Re: Proposed House rule
In reply to Meir Galinski (msg # 976):
Actually a lot of explosives are not so stable... and now you are in one of my knowledge areas. The Military is working hard to make safer explosives even now, and yes, great strides have been taken, many starting in about 1909!!
US Coast Artillery converted to Explosive D filler (a form of Ammonium Nitrate) back then for safety reasons and the US Navy soon followed. Magazine explosions were much too common back them (witness USS Maine 10 years or so before). Most were due to the propellant, not the explosive charges, although the are cases where those who used Picric Acid under a variety of names may have suffered a shell explosion. It was used up through WW2.
Explosive Ds issues were that it needed a powerful initiator, so the the fuze often set off a booster that weighed a pound or more, TNT being a common booster initiated by a Tetryl disk set off by the black powder fuse charge. Explosive D also emitted fumes that caused fuses to become gummed up and inoperative, discovered before WW2 and fixed in time.
TNT is less used in Shells now, but is a common Military explosive. It will explode with a sharp strike (like by a bullet) but won't reliably do so ...
Dynamite is still used by Military Engineers. It would only be used in combat in extreme cases.
Composition B has been used for a long time, but is also being phased out. My tanks used it in their shells ... in a diesel fire they had a cook off rating of about 15 minutes (likely due to the propellant), but of course would no longer have been safe to use. Those shells were fired by a 1.5 volt discharge. This sounds scary but has proven rather safe, remember, a tank is a mobile faraday cage among other things.
C4 burns in small quantities, but in larger amounts conflagration will cause deflagration! Likewise any compression of what burning will do the same, as several guys learned in Vietnam when they tried to stomp it out. One of many reasons why the combat arms are not a place for the stupid.
Some of the newer explosives just coming into use in the past 8-10 years I am less familiar with; many are the old explosives with new additives.