomb contained 350 grams of Semtex and it destroyed a Boeing 747. It doesn’t take a large quantity of explosives to destroy an airplane.
If you aren’t very concerned about safety, I can’t think of anything that would prevent someone from developing a non-metallic initiator system.
I am not sure that this is true, but the person who told me the tale was fairly reliable.
A photographer was out in Bosnia and got his hands on some Semtex and detonators. He brought them back to my old home town and buried them in the garden. One day he returned from abroad after a marital tiff, to find all the locks changed.
He dug up his cache and put a golf ball sized lump of Semtex on the lock of the garage door. The entire garage was demolished, and most windows down the street were broken.
The guy who told me the tale certainly knew war photographers, and was pretty reliable.
Yep! We had an M112 (1.25 lb) stick ‘o’ C-4, and on occasion, a stick of M1 Dynamite. Sometimes we doubled the M112s up. But our standoff? Google Maps tells me it’s about 750 feet–probably for the frag standoff. The crater in the sand was about 10’ across, and maybe five down, give or take. I could figure out the blast pressures, but I have to leave my books at the school.
The best, though? Was on our final Demo day, when we set off at least 750 lbs NEW TNT in a hole and got two miles away. That was a literal kick in the pants! 
Tripler
Fun stuff!