Or at least minimize the damage? So, yeah, I’m probably hosed.
This is based on a scenario from “Lost” a few weeks ago. Basically, the Good Guys discover in their backpack a goodly-sized brick of C4 attached to a digital timer serving as a detonator. Much drama ensues.
Here’s my question, though. I’ve got a detonator attached to some wires which have prongs jammed into the C4. I’m going to guess that the producers on “Lost” aren’t demolitions experts, but this seems to be a pretty standard TV/movie bomb setup.
I really don’t want this thing to blow a hole in my submarine, mostly because I’m a really terrible swimmer. My own, personal inclination would be to do something like taking a knife and cutting away as much explosive from the prongs/probes/whatever as I could, in the hopes of minimizing the actual explosion.
Is this realistic? Would I somehow be able to accomplish that with a knife? Would there be a chance of my accidentally setting it off if I (say) shorted the two prongs with my knife?
The people on this show had several minutes - is it possible to just shave away 95% of the C4?
Assuming no anti-tampering measures, why not just pull the “prongs” away from the explosive? Not sure why you’d need to scrape with a knife, does plastic explosive stick to things, like it were dried oatmeal?
Once you’ve got the prongs cleaned, place prongs/wires/timer well away from you and just let it go off. Provided you’re not holding the thing at arm’s length, how much bang is in your typical blasting cap? (we’re also assuming the prongs aren’t packed with PETN or other initiator compound). Enough to harm you if it goes off in the next compartment? I don’t think it’s that much, though I’ve never used a blasting cap. I don’t know if enough poisonous gas would be evolved so that you had to surface.
No idea, I’m less of an explosives expert than the “Lost” producers are.
However, when the prongs WERE yanked out the timer did the good old “speed up really damned fast” trick.
So, suspecting something sneaky, my first instinct is to cut away as much explosive as possible. Along those same lines, since we had some time on the timer, we could just wait for the “jerk the probes and hope for the best” gambit until we were way late in the countdown.
Aboard submarines, they have a pretty good rule that is straight forward and to the point: “Secure the f*ckin’ hatch!”. Had that idiot Saheed ( sudden lapse of previously demonstrated explosives expetise notwithstanding) simply dogged the damn hatches behind him as he went , those left to deal with his idiocy would have been much better off.
What I would do: Cut down the center of the brick to prevent the circuit from being completed. Keep the two sides apart while running to the nearest torpedo tube, load and fire.
Can’t wait to hear if that would have killed everyone?
Not explosives expert, but my understanding is that the explosives do not form a link in a circuit, such that severing the C4 between the blasting caps would do any good. My understanding is that the wires form the circuits with each blasting cap.
I cannot foresee any issue with removing the blasting caps from the C4 other than anti-tampering devices on the detonator. If it has stability sensors (liquid switches, etc), then picking up the device would trigger it more easily than carefully pulling the blasting caps out of the C4. I don’t know what kind of stability sensor or other booby trap could be set in the wires with the blasting caps.
So yes, if the C4 is exposed, I can’t think of a reason trying to carefully reduce the amount of C4 touching the blasting cap would hurt you. At best, the final explosion will be greatly reduced, perhaps enough to contain in a chamber on the far side of a hatch.
I still wonder about cutting the wires at the blasting caps. I assume from movies there is a way to rig a current and a sensor to ensure that current is maintained, but I don’t know enough about it to verify.
From what I could see of the bomb, it wasn’t that sophisticated. It had bounced around in a backpack, and had been removed from its initial location by an untrained person. So I doubt there was any redundency built into the detonation system. Between cutting away large hunks of C4 and dogging hatches, the explosion could have been kept to a small “Bang!” But that would have ruined the sacrifice of a key character, so let’s go for the stupid instead.
Yeah. I’m totally disappointed that the doctor, housewife, con man, mafia heavy, mafia princess, millonaire chicken franchise owner, airline pilot, and Iraqi torturer aren’t up on proper submarine etiquette.
The con man even rode in a sub once for like an hour!
So, getting back to the op, could I cut c4? Is it like clay or kilned clay? Would I need a knife or could I just pinch off pieces like play-doh?
Hey, the only subs I’ve ever been on in my life are the ones at Disneyland, but I still thought about closing the watertight hatches.
C4 is like modeling clay. You can cut it with a knife, and pull it apart with your bare hands. IIRC they had about 3 minutes to work with when they discover the bomb. Plenty of time to take the sucker apart and lock it in an empty, sealed compartment.
While I watched that scene all I kept thinking was how damn hard it would be to create a detonater out of a digital watch.
I mean it’s not like digital watches come equipped with a couple of terminals to which an electric current is sent when a stopwatch counts down.
And how do you go about programming the watch so all other buttons are disabled during the countdown?
There’s some intricate design to a detonater and I don’t think turning a watch into one is all that easy.
Well, not open terminals, but if it has an alarm or countdown timer with a chime, presumably the leads that power the beep-emitter could be connected to a blasting cap instead. You’d have to open up the back of your watch, of course (warning: voids warranty) and find those leads without the innards of your watch falling apart, though.
Of course, then any watch tone would set off the bomb, including the tone many watches make when you change mode. So the timer couldn’t be stopped safely, and you’d have to hook up the connections after activating it.
Simply cutting a connection to the cap or pulling the cap out of the explosive would still work, though. Or taking the battery out of the watch.
The big question would be whether a watch battery can produce sufficient current to set off a blasting cap. I think probably not, and that some sort of secondary power supply, activated by the chime current, would be necessary.
People have been trained by years of cheesy Hollywood bomb-disarming scenes, though, to think that there’s some secret to it beyond “take the cap out of the explosive”, when that’s really all there is to it, absent intentionally set boobytraps or complications. Maybe it makes sense to assume the worst, but hell, if you’ve only got a few seconds…