…and not just “the superpower of detonating high explosives,” thankyouverymuch. I mean, what kind of physical effect might comic-book style superpowers need to generate that could cause high explosives to detonate, as a side effect?
Many high explosives, of course, being stable enough that they can be dropped, shot, or burned without detonating. Primary explosives, used in detonators, are more volatile—but I’m curious as to what kind of effect, however exotic, might be used to set off either type. Aside from, y’know, another explosion.
So…any ideas? C’mon—at least some of you have to be as [del]bored and waiting for jury duty summons[/del] willing to seriously consider extremely silly technical problems as I am.
That’s basically it. You make big explosions with little explosions. Generally by applying heat and pressure. The more stable the compound the more heat and pressure needed to make it explode.
Can’t say I’m well up on superpowers. But projected energy or ability to create a powerful enough shockwave should do it. I’ve seen Superman create a perfect diamond out of a lump of coal in his hand. I’m sure that if you asked him to crush lump of Semtex instead it would go bang. He could probably set things off with his X-Ray vision, he just needs to blink it on a full power very quickly. Pitch a rock fast enough that it would set things off. I suspect a hypersonic pebble would do the job.
Delivering thunderbolts would also probably be a good one.
Its a shame angst won’t do it. Just about every modern superhero would be up for the job then.
Ultrasonics might do it - pump enough sound energy into the high explosive, and you can get cavitation (at least in liquids). As the bubbles collapse, heat (and light) is released (sonoluminescence). With some judicious focusing, you could probably collapse enough bubbles in a small area to trigger detonation.
Well, microtelekenesis would do it, since it could change matter at the atomic (but not subatomic) level. But that would make for a crap superhero because they could just do whatevee they wanted.
How about just setting them off in the way they were designed to be set off? Maybe a telekinetic finger that can push the big red button on the detonator.
