I’m trying to get a handle on how much chaos can be sewn with 380 tons of the military explosives HMX and RDX, gone missing in Iraq.
First, on the large scales explosion end, can anyone relate the power of these explosive compared to the OK City home-brew of fertilizer and diesel? IIRC, the Ryder truck bomb was about 2 tons, so how much HMX or RDX would have been needed to have comparable power?
Second, I’m thinking about antipersonnel car bombs and/or IEDs. Not big enough to destroy a building but enough to turn your average sedan into a shrapnel bomb that will kill most people standing around it. How much would that take? (I have some vague memory of reading somewhere that 2 or 3 pounds would be enough.)
And does anyone recal how big the Lockerbie bomb was? It fit in a radio, IIRC, but I can’t remember if there was any more detailed bomb testimony published.
I’m sure your interest is purely academic but my spidey senses tell me this thread will probably be shut down. Explosives have been discussed on SDMB and a searach may turn up information but asking how much is needed for a car bomb is a gray area at best.
Oh come on! I’m asking about what volume of damage can be done with stolen military explosives. Don’t you think the people who have access to this stuff and the expertise to make a bomb already have a clue how much gunk to use?
The typical hand grenade has between .35 & .5 KG of “Gunk.” This will blow a baseball sized ball of steel to bits and be lethal for about a 5 meter diameter IIRC.
A Claymore Mine ahs about .75 KG and propells BBs for a lethal range of about 300 feet.
T blow a Ford Escort and the adjacent 50 feet radius to smithereens could be done rather effectively with not much “gunk” at all. A manequin, car seat, body panel, etc. fashioned out of the stuff would be sufficient as a disguise and provide adequate quantity for a smattering of mayhem.
Quite a lot of mischief can be gotten into with 380 tons of gunk, certainly enough to keep the coalition entertained for a number of years with judicious use.
The FAQs include some info on the use of RDX in this application. The ‘kilogram to level a building’ remark seems a bit of an exaggeration, unless the building is a very small one, or the explosive has been split up into smaller charges and very carefully placed to cut through one or more structural supports in a larger building.
Nevertheless, surprisingly small amounts are required when the demolition is properly engineered. As described on the linked site, a half-mile-long steel highway bridge in Ohio was brought down with a mere 138 pounds of RDX, which apparently was equivalent to 600-1000 lbs of dynamite.
For an anti-personnel car bomb, I’ve not seen any mention of RDX-fired devices, but reports I’ve read concerning dynamite-charged vehicle bombs indicate they are somewhere in the 30-40 kg (about 65-90 lb) range, so 3-5 kg of RDX would probably do.
It has been estimated that less than a pound of explosive was used to down Pan Am 103. However, it’s not like imploding an office building in that once the airframe is sufficiently compromised, the plane will break up and crash.
Yeah, so the gasoline goes up in a bright fireball, cooks the car, maybe sets some other stuff on fire… but basically burns out pretty quick. If you want real blast radius, you need something that detonates, rather than merely deflagrates.
I just had a scary thought. What if all 380 tons were concealed in a cargo container, placed on a ship, and detonated while the ship is docked at Long Beach Harbor? Would there be anything left of Long Beach?
Less than a pound of HMX was used on the Lockerbie bombing, according to the New York Times:
In my morning’s reading, I believe that I came across a statement that the amount of HMX stolen equates to 4000 Oklahoma bombings. I can’t find this at the moment, unfortunately, so take it with a grain of salt.
I found this site which claims a B-53 can carry about 30 thousand pounds of bombs, or 15 tons. A substantial portion of that weight isn’t ectual explosive, it’s xasing an fins. MY WAG is thatmeans maybe one B-52 sortie equals 10 tons of explosives. So the equivalen of 38 B-53 strikes.
Or at five pounds a pop for a car bomb, we’re talking about well over a hundred thousand car bombs.
Heh…before I joined the Army I was a true 4th of July punk. Thought I knew a thing or two about “bang” from the loot we’d score from the Muckleshoots. And while you *can *get a lot done with a gunpowder-based M-80, half-stick or even a well-constructed gasoline bomb, it really does nothing to your mind quite like the pop you get out of a hand grenade, or a claymore. For me, high explosive tapped into an emotion I never recall feeling before or since. The explosion felt like reality itself had been lacerated, but just for an instant. The stuff is truly “awesome.” No, fuel can’t come close. HE is the heroin of the non-nuclear ordnance world. Besides, for gasoline to be most effective you need to vaporize it first, or at least distribute it in a fine mist immediately before detonation, and that gives a warning in addition to being tactically difficult to pull off. HE gives you no such worries. Just give it a good jolt and you’re in business.
I’ve not been to Iraq, but in Nairobi, some of the ten story buildings I saw, a good swift kick would probably level them (the elevators only went up to the fourth floor, since that used to be the top floor. All the other floors were added later. Very scary).
That depends on what you want. A pound or two of a Magnesium/oxidant mixture in proximity to a few gallons of gasoline will produced a truly awesome fireball that HE can’t match. It’s all fash, and no bang, but sometimes that’s what you want.