…but I couldn’t use nukes. What’s the best stuff for the job? Somehow we got talking about this over beer, and there was no consensus. I thought C4 was the best, but a friend disagrees. Trouble is, he can’t remember what the real good stuff is called.
So I guess the question is, what’s our most powerful conventional expolsive, and are we at our theoretical limit with chemistry?
Last I heard, a compound called HMX was the most powerful HE now in use. This New Scientist talks about a new brred of HE, which are desinged with environmental friendliness in mind, and turn out to also be more powerful. One compund in particular, called diazyltetrozolate, is 25% more powerful than HMX.
Ya either got balls or no brains talking about this kind of stuff on the Internet.
how so?
(ok I know what your point is, but be realistic. This is real life not TV. people can ask what the most powerful conventional explosive is on a message board without worrying about the FBI crashing in through the windows)
John Ashcroft can kiss my butt too.
Anway, thanks QED. Besides, it’s not like I can get this stuff without somebody knowing. I doubt I can just cook some up in my kitchen. Sheesh.
Really two different questions. It depends on what you wish to blow up to accurately answer what would be best to use.
As far as power. I have read about PETN being on the hi end of the scale for conventional chemicals. Pure liquid nitroglycerin would also be very high on the list, but it is usually mixed to make a dynamite like substance that is much less powerful than the pure liquid form. This is true for many of the chemical substances. For instance, RDX, a C4 component can be crystallized into one big nugget to make a substance much more powerful than C4.
Here I was thinking it was me after a large amount of Taco Bell. I’ll be damned.
Well, he did say “conventional” explosive. 
Well I just happened to know somenone who went to jail over chemical blueprints, so I’m careful.
I did find this for ya though powerful stuff
Can you still get ammonium nitrate at a feed and seed store in the US? When I was in young and foolish we made a bomb out of ammonium nitrate and diesel oil. It made a wicked, big explosion but we hadn’t shaped the charge so we didn’t hurt anything.
By the way haven’t they held Jose Padilla for a couple of years now for talking about making a “dirty bomb”? I think they have finally let him have a lawyer. I don’t know.
hlanelee - I would seriously, seriously not post stuff like that on this board. I know ANFO is public knowledge especially after Oklahoma city, but the mods and admins really do not like discussion of anything remotely illegal. They get antsy if people even talk about peer-to-peer file sharing.
Back to the OP - short answer, your friend is right. Long answer…
“Power” isn’t that useful a term when applied to explosives. Practical considerations will almost always trump straight power. Something half as powerful but ten times as cheap may be preferable, for example.
One measure of an explosive’s power is the energy released when it reacts. But energy doesn’t necessarily convert to an energetic blast - it depends on how much of that energy is used to do work. Thermite for example releases a lot of energy on reaction, but the reaction products are non-gaseous - liquid iron and solid aluminium oxide. Thermite is not therefore an effective explosive - too much of the energy is lost as hot non-gaseous product.
Another measure of an explosive’s power is called “brisance” which is a measure of the shattering power. Brisance depends upon the peak pressure developed within the explosive’s body as it detonates, and is determined empirically. It varies with the energy released, the explosive’s density, the detonation velocity etc. Brisance is important if you want to turn a bomb casing into a lot of shrapnel, or break a large volume of rock into smaller bits, but may be completely unimportant or even undesirable if you want to blow tree stumps out of the ground.
Most military explosives are based upon RDX or PETN, which are energetic, brisant, and not terribly sensitive. They have similar performance - RDX is a touch more powerful and less sensitive. C4 is finely devided RDX in a plastic matrix, and so is less powerful because the plastic matrix dilutes the RDX. That is not the point however - C4 is made that way because it is squidgy, which is convenient for a number of applications.
Really big conventional explosions have always used ANFO - a crude fuel-oxidiser mixture. ANFO is a relatively mediocre explosive, but it has a few advantages - it is dirt cheap so you can afford to pile up thousands of tonnes of it, and it is so insensitive that it is not classified as an explosive at all for purposes of transport or storage - it has a lesser designation as a “blasting agent”.
CW’s link to octanitrocubane is fascinating because for a long while it was not thought possible to synthesize this, although it clearly would be a very energetic explosive. Cubane is a highly stressed carbon structure (a cubic lattice with a carbon at each corner and a dangling bond) so the energy of that bond stress is added to the redox energy of the explosive reaction. The high density is also significant as it means the brisance would be tremendous. It remains to be seen if it can be synthesized in any usable quantity or whether it will remain a lab curiosity. Even it is synthesized in usable quantities, chances are you’d do much better with ANFO for any general task, for the money.
Are we at the theoretical limit with chemistry? That’s a tough question. No explosive is as energetic pound for pound as the simple rocket fuel mixtures. A stochiometric hydrogen and oxygen mixture is immensely energetic, for example, but the density is pitiful when they are gaseous. Hydrogen and fluorine are even more energetic, so there may be a way to go yet. On the other hand, explosives have to be practical as well as powerful, and those requirements are to some extent contradictory.
If you want to talk exotic, there are odd states of matter such as metallic hydrogen which may be tremendously poweful explosives. Metallic hydrogen is largely theoretical high density solid state that hydrogen may be able to achieve under enormous pressure. If it indeed exists, and if it is stable once formed, then we’re talking a new family of chemical explosives considerably more powerful than any we have now.
An article on possible metallic hydrogen synthesis - for a fraction of a second.
http://www-phys.llnl.gov/H_Div/GG/metalhydrofact.html
And some wonderfully vague speculation on to what its properties would be. The only one I believe is the last one, that it would be a powerful explosive. All that energy that goes into making it has to come out when you un-make it.
Cool info. above, all, and thank you. Extra distinction must go to matt, of course, for his detailed summary of explosive properties, and honorable mention to cw for the octanitrocubane ref. Very interesting.
Shit, now I wanna play with this stuff. I pay taxes, why can’t I? Gimme a sandpit and a few junk cars…good clean fun!
The terms of the ‘Report to Moderator’ option don’t cover this, but count me as someone who is extremely uncomfortable.
Relax. There’s not nearly enough information here or in any of the links to actually manufacture any of these compounds, as far as I can tell. And if someone really wants to make explosives, there’s plenty of information readily available to the persistent researcher.
But say you wanted to blow something up…
Instead of using explosives, use conventional fuels heating water in a container to engineer a steam explosion. Steam itself is literally unstoppable and, at pressures past what metal can endure, irresistible. For an example of the power of steam, consider the largest steam explosion in the history of the United States: Mount St. Helens.
Man, am I really that over the line here? Hell, a while ago we were talking about nuking the Moon out of its orbit, which, you know, involves entertaining things like large explosions. Look, I work amidst a bunch of science dweebs and am one myself. Each and every one of us had a chemistry set when we were kids, and each and every one of us were into explosions. The bigger, the better. Not to hurt anybody, not to commit terrorist acts, but because explosions are cool. They’re loud, they’re powerful, stuff goes flying everywhere. Maybe it’s some kind of Freudian phallic ejaculatory psycho-male thing, I neither know nor care. So, you know, we’re talking about the dumb shit, such as blowing things up, we did as kids over beers, and then somehow the conversation moved to what the real explosive are, and how would they be ranked. It’s purely interest in trivia, plus our benign pyrotechnicomania.
Sheesh
By the way, I’ve never built a bomb in my life, 'cause I knew somebody who blew off two of his fingers with an M-80 when I was a kid, and that freaked me the hell out.
My brother, on the other hand…
hlanelee, your post is a violation of the rules of this board. Do not post information on where to get ingredients to make a bomb, or how to make it.
Read the Registration Agreement and FAQ carefully before you make your next post.
If you violate this rule again you will be banned without hesitation. You have been warned.
This thread is asked and answered to the extent it can be in GQ, and is therefore closed.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
qts, next time please use the “Report bad post” feature. Thank you.
Since I’ve posted on this topic before, I’ll just copy/paste it here for the convenience of our members:
The “Report this post to a moderator” (now “Report bad post”) is a very useful feature. To clarify, the message you see currently, “Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising messages, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts.” is the default message of the new version of the board software. However, please feel free to use it for purposes of reporting posts as you have done in the past (e.g. typos, coding mess ups, title edits, incorrect forum, troll suspicions, etc.)
It is the easiest and most efficient way to reach the moderators. Please do not hesitate to use it for legitimate purposes. A good part of the standard of moderation on these boards (and the moderator response times) is due to the vigilance of our members in reporting incorrect or inappropriate posts.
Please feel free to continue to use the feature as you have done previously.
We are aware that you cannot report your own post in the current version of the software. I’ll have to check with the CR team to see if we can change that, but for now, feel free to report the post that is immediately above or below your post, and explain yourself in the report.
-xash
General Questions Moderator