Last night, I dreamt that I went to the dentist. In the dream, one of my teeth had been pulled and replaced with some explosive material (and, I assume, a detonator) so that some malevolent control freak could kill me instantly if I began to share compromising information with the wrong person. I was at the dentist to have fat injected into the cheek that lay over this tooth, so that if I was hit in the face, the explosive wouldn’t accidentally detonate.
My question is, is there any explosive substance that could be lethal, in the amount that could be stuffed into a tooth cavity and the crown covering it, if it exploded inside someone’s mouth, a la my dream? Speculation about the supposed detonator as well as whatever surveillance device the malevolent control freak must have planted on me is welcome.
Also, did I make this up or did I see/read it in a movie/book somewhere?
Some of the faster burning, thus more explosive, explosives placed in a molar has the potential of killing you. The upper palate, hereafter referred to as the UpperJawium, is conected reasonably solidly (seems to me there may be some growth thingies interspaced through the face, but in an adult this shouldn’t matter much and why we would go to all this trouble to murder an infant) to the skull. Thus a fairly small explosion, assuming the teeth are tightly clinched, should transmit a rather sharp slap to the brain. Thus bringing on Deathium.
The density of most plastic explosives seems to be around 1.5 g/cc. (Reference)
A hand grenade contains about 43 gm of such explosive. (Reference)
So, you could pack about 1/30 the energy of a hand grenade into 1 cc (about one tooth’s volume, I’d guess). Seems to me that should be more than enough, when taken ‘by mouth’, to kill you.
If the malevolent freak placed shrapnel above the explosive aimed at the brain, maybe you could get away with using less. And if he placed toxins above it, he could use only enough to break the capsule the toxins were encased in.
Let’s say you discount such accessories, saying they’re not true to the dream. Fair enough. Bone can become some mighty good shrapnel, however, especially if the charge is shaped in some way. And if you’re going to drill around and install explosives anyway, why not leverage the available resources? So I suppose you’d need to know how much explosive force is needed to drive the bone far enough into the brain to kill you.
Poison won’t do, though. The malevolent control freak has to be able to kill me instantaneously–to stop me from saying another word, never mind finishing the sentence.
KarlGauss–> The power of explosives according to weight is linear, then?
And distance from the explosion. The NEW (Net Explosive Weight) is important, but power of the overpressure (the ‘shock wave’) drops exponentially as you move further away from the detonation site.
And not all explosives are made the same. Some burn faster than others. TNT has more power than, say, black powder.
Tripler
Think of it like alcohol: Whiskey versus beer, and how long has it been since your last drink?