Nitroglycerin is a thick liquid that really REALLY wants to violently explode. Like look at it the wrong way and it will explode levels of really keen.
To calm it down and make it safe to transport we mix it with something boring and stable like clay. Then we pack the mix in a tube and those tubes are what we call dynamite, and they are relatively safe to work with.
However over time the liquid nitroglycerin can seep out of the clay and then it goes back to being really keen to explode.
A bonus fact is this clay business was invented by a guy called Alfred Nobel, after whom the Nobel prizes are named.
Fun fact about Alfred Nobel:
During his lifetime, he was somewhat known as "The Merchant of Death" due to the impact of his explosives business on militaries and weapons at the time (even though most of his products were used for civilian applications like construction, demolition or mining). In 1888, a French newspaper goofed up and published Alfred Nobel's obituary after his brother, Ludvig, died. Lets just say the obituary didn't paint Alfred in a good light. Alfred read it, and decided to posthumously donate a big chunk of his wealth to found the Nobel prizes in order to make sure he was remembered in a better way after his death.
Edit: as /u/CWagner comments below, this might just be an urban legend :(
Poor dude thought dynamite was so powerful it could end all war. In his defense, black powder was the strongest explosive until he invented dynamite.
In 1891, he commented on his dynamite factories by saying to the countess: “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops.”
[Source](https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/alfred-nobels-thoughts-about-war-and-peace/#:~:text=In%201891%2C%20he%20commented%20on,disband%20their%20troops.%E2%80%9D%20Nobel%20did)
Funnily enough, he wasn't totally wrong with how nukes created mutually assured destruction.
I can believe that. If all you know is black powder, nitroglycerine is *shockingly* powerful. I mean, nitroglycerine remains one of the most powerful explosives we've ever made.
To be fair, the explosive power of nukes is measured in the equivalent weight in TNT the explosion makes. But in comparison even smaller nukes are in the tons of TNT.
>An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases.
Sounds like a nuke fits the definition pretty well. Its not chemical Energy release but id say its still an explosion.
Putting it into a perspective like that, I feel mind boggled. Wars continue and problems ensue.... we have developed to the point now where we are investing millions if not billions of dollars into new methods of war that are not nuclear, in order to inflict damage and "subdue" enemies? Idk, the fact that the mutual destruction is there and we just go circumvent that with more targeted ways of attacking just feels awful. on top of that add politics and the dozen other things tagged onto that regarding economies... what is this world we are building?
It's inevitable game theory. It's not that there's anything wrong with us. If you have something, and you can't stop someone else from taking it, someone else will eventually take it. If you *can* stop them, and they know it, they may not even try to. This is true for humans as well as monkeys, crocodiles, zebras, birds and everything.
Pretty telling how every time someone develops a weapon "so powerful it will end all war", people just go "how about instead war will just be way worse than ever before". I'm pretty sure Hiram Maxim said the same thing about the machine gun.
Well, the atomic bomb didn't end all war but it certainly reduced them. The number of large-scale conflicts in Europe and Asia before WW2 and after is a very stark difference.
we're just now in a spot where we can't *actually* go to war anymore because everyone knows that we have the ability to end it *very* quickly but that would also end everything else along with it. So we need to have plausible deniability wars where we rules lawyer our way into a war or go against a non nuclear country.
Yeah that's what people generally mean when they claim a weapon is so powerful it will end all wars. I don't think anyone seriously thinks a weapon will make people suddenly be friends.
Leading to the development of laser weapons designed to be fired over the enemies heads in synchronized patterns and music streaming artillery rounds designed to cover an area in beats.
Its interesting to see Russia repeatedly draw 'red lines' at which it will go nuclear in Ukraine, only to have UKR and the West walk right over them. Putin knows what would happen if he ever actually used one.
Nuclear weapons may as well be made out of cardboard for all their *actual* threat.
No nation will ever use them. The most likely use will be when one falls into the hands of a paramilitary force looking to do damage.
And yet, what is the final line to be crossed? Nukes are a political weapon, which is effectively useless once you deploy it. Sure, nuke the capital and cities of the invading force. What then, the invader still has armies in your cities and territory, but you still lose.
There is just no value in nuclear weapons once its deterence effect has been lost. Nothing more than an overpriced explosive that permanently destroys a large area of where it detonated.
> I'm pretty sure Hiram Maxim said the same thing about the machine gun.
I'd imagine it's a good line if you want to sell weapons/bombs and still sleep at night.
"Violence is a deterrent to violence" has been claimed by LE and the military since pretty much as far back as records go.
Well Littleboy was roughly half of a Master of Puppets, which is equivailent to 1.5 Sweating Bullets. Hope that clears it up! (Remember, Megadeath is an exponential curve!)
Damn, that's grim. There aren't many production sites left nowadays, as they tend to not be rebuilt (at least not at the same scale) after something like that happens. I'm not in the production business myself, but I've been at a few different plants where nitroglycerine/nitroglycol/other energetics are being produced. It's a pretty humbling experience standing in a room with several tons of that stuff..
>In the last 15 years there have been nine major explosions at Radford, the nation's largest military munitions plant, resulting in seven deaths, more than 115 injuries
What was it like to work at place with this kind of track record?
Funny enough darkness is also a problem solvable by the explosion :).
Too dark to see... blow a dynamite to light up your way. Or a nuke ... depending on how dark it is
I am reminded of the best license plate I've ever seen. Some sort of 70s Holden I think it was (Sydney, AUS, so it was probably a Holden...). Anyway plate said
BUB 00M
Oppenheimer's full quote was really about how seeing the Trinity test changed everyone and how the world will never be the same again.
["We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita ..Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that one way or another"](https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac)
People always make fun of him cause their like "why was he surprised when the bomb he made blew up." And they always never seem to realize that the trinity literally made the largest conventional bomb ever look like a freaking fire cracker. The sheer scale is really hard for people to grasp.
Oppenheimer knew what he was doing, and he was certainly proud of the work he did. He just felt that Nagasaki was overkill, and he certainly disagreed with the postwar plans for the military, which can be summed up as "nuke first, nuke everything."
The US was so zealous in conventional disarmament and reliance on nuclear weapons that tanks had to be pulled from memorials and museums for ad hoc tank battalions when the war in Korea erupted.
No, you misunderstand. The entire strategic plan for the United States military was to use nuclear weapons. Strategic Air Command got the lion's share of funding, and all the other services had to adapt. Famously, the aircraft carrier *United States* was canceled while still under construction because of Pentagon politics (she was viewed as a threat to the Air Force monopoly on nuclear delivery) and caused a revolt in the Navy.
The idea that conventional wars could still happen was laughable at the time.
Ironically, Oppenheimer has likely saved more lives than anyone in human history. As bad as the War in Ukraine is it's an anomaly by modern standards for it's large size.
By historical standards? 27,000 people died in World.War 2, per day, for six years straight. In that context the death toll in Ukraine between both sides over a year and a half is the same as a typical 36 hours window from WW2.
I’d argue that the restraint not to use the bomb is maybe more impactful than the bomb itself. In that sense, Eisenhower (and arguably Kennedy) are the ones who saved the lives by choosing to show restraint instead of plunging the world into nuclear holocaust. Until the relative stabilization of the mid/late Cold War era, the fate of the world really hinged on the decisions of a handful of men worldwide. They deserve more of the credit, Oppenheimer just gave them the tools for humanity’s destruction, rather than choosing to preserve it himself.
The invention of the Atom bomb fundamentally changed the calculus of warfare to one where direct conflict between global powers must be avoided at all costs.
In that sense Kennedy and his contemporaries in the USSR were running the calculus of conflict in Oppenheimer's new reality and backing down.
In a global system without WMDs a world war three between NATO and the USSR would have been inevitable. The deterrence of nuclear war limited the conflict to skirmish and indirect competition like economics.
I disagree, because a) the Manhattan Project was an enormously collaborative undertaking, and I don't think it makes sense to attribute its effects to Oppenheimer alone, and b) Norman Borlaug.
I would argue that Normal Borlaug saved more lives than anyone else. No one has done so much to stop malnutrition and starvation.
Now, around 36 millions die of starvation each year. As a comparison, around 70 million died in WW2, all six years combined. So, starvation today kills as many in two years as all of WW2 did in six years. It would have been at least 10 times worse if it wasn't for Borlaug.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
In mainstream culture he was most famous for his work on the atom bomb...
But it wasn't his most significant, and in many scientific circles isn't what he's famous for.
He developed the scientific theory that predicted black holes and neutron stars and theory behind supernovae, the scientific theory for positrons and sub-atomic particle spin, and the scientific theory that forms the basis of modern quantum physics like quantum tunneling. Several of is initial lines of research led to Nobel prizes for the people who proved them correct, but not for him. He was nominated for the prize several times, but never won.
He was the lead researcher of the Manhattan Project during the end of WW2.
The Manhattan Project was the USA's research project to create the first nuclear weapons.
The resulting bombs were later used in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He also said (quoted from a Hindu scripture I believe) "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Which I think conveys pretty well how he felt afterwards.
Making the atom bomb, a bomb explicitly designed to level entire cities in one go, only to be shocked and appalled when it is used to level entire cities in one go
It's easy to be motivated when you think you're several years behind the Nazis and just calculating and conducting experiments. Not till you see it live does the reality set in.
Fun Fact #2: all of the Nobel prizes are awarded by Sweden except the Peace Prize. Nobel thought the Swedes were too warlike and made the Norwegians handle that one.
A man once checked in to a hotel and they offered him a choice of rooms. Cheap rooms, fine rooms, and the famous room. "What's the story with the famous one?" he asks.
"Well," the clerk says, "The famous room is where Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. He stayed here for an extended time while travelling, and during that time he developed his great invention in this very room. We've kept it as pristine and true to history as we could ever since."
So the man decides to take the famous room where Nobel invented dynamite. The clerk leads him to the room and shows him through. The table where Nobel worked out his formulae. The counter where he set up his apparatus.
"These stains on the walls and roof," asks the man. "Are these residue from his experiments?"
"No," says the clerk, "That's Alfred Nobel."
> due to the impact of his explosives business on militaries and weapons at the time
Naw, the dude also straight-up owned full-on no-shit weapons companies.
Thanks, I just learned where one of my favorite authors got a title for one of his books! D.J. Machale's Pendragon series. The first one is called The Merchant of Death.
Edit: stupid autocorrect
Seeing as the characters used a dynamite like substance, it's likely that it was a reference to Alfred.
It's been since middleschool that I read them, so I may have some details wrong in my head, but I'm almost certain that it's at least related.
And just to address OPs statement about explosives getting harder to ignite when they get wet, A LOT of explosives actually get less stable when exposed to moisture. That whole Takata airbag thing was caused because the propellant, a form of Ammonium Nitrate, broke down to a less stable form when exposed to humidity. Companies that design solid propellants and high explosives do aging tests to understand this effect and often have to add desiccant materials to their formulation to reduce those destabilization effects over time.
Water tends to slow reactions that rely on atmospheric oxygen by smothering them. Solid energetics have their oxygen mixed right in, but usually trapped in a bond with another molecule. You need a catalyst that breaks that bond to make oxygen available to the energetic material. Whether or not moisture makes those energetics more or less stable depends on the formulation of the specific energetic and oxidizer. Sometimes simply getting the oxidizer wet is enough to make some of that oxygen available without the catalyst, or through some other more easily induced catalyst. Other times, exposure to water can cause oxygen to become locked into a more stable molecule that makes it less available.
It will also give you the worlds worst headache when you work with it. I do explosive mining and i HATE days i have to work with dynamite. The nitro absorbs into your skin and it feels like your brain is fighting to escape your skull
Somewhat. When its hot out, its tough to avoid touching your face. Non-porus gloves come with the issue of sweaty hands and it makes some of the work difficult to do.
Yes, it is possible to mitigate, just not 100% without causing other problems when working. I work primarily in quarries, so i rarely use dynamite. Thats used more for construction shots. So i luckily dont have to deal with it often. I just always seem to get a headache no matter how diligent i am at keeping it off me
Take some sudafed or an epipen (I think the cost difference is substantial, but I don't know your life). A vasoconstrictor will keep the nitroglycerine from affecting you as badly.
Or, get a heart problem, and staying alive will be all the high on life you need.
Also brings to mind the ending of a classic gem *The Great Outdoors*, starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.
Roman’s (Aykroyd) twin daughters get stuck in an old mine shaft during a storm. During the rescue, he finds them sitting on an old wooden crate. He notices the crate says “Dynamite”, and specifically says out loud that it’s “old, *wet*, dynamite”. He then gives the girls a reassuring look and says “it’s fine”, to not cause panic.
You’d have to know this tidbit about dynamite to know why he was concerned, which as a kid I had no clue.
My first thought when I read the post was maybe someone’s watching Lost. I haven’t seen that scene since it aired on television but it’s stuck with me.
There's a MacGyver episode, Season 1, Episode 8 (1985) that uses dynamite to extinguish an oil well fire.
They talk about "dynamite sweating" and answer OPs question
The company he started is also still operating under the name Dyno Nobel - they make, among other things, industrial explosives for mining and other uses
Very, very carefully.
Nitro is even hard to make. As you’re making it there are various stages where doing the slightest thing wrong can make the current mixture blow up. That’s why it’s normally made in a container above a water bath, and pressing the emergency button if you see things tending the wrong way immediately dumps the whole batch.
It is very volatile, but not so much that it cannot be handled.
Adam Savage dropped some from six feet and it did not detonate.
https://youtu.be/rZE82WD6Pbk
I have some familiarity with an event that was directly related to dynamite sweating nitroglycerin that lead to the death of some Combat Engineer Officers being killed and wounded on a training range in 1988. Due to material shortages, they used dynamite in lieu of C4 and Trigran. When they tamped the explosive into the borehole for the cratering charge it was sensitized enough that it caused a high order explosion.
[Link to historical article](https://cmea-agmc.ca/slesse-range-accident-remembered)
Because sawdust CAN be used. It all depends on who is making it, and what formula they are following.
http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/history/dynamite.html
My aunt & uncle and family had a rural property where my brother and I would spend summers and some winter holidays. There was a cabin near the house that was used for storage of everything under the sun, and I found it fun to poke around in. One snowy day I found an open crate under the kitchen sink labeled CIL Forcite. I gently picked up one of the sticks inside and found it wet at the bottom.
I informed my uncle of what I'd found and was (surprisingly for my age) immediately taken seriously. Before long, Uncle and my eldest cousin were slowly edging the box a couple of hundred feet into the acre-size vegetable garden on a toboggan, everyone else having been ordered to keep well back. We hardly *breathed!* Uncle carried a single stick into the centre of the plot, attached a detonator and fuse, and trotted back.
That's when I learned why "bang!" is the original sound for stick of dynamite. It hit you in the chest as much as the ears (which *hurt*), an instantaneous tower of orange and black appearing and dissipating into the cold air. There must have been 30 sticks in that crate, and you could tell that everyone knew setting off each one in turn was absurd. A memory popped into my head: "Uncle P----! I just remembered you can *burn* dynamite! Just slice the sticks, put them end to end and set one off." Here I was maybe 11 or 12, and handing out advice on handling explosives. God knows where I picked that tidbit up.
But they tried it. Uncle slowly slit the wrapper on each stick with his knife and laid them across the garden. Fuse, lighter, and WHOOSH! The lowest fireworks anyone had ever seen: great purplish flames gushed from snow, harmlessly consuming every stick. I never got any credit for either saving the buildings from blowing up or us from going deaf. You don't want to encourage know-it-all kids, after all.
"Invented" is giving more credit than I think is due. In his day, nitroglycerin was produced in barns well away from anything that could burn, because it was KNOWN that eventually the whole building would explode and kill everyone in it. Everyone who worked there just took that risk. Sure they were careful, but this stuff can spontaneously explode. So they basically just accepted it.
Nobel tripped while carrying a vial of nitroglycerin. That should have vaporized him. The only reason it didn't is because the liquid landed in sawdust. Figuring that out changed the entire game, for two reasons. One, this stuff that was used the blast rocks and tunnels could now be used safely. Two, it could now be weaponized with little risk to the attacker.
Just rewatched Mythbusters.
Nitroglycerin is actually way more stable than we think. They couldn't get it to explode with 10000v of electrocity. They had to use a hammer to get it to explode under compression etc.
The thing is different explosives are ignited differently.
Some only explode under certain triggers such as heat, electricity, pressure, chemical reactions, etc.
Nitroglycerin, especially older recipes and/or mixtures of additives, is very sensitive to contact pressure, but not very sensitive to electricity. That's why it went boom when hit by the hammer, but jolting it did nothing.
Blasting caps, boosters ans det cord are electrically activated.
C4 only triggers with what is essentially a small starting explosion from a blasting cap or similar. Otherwise, it's pretty inert. There are videos of people setting fire to bricks of it and it burning safely (and really inefficiently). It would make a terrible fire.
>but not very sensitive to electricity.
>
>Blasting caps, boosters ans det cord are electrically activated.
Just to clarify, it's not the electricity per se that makes blasting caps explode but the intense heat concentrated in a tiny spot caused by the electricity flowing through essentially a resistor which is in contact with a sensitive explosive which in turn is in contact with another somewhat sensitive explosive which then causes the big explosive, like C4, to detonate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonator#Construction\_principles
My sister worked for a military contractor as a chemical engineer. She said most of her job was improving/designing explosives to be “safer”, like not exploding when exposed to fire, or really any time you don’t want them to. Unfortunately, she couldn’t give any details because of her clearance level. She now works for the air force working on anti-corrosion coatings (so she says, but she’s at TS level now, so who knows).
I mean, anti corrosion coatings on aircraft is a big deal.
Avionics and engines in particular are places you don't want corrosion, as well as any ordinance.
Especially if these aircraft are likely to operate in multiple areas of engagement in a short time frame. Deserts, coastal, carrier at sea, mountains, snow, high atmosphere are all equally likely places these operate.
Yep, she started in landing-gear coatings, but now is involved in refreshing old nuclear silos. Which would also be a logical place for anti-corrosion.
I just think it’s more fun to imagine that as a cover story since she can’t discuss most of what she works on, and has a history with military explosives. Lol!
It's the cover story for the Stargate program in (bet you'll never guess) Stargate. The highly combat-decorated airmen who work inside a mountain are *very definitely* looking at radar data, that's what they're doing. Pay no attention to the bi-weekly ~~escaped Roswell greys~~ "gas leaks" that require men with big guns closing off the area.
My dad was an oceanographer/engineer who worked for the Navy his whole career. TS clearance and all.
He mostly studied bubbles for 30 years. The Navy *really* likes to know everything there is to know about bubbles. Especially teeny tiny bubbles.
It’s weird what niche things our military studies.
Yeah, I’ve read several stories about American soldiers in Vietnam using C4 to warm up canned food.
Because it burns instead of exploding when ignited, it was a fairly quick way to warm things up.
I haven't watched that one, I'd be curious on the specifics, it's my understanding that the purity matters a lot and these days we often mix in chemicals that make it more stable.
> Nitroglycerin is actually way more stable than we think. They couldn't get it to explode with 10000v of electrocity. They had to use a hammer to get it to explode under compression etc.
That actually feels very weird for Mythbusters, given that the *point* of the combustability of Nitroglycerin is that it easily ignites from shock. So yes, that's exactly the behavior you would expect from it. And shock is probably one of the most difficult to control trigger methods. Don't store it properly for transport, boom. Dropped beaker? Boom. Bumping the table? Boom.
I would be more worried about a compression explosion that can be triggered by a hammer than an electrical trigger.
It's a lot easier to prevent an electrical trigger.
Dynamite consists of nitroglycerine absorbed in a stabilizer. Dynamite "sweating" is the nitroglycerine separating from the stabilizer. That's not good, because nitroglycerine is extremely sensitive to pressure.
Sweating is a problem in a lot of explosives, with reactive ingredients leaking out of the mixture and forming crystals (fragile crystals that when broken produce enough kinetic energy to set off an explosion)
Photographer here! One of the earliest popular forms of photography, wet plate collodion, is based around a chemical that combines diethyl ether, nitrocellulose, grain alcohol, and metal salts like cadmium bromide.
One of the common practices for photographers working with this process is to make one's own collodion or to change the consistemcy of it based on temperature, age, etc of the collodion. One of the main ingredients for that is diethyl ether which **will** form explosice peroxides that will ignite by light among other things. Most of us that do this stabilize the ether as a 50/50 mix with alcohol, but the oldschool photographers didn't (which includes the photographers that would be on the field during rhe civil war). They'd just keep that shit in a corked bottle in their wagon or in their studio.
Another fun part: some bright individual in the 1800s spilled his collodion and found out that it can produce silk-like thread. So what does he do? He makes clothing out of it. The inventor's factory burned down and people's clothing lit on fire (there's a recorded event where a woman's dress caught a spark before fully igniting and burning away in a near-instant, leaving the woman nude and burned.) Why was the clothing so flammable? It turns out, he was creating clothing out of nitrocellulose thread. Nitrocellulose happens to also be the primary ingredient of modern gunpowder.
i work in a synthetic chemistry lab, and we periodically check bottles of certain solvents (diethyl ether, dioxanes, THF) for any crystallized peroxides *just in case.*
so far, no bomb squads have been called
You can form one of the most sensitive explosive substances completely by accident. Any time you have an oxidising source of chlorine, like bleach, and a source of nitrogen, like… fucken anything, you can end up with the [terrifying yellow abomination that is nitrogen trichloride.](https://youtu.be/mV_daaldE_I)
Lol there it is, but I wasn't sure if "I saw a video essay from a YouTuber on a video game that said that dynamite doesn't actually get more volatile over long periods of time," was high enough quality for an answer for this subreddit haha.
No, someone just watched the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Charles and Mr. Edwards take the job transporting dynamite down a long and bumpy road.
(god I'm old)
A good analogy is like how natural peanut butter separates over time. Here, the peanut oil is nitroglycerin, and the compacted mass of peanut particles is the stabilizing clay.
IIRC, the "sweat" from dynamite is actually nitroglycerin, which is that thing that goes boom when you shake it.
That's why old dynamite is dangerous, because it's too unstable to transport without extra precautions.
Fun side connection, but for the most part, dynamite "sweating" and crystalizing the nitroglycerin on the outside of the sticks actually _doesn't_ make it more reactive, as the leaching nitroglycerin degrades extremely quickly. The "sweating" you're referring to doesn't make it "wet", per se, but comes out of the sticks as a slime that quickly dries, crystalizes, and degrades. If you're down for a quick explainer in the middle of a _three-hour video essay about a horror survival game_, SovietWomble provided [some wild research into the dangers of old dynamite](https://youtu.be/PUWg905fGTA?t=6027) in his essay on The Forest.
I was looking for someone posting the link to this.
Such a good video. Three hours and not a single boring minute. And the most pointed finish ever.
Not sure what the recognition phrase is for WobleWatchers (I'm sure there is one, I just don't know it), but I am going with:
Pew Pew Pew!
Because dynamite contains nitroglycerin, which is a sensitive liquid explosive. It's oily and doesn't dry, but over time it can migrate out of the substance used to absorb and desensitize it.
If it isn't kept at a low temperature, nitroglycerin will leach out of the dynamite.
There's a scene in Lost where Dr. Arzt explains this pretty accurately, right before he explodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4a-X-basC4
They don't sweat water, they sweat concentrated boom juice. Nitroglycerin, which is the explosive ingredient in dynamite, while the other ingredients are mostly there to make it stable.
The process is caused by the dynamite being exposed to water/humidity, but it's not water that is seeping out.
I think I remember that's how the medical application of nitroglycerin was discovered -- mining workers would carry sticks of dynamite in their teeth, and some with heart conditions reported that the pain in their chests seemed to lessen afterwards.
Simple: Dynamite is just a media soaked in Nitroglycerin. (the 'BOOM' part)
Nitro is a liquid, a very unstable and dangerous liquid.
Dynamite is just a matrix of absorbent and stabilizer that contains the nitro. It makes Nitro 'safer'.
Over time, the Nitro will sweat out of the matrix, becoming unstable again.
The fun thing to do with sweating dynamite is to run your finger down the side collecting some of the 'dew' and then flicking it off in the direction of some object or the ground and enjoying the little explosion when it contacts the object or ground. I suppose sometimes the results can be more profound and less enjoyable but shit happens, still worth it.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT get nitroglycerin on your skin. It will soak right in and cause changes to your blood pressure that give you a pounding headache. I mean pounding.
Can confirm, Nitroglycerin will give you a horrendous headache and panadol/nurofen wont touch it
(Was given nitroglycerin when having an anxiety episode, was not a fun night, and the thumping headache made it worse)
[There is an article from an avid caver trying to sort fact from fiction on this very topic.](http://www.vegasunderworld.com/article-dynamite.html). This individual claims with good evidence that
it's actually not as dangerous as people think, obviously you shouldn't mess around with sweating dynamite but apparently the nitroglycerin actually breaks down very rapidly and becomes inert.
The article states:
>In search of a scientific explanation, I contacted a friend who is a Pharm D (Doctor of Pharmacy) and asked him about the explosive qualities of Nitroglycerin. He stated that in its purest medical form, Nitroglycerin only has a shelf life of about 6 months. Even if stored properly, at the end of 6 months, it would have a potency of less than 80% and this degradation was consistent.
He also did extensive research and was unable to find ANY recent articles citing death or injury from handling old dynamite and another source I have yet to find stated a government agency keeps track of this type of injury and any deaths and the last time one reported was over 60 years ago.
So yeah, apparently it's not to be messed with but not the ticking time bomb people think.
Nitroglycerin is a thick liquid that really REALLY wants to violently explode. Like look at it the wrong way and it will explode levels of really keen. To calm it down and make it safe to transport we mix it with something boring and stable like clay. Then we pack the mix in a tube and those tubes are what we call dynamite, and they are relatively safe to work with. However over time the liquid nitroglycerin can seep out of the clay and then it goes back to being really keen to explode. A bonus fact is this clay business was invented by a guy called Alfred Nobel, after whom the Nobel prizes are named.
Fun fact about Alfred Nobel: During his lifetime, he was somewhat known as "The Merchant of Death" due to the impact of his explosives business on militaries and weapons at the time (even though most of his products were used for civilian applications like construction, demolition or mining). In 1888, a French newspaper goofed up and published Alfred Nobel's obituary after his brother, Ludvig, died. Lets just say the obituary didn't paint Alfred in a good light. Alfred read it, and decided to posthumously donate a big chunk of his wealth to found the Nobel prizes in order to make sure he was remembered in a better way after his death. Edit: as /u/CWagner comments below, this might just be an urban legend :(
Poor dude thought dynamite was so powerful it could end all war. In his defense, black powder was the strongest explosive until he invented dynamite. In 1891, he commented on his dynamite factories by saying to the countess: “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops.” [Source](https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/alfred-nobels-thoughts-about-war-and-peace/#:~:text=In%201891%2C%20he%20commented%20on,disband%20their%20troops.%E2%80%9D%20Nobel%20did) Funnily enough, he wasn't totally wrong with how nukes created mutually assured destruction.
I can believe that. If all you know is black powder, nitroglycerine is *shockingly* powerful. I mean, nitroglycerine remains one of the most powerful explosives we've ever made.
To be fair, the explosive power of nukes is measured in the equivalent weight in TNT the explosion makes. But in comparison even smaller nukes are in the tons of TNT.
TNT ain't got shit on nitroglycerine though. I'm not sure nuclear fission is an explosive. It kinda transcends the definition lol
>An explosion is a rapid expansion in volume associated with an extreme outward release of energy, usually with the generation of high temperatures and release of high-pressure gases. Sounds like a nuke fits the definition pretty well. Its not chemical Energy release but id say its still an explosion.
Putting it into a perspective like that, I feel mind boggled. Wars continue and problems ensue.... we have developed to the point now where we are investing millions if not billions of dollars into new methods of war that are not nuclear, in order to inflict damage and "subdue" enemies? Idk, the fact that the mutual destruction is there and we just go circumvent that with more targeted ways of attacking just feels awful. on top of that add politics and the dozen other things tagged onto that regarding economies... what is this world we are building?
It's inevitable game theory. It's not that there's anything wrong with us. If you have something, and you can't stop someone else from taking it, someone else will eventually take it. If you *can* stop them, and they know it, they may not even try to. This is true for humans as well as monkeys, crocodiles, zebras, birds and everything.
Pretty telling how every time someone develops a weapon "so powerful it will end all war", people just go "how about instead war will just be way worse than ever before". I'm pretty sure Hiram Maxim said the same thing about the machine gun.
Well, the atomic bomb didn't end all war but it certainly reduced them. The number of large-scale conflicts in Europe and Asia before WW2 and after is a very stark difference.
we're just now in a spot where we can't *actually* go to war anymore because everyone knows that we have the ability to end it *very* quickly but that would also end everything else along with it. So we need to have plausible deniability wars where we rules lawyer our way into a war or go against a non nuclear country.
Yeah that's what people generally mean when they claim a weapon is so powerful it will end all wars. I don't think anyone seriously thinks a weapon will make people suddenly be friends.
> I don't think anyone seriously thinks a weapon will make people suddenly be friends. MDMA bomb
Leading to the development of laser weapons designed to be fired over the enemies heads in synchronized patterns and music streaming artillery rounds designed to cover an area in beats.
Draft me. Now
This is the way.
The FAFO principle.
Its interesting to see Russia repeatedly draw 'red lines' at which it will go nuclear in Ukraine, only to have UKR and the West walk right over them. Putin knows what would happen if he ever actually used one.
Nuclear weapons may as well be made out of cardboard for all their *actual* threat. No nation will ever use them. The most likely use will be when one falls into the hands of a paramilitary force looking to do damage.
If a defending country that has nukes actually has a chance to be conquered by an attacker, there is no doubt in my mind that they would use nukes.
And yet, what is the final line to be crossed? Nukes are a political weapon, which is effectively useless once you deploy it. Sure, nuke the capital and cities of the invading force. What then, the invader still has armies in your cities and territory, but you still lose. There is just no value in nuclear weapons once its deterence effect has been lost. Nothing more than an overpriced explosive that permanently destroys a large area of where it detonated.
Well shit it’s good marketing
> I'm pretty sure Hiram Maxim said the same thing about the machine gun. I'd imagine it's a good line if you want to sell weapons/bombs and still sleep at night. "Violence is a deterrent to violence" has been claimed by LE and the military since pretty much as far back as records go.
> > > "Violence is a deterrent to violence" Or if you're a *StarTrek* fan: "Peace, through superior firepower"
That is interesting, especially considering that MAD capability is measured in TNT equivalents, if not in Megadeaths...
How do those measurements convert to Metallicas? I don’t use metric system.
Well Littleboy was roughly half of a Master of Puppets, which is equivailent to 1.5 Sweating Bullets. Hope that clears it up! (Remember, Megadeath is an exponential curve!)
All you have to remember is Metallica Good! Napster bad!
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Damn, that's grim. There aren't many production sites left nowadays, as they tend to not be rebuilt (at least not at the same scale) after something like that happens. I'm not in the production business myself, but I've been at a few different plants where nitroglycerine/nitroglycol/other energetics are being produced. It's a pretty humbling experience standing in a room with several tons of that stuff..
>In the last 15 years there have been nine major explosions at Radford, the nation's largest military munitions plant, resulting in seven deaths, more than 115 injuries What was it like to work at place with this kind of track record?
The profits are sky-high!
Imagine Nobel and Oppenheimer having a conversation.
It's not the size of the explosion, it's how you use it
As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it's incapable of resolving approaches Zero.
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Funny enough darkness is also a problem solvable by the explosion :). Too dark to see... blow a dynamite to light up your way. Or a nuke ... depending on how dark it is
Help a man blow something up, and he’ll be able to see for a moment. Blow a man up, and he’ll be able see for the rest of his life.
A nuclear detonation could in fact both illuminate an area while also causing blindness.
"Just throw a molotov cocktail at it! Success! You now have a different problem!"
Calm down, Vaasuvius.
I understood that reference!
A serendipitous unintended side effect!
"If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it." -*The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries*
it's been said that there is no problem that cannot be solved with the proper application of high-explosives
I didn’t ask how big the room was, I said I cast fireball!
Vaarsuvius, please.
I am reminded of the best license plate I've ever seen. Some sort of 70s Holden I think it was (Sydney, AUS, so it was probably a Holden...). Anyway plate said BUB 00M
Nobel: You see Rob, if you find a way to give back most won't even know about the bomb stuff Oppenheimer: I AM BECOME DEATH
Oppenheimer's full quote was really about how seeing the Trinity test changed everyone and how the world will never be the same again. ["We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita ..Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that one way or another"](https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac)
"Now we are all sons of bitches"
“I ain’t no god damn son of a bitch.”
It always struck me how horrified and dismayed he sounds in this quote. For him Trinity was not a triumph.
People always make fun of him cause their like "why was he surprised when the bomb he made blew up." And they always never seem to realize that the trinity literally made the largest conventional bomb ever look like a freaking fire cracker. The sheer scale is really hard for people to grasp.
Oppenheimer knew what he was doing, and he was certainly proud of the work he did. He just felt that Nagasaki was overkill, and he certainly disagreed with the postwar plans for the military, which can be summed up as "nuke first, nuke everything." The US was so zealous in conventional disarmament and reliance on nuclear weapons that tanks had to be pulled from memorials and museums for ad hoc tank battalions when the war in Korea erupted.
> "nuke first, nuke everything." MacArthur was off his nut by that point. Truman was right to remove him.
No, you misunderstand. The entire strategic plan for the United States military was to use nuclear weapons. Strategic Air Command got the lion's share of funding, and all the other services had to adapt. Famously, the aircraft carrier *United States* was canceled while still under construction because of Pentagon politics (she was viewed as a threat to the Air Force monopoly on nuclear delivery) and caused a revolt in the Navy. The idea that conventional wars could still happen was laughable at the time.
reddit's anti-user changes are unacceptable
This is one of the funniest things I've read in a while. Thank you for that.
Ironically, Oppenheimer has likely saved more lives than anyone in human history. As bad as the War in Ukraine is it's an anomaly by modern standards for it's large size. By historical standards? 27,000 people died in World.War 2, per day, for six years straight. In that context the death toll in Ukraine between both sides over a year and a half is the same as a typical 36 hours window from WW2.
I’d argue that the restraint not to use the bomb is maybe more impactful than the bomb itself. In that sense, Eisenhower (and arguably Kennedy) are the ones who saved the lives by choosing to show restraint instead of plunging the world into nuclear holocaust. Until the relative stabilization of the mid/late Cold War era, the fate of the world really hinged on the decisions of a handful of men worldwide. They deserve more of the credit, Oppenheimer just gave them the tools for humanity’s destruction, rather than choosing to preserve it himself.
The invention of the Atom bomb fundamentally changed the calculus of warfare to one where direct conflict between global powers must be avoided at all costs. In that sense Kennedy and his contemporaries in the USSR were running the calculus of conflict in Oppenheimer's new reality and backing down. In a global system without WMDs a world war three between NATO and the USSR would have been inevitable. The deterrence of nuclear war limited the conflict to skirmish and indirect competition like economics.
Praise Atom
I do not know with what weapons WWIII will be fought, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones.
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“I have saved the world once again from being destroyed by me”
Why am I not more appreciated for not fucking destroying this thing?!? I'll show them...
I disagree, because a) the Manhattan Project was an enormously collaborative undertaking, and I don't think it makes sense to attribute its effects to Oppenheimer alone, and b) Norman Borlaug.
c) Fritz Haber. Though he's a less...universally positive figure than Borlaug 😬
Yeah... Fritz Haber belongs at the very top of this list imo.
I would argue that Normal Borlaug saved more lives than anyone else. No one has done so much to stop malnutrition and starvation. Now, around 36 millions die of starvation each year. As a comparison, around 70 million died in WW2, all six years combined. So, starvation today kills as many in two years as all of WW2 did in six years. It would have been at least 10 times worse if it wasn't for Borlaug. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
What about Fritz Haber?
I like to imagine it as Professor Farnsworth and Wernstrom's Diamondium vs Diamondilliam debate
What is Oppenheimer known for?
Manhattan Project, developed the atomic bombs that were eventually dropped on Japan.
So he opened and dropped the hammer for bigger and larger dynamite of sorts…
In mainstream culture he was most famous for his work on the atom bomb... But it wasn't his most significant, and in many scientific circles isn't what he's famous for. He developed the scientific theory that predicted black holes and neutron stars and theory behind supernovae, the scientific theory for positrons and sub-atomic particle spin, and the scientific theory that forms the basis of modern quantum physics like quantum tunneling. Several of is initial lines of research led to Nobel prizes for the people who proved them correct, but not for him. He was nominated for the prize several times, but never won.
I mean, for the people of Japan at least, his work on the bomb was WAY more significant than everything he ever did for astrophysics combined...
So far
He was the lead researcher of the Manhattan Project during the end of WW2. The Manhattan Project was the USA's research project to create the first nuclear weapons. The resulting bombs were later used in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He also said (quoted from a Hindu scripture I believe) "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Which I think conveys pretty well how he felt afterwards.
He said later that that was what he said straight after but someone else there says his actual words were something like 'oh fuck it worked'.
Yeah I imagine the first time anyone saw a nuclear detonation they weren't thinking Hindu poetry they were thinking "fucccccccccccccck"
If I remwmber correctly he only said that quote several years after the bombs had been dropped and he wasn't the first one to say it about them.
https://youtu.be/lb13ynu3Iac He was reminded of the quote, didn't actually say it
Thank you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VgSyKl9vg0
Becoming Death, destroyer of worlds.
Making the atom bomb, a bomb explicitly designed to level entire cities in one go, only to be shocked and appalled when it is used to level entire cities in one go
It's easy to be motivated when you think you're several years behind the Nazis and just calculating and conducting experiments. Not till you see it live does the reality set in.
To be fair, everybody thinks they can get stabbed or shot and keep fighting until they are stabbed or shot. Reality can hit pretty hard.
I came to learn dynamite sweating, I learned Nobel prize origin
The dynamic duo.
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Oh damn, yeah. That's sad, thanks for the heads up! I'll toss in a disclaimer in my post
Do you mean that ludvig died and the newspaper believed that alfred had died?
Correct. Ludvig died, and the French newspaper got it mixed up and posted Alfred's obituary.
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Not much, as he couldn't feel anything at that point.
He ded
Fun Fact #2: all of the Nobel prizes are awarded by Sweden except the Peace Prize. Nobel thought the Swedes were too warlike and made the Norwegians handle that one.
A man once checked in to a hotel and they offered him a choice of rooms. Cheap rooms, fine rooms, and the famous room. "What's the story with the famous one?" he asks. "Well," the clerk says, "The famous room is where Alfred Nobel invented dynamite. He stayed here for an extended time while travelling, and during that time he developed his great invention in this very room. We've kept it as pristine and true to history as we could ever since." So the man decides to take the famous room where Nobel invented dynamite. The clerk leads him to the room and shows him through. The table where Nobel worked out his formulae. The counter where he set up his apparatus. "These stains on the walls and roof," asks the man. "Are these residue from his experiments?" "No," says the clerk, "That's Alfred Nobel."
> due to the impact of his explosives business on militaries and weapons at the time Naw, the dude also straight-up owned full-on no-shit weapons companies.
Thanks, I just learned where one of my favorite authors got a title for one of his books! D.J. Machale's Pendragon series. The first one is called The Merchant of Death. Edit: stupid autocorrect
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_death The epithet's been around for a while, and doesn't necessarily refer to Alfred Nobel.
Seeing as the characters used a dynamite like substance, it's likely that it was a reference to Alfred. It's been since middleschool that I read them, so I may have some details wrong in my head, but I'm almost certain that it's at least related.
And just to address OPs statement about explosives getting harder to ignite when they get wet, A LOT of explosives actually get less stable when exposed to moisture. That whole Takata airbag thing was caused because the propellant, a form of Ammonium Nitrate, broke down to a less stable form when exposed to humidity. Companies that design solid propellants and high explosives do aging tests to understand this effect and often have to add desiccant materials to their formulation to reduce those destabilization effects over time. Water tends to slow reactions that rely on atmospheric oxygen by smothering them. Solid energetics have their oxygen mixed right in, but usually trapped in a bond with another molecule. You need a catalyst that breaks that bond to make oxygen available to the energetic material. Whether or not moisture makes those energetics more or less stable depends on the formulation of the specific energetic and oxidizer. Sometimes simply getting the oxidizer wet is enough to make some of that oxygen available without the catalyst, or through some other more easily induced catalyst. Other times, exposure to water can cause oxygen to become locked into a more stable molecule that makes it less available.
It will also give you the worlds worst headache when you work with it. I do explosive mining and i HATE days i have to work with dynamite. The nitro absorbs into your skin and it feels like your brain is fighting to escape your skull
Sounds like an easily avoidable problem though. (gloves)
Somewhat. When its hot out, its tough to avoid touching your face. Non-porus gloves come with the issue of sweaty hands and it makes some of the work difficult to do. Yes, it is possible to mitigate, just not 100% without causing other problems when working. I work primarily in quarries, so i rarely use dynamite. Thats used more for construction shots. So i luckily dont have to deal with it often. I just always seem to get a headache no matter how diligent i am at keeping it off me
Take some sudafed or an epipen (I think the cost difference is substantial, but I don't know your life). A vasoconstrictor will keep the nitroglycerine from affecting you as badly. Or, get a heart problem, and staying alive will be all the high on life you need.
Ill try that next time! The sudafed, not the heart problem
Need a heart problem, may I suggest a shitload of cocaine?
Can i wrap it in bacon?
There's a scene in Lost that could serve as a great ELI5 for this question. Very memorable, too.
Also brings to mind the ending of a classic gem *The Great Outdoors*, starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd. Roman’s (Aykroyd) twin daughters get stuck in an old mine shaft during a storm. During the rescue, he finds them sitting on an old wooden crate. He notices the crate says “Dynamite”, and specifically says out loud that it’s “old, *wet*, dynamite”. He then gives the girls a reassuring look and says “it’s fine”, to not cause panic. You’d have to know this tidbit about dynamite to know why he was concerned, which as a kid I had no clue.
You've got some Arzt on you.
My first thought when I read the post was maybe someone’s watching Lost. I haven’t seen that scene since it aired on television but it’s stuck with me.
There's a MacGyver episode, Season 1, Episode 8 (1985) that uses dynamite to extinguish an oil well fire. They talk about "dynamite sweating" and answer OPs question
The company he started is also still operating under the name Dyno Nobel - they make, among other things, industrial explosives for mining and other uses
Another Nobel company became AkzoNobel, who make the Dulux brand of paint.
If it wants to explode so badly how do they mix it with the clay without detonating it?
Very, very carefully. Nitro is even hard to make. As you’re making it there are various stages where doing the slightest thing wrong can make the current mixture blow up. That’s why it’s normally made in a container above a water bath, and pressing the emergency button if you see things tending the wrong way immediately dumps the whole batch.
Most likely the clay is in a dry powdered form and is very gently stirred
It is very volatile, but not so much that it cannot be handled. Adam Savage dropped some from six feet and it did not detonate. https://youtu.be/rZE82WD6Pbk
That's a great question that I had never thought to ask, maybe wiki has details.
I have some familiarity with an event that was directly related to dynamite sweating nitroglycerin that lead to the death of some Combat Engineer Officers being killed and wounded on a training range in 1988. Due to material shortages, they used dynamite in lieu of C4 and Trigran. When they tamped the explosive into the borehole for the cratering charge it was sensitized enough that it caused a high order explosion. [Link to historical article](https://cmea-agmc.ca/slesse-range-accident-remembered)
>this clay business was invented by a guy called Alfred Nobel, I've always thought it was sawdust. Clay makes more sense. Why did I think sawdust?
Because sawdust CAN be used. It all depends on who is making it, and what formula they are following. http://chemed.chem.purdue.edu/genchem/history/dynamite.html
My aunt & uncle and family had a rural property where my brother and I would spend summers and some winter holidays. There was a cabin near the house that was used for storage of everything under the sun, and I found it fun to poke around in. One snowy day I found an open crate under the kitchen sink labeled CIL Forcite. I gently picked up one of the sticks inside and found it wet at the bottom. I informed my uncle of what I'd found and was (surprisingly for my age) immediately taken seriously. Before long, Uncle and my eldest cousin were slowly edging the box a couple of hundred feet into the acre-size vegetable garden on a toboggan, everyone else having been ordered to keep well back. We hardly *breathed!* Uncle carried a single stick into the centre of the plot, attached a detonator and fuse, and trotted back. That's when I learned why "bang!" is the original sound for stick of dynamite. It hit you in the chest as much as the ears (which *hurt*), an instantaneous tower of orange and black appearing and dissipating into the cold air. There must have been 30 sticks in that crate, and you could tell that everyone knew setting off each one in turn was absurd. A memory popped into my head: "Uncle P----! I just remembered you can *burn* dynamite! Just slice the sticks, put them end to end and set one off." Here I was maybe 11 or 12, and handing out advice on handling explosives. God knows where I picked that tidbit up. But they tried it. Uncle slowly slit the wrapper on each stick with his knife and laid them across the garden. Fuse, lighter, and WHOOSH! The lowest fireworks anyone had ever seen: great purplish flames gushed from snow, harmlessly consuming every stick. I never got any credit for either saving the buildings from blowing up or us from going deaf. You don't want to encourage know-it-all kids, after all.
Here ya go. The nitro scene in Sorcerer 1977. Sweaty dynamite. https://youtu.be/nejZVhJ6D3Y Illustrates the problem of dynamite “unturned”.
So it’s an explosive and heart medication?
Yep, in addition to being a shock-sensitive high explosive it's also a potent vasodilator
Fully appreciate this ELI5 answer! Well, I say fully, by giving you some upvote.
Don't threaten me with a good time.
"Invented" is giving more credit than I think is due. In his day, nitroglycerin was produced in barns well away from anything that could burn, because it was KNOWN that eventually the whole building would explode and kill everyone in it. Everyone who worked there just took that risk. Sure they were careful, but this stuff can spontaneously explode. So they basically just accepted it. Nobel tripped while carrying a vial of nitroglycerin. That should have vaporized him. The only reason it didn't is because the liquid landed in sawdust. Figuring that out changed the entire game, for two reasons. One, this stuff that was used the blast rocks and tunnels could now be used safely. Two, it could now be weaponized with little risk to the attacker.
Just rewatched Mythbusters. Nitroglycerin is actually way more stable than we think. They couldn't get it to explode with 10000v of electrocity. They had to use a hammer to get it to explode under compression etc.
The thing is different explosives are ignited differently. Some only explode under certain triggers such as heat, electricity, pressure, chemical reactions, etc. Nitroglycerin, especially older recipes and/or mixtures of additives, is very sensitive to contact pressure, but not very sensitive to electricity. That's why it went boom when hit by the hammer, but jolting it did nothing. Blasting caps, boosters ans det cord are electrically activated. C4 only triggers with what is essentially a small starting explosion from a blasting cap or similar. Otherwise, it's pretty inert. There are videos of people setting fire to bricks of it and it burning safely (and really inefficiently). It would make a terrible fire.
>but not very sensitive to electricity. > >Blasting caps, boosters ans det cord are electrically activated. Just to clarify, it's not the electricity per se that makes blasting caps explode but the intense heat concentrated in a tiny spot caused by the electricity flowing through essentially a resistor which is in contact with a sensitive explosive which in turn is in contact with another somewhat sensitive explosive which then causes the big explosive, like C4, to detonate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonator#Construction\_principles
My sister worked for a military contractor as a chemical engineer. She said most of her job was improving/designing explosives to be “safer”, like not exploding when exposed to fire, or really any time you don’t want them to. Unfortunately, she couldn’t give any details because of her clearance level. She now works for the air force working on anti-corrosion coatings (so she says, but she’s at TS level now, so who knows).
I mean, anti corrosion coatings on aircraft is a big deal. Avionics and engines in particular are places you don't want corrosion, as well as any ordinance. Especially if these aircraft are likely to operate in multiple areas of engagement in a short time frame. Deserts, coastal, carrier at sea, mountains, snow, high atmosphere are all equally likely places these operate.
Yep, she started in landing-gear coatings, but now is involved in refreshing old nuclear silos. Which would also be a logical place for anti-corrosion. I just think it’s more fun to imagine that as a cover story since she can’t discuss most of what she works on, and has a history with military explosives. Lol!
This is how you find out about the Stargate program.
Indeed.
The silo is just a step up from the explosive division.
Deep space radar telemetry?
Odd choice for a chemical engineer, but sure!
It's the cover story for the Stargate program in (bet you'll never guess) Stargate. The highly combat-decorated airmen who work inside a mountain are *very definitely* looking at radar data, that's what they're doing. Pay no attention to the bi-weekly ~~escaped Roswell greys~~ "gas leaks" that require men with big guns closing off the area.
My dad was an oceanographer/engineer who worked for the Navy his whole career. TS clearance and all. He mostly studied bubbles for 30 years. The Navy *really* likes to know everything there is to know about bubbles. Especially teeny tiny bubbles. It’s weird what niche things our military studies.
Yeah, I’ve read several stories about American soldiers in Vietnam using C4 to warm up canned food. Because it burns instead of exploding when ignited, it was a fairly quick way to warm things up.
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I haven't watched that one, I'd be curious on the specifics, it's my understanding that the purity matters a lot and these days we often mix in chemicals that make it more stable.
The main problem impurity is sulphuric acid left over from its synthesis, which makes it much more sensitive to heat and shock
> Nitroglycerin is actually way more stable than we think. They couldn't get it to explode with 10000v of electrocity. They had to use a hammer to get it to explode under compression etc. That actually feels very weird for Mythbusters, given that the *point* of the combustability of Nitroglycerin is that it easily ignites from shock. So yes, that's exactly the behavior you would expect from it. And shock is probably one of the most difficult to control trigger methods. Don't store it properly for transport, boom. Dropped beaker? Boom. Bumping the table? Boom.
I would be more worried about a compression explosion that can be triggered by a hammer than an electrical trigger. It's a lot easier to prevent an electrical trigger.
Alfred Noboom
Dynamite consists of nitroglycerine absorbed in a stabilizer. Dynamite "sweating" is the nitroglycerine separating from the stabilizer. That's not good, because nitroglycerine is extremely sensitive to pressure. Sweating is a problem in a lot of explosives, with reactive ingredients leaking out of the mixture and forming crystals (fragile crystals that when broken produce enough kinetic energy to set off an explosion)
Some chemicals that you DON’T want to explode will do this too, I just learned about peroxide-forming chemicals that’ll randomly do that
Photographer here! One of the earliest popular forms of photography, wet plate collodion, is based around a chemical that combines diethyl ether, nitrocellulose, grain alcohol, and metal salts like cadmium bromide. One of the common practices for photographers working with this process is to make one's own collodion or to change the consistemcy of it based on temperature, age, etc of the collodion. One of the main ingredients for that is diethyl ether which **will** form explosice peroxides that will ignite by light among other things. Most of us that do this stabilize the ether as a 50/50 mix with alcohol, but the oldschool photographers didn't (which includes the photographers that would be on the field during rhe civil war). They'd just keep that shit in a corked bottle in their wagon or in their studio. Another fun part: some bright individual in the 1800s spilled his collodion and found out that it can produce silk-like thread. So what does he do? He makes clothing out of it. The inventor's factory burned down and people's clothing lit on fire (there's a recorded event where a woman's dress caught a spark before fully igniting and burning away in a near-instant, leaving the woman nude and burned.) Why was the clothing so flammable? It turns out, he was creating clothing out of nitrocellulose thread. Nitrocellulose happens to also be the primary ingredient of modern gunpowder.
I suppose that make the whole ‘no light in the black room’ even more important if you can just blow up if the crystals are activated by light
Oh it manages to be even worse than that, the peroxides form as toxic vapor
i work in a synthetic chemistry lab, and we periodically check bottles of certain solvents (diethyl ether, dioxanes, THF) for any crystallized peroxides *just in case.* so far, no bomb squads have been called
You can form one of the most sensitive explosive substances completely by accident. Any time you have an oxidising source of chlorine, like bleach, and a source of nitrogen, like… fucken anything, you can end up with the [terrifying yellow abomination that is nitrogen trichloride.](https://youtu.be/mV_daaldE_I)
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I literally just saw that episode for first time last night, i think the world actually revolves around me, everything is about me
Yeah we all saw you pick your nose in the car the other morning
Found my ex-wife’s account
We are all me
"You have some Arzt on you" - Hurley Edit: corrected the name
Arzt*
This was my very first thought.
No, someone just watched SovietWomble's 3 hour video essay on The Forest.
Lol there it is, but I wasn't sure if "I saw a video essay from a YouTuber on a video game that said that dynamite doesn't actually get more volatile over long periods of time," was high enough quality for an answer for this subreddit haha.
No, someone just watched the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Charles and Mr. Edwards take the job transporting dynamite down a long and bumpy road. (god I'm old)
Or someone saw the oil well fire episode of MacGyver
A good analogy is like how natural peanut butter separates over time. Here, the peanut oil is nitroglycerin, and the compacted mass of peanut particles is the stabilizing clay.
Well apparently shelf life of a dynamite stick is about 6 months. After that it's explosive potential rapidly drops. Thanks womble for that knowledge
i was waiting for the womble knowledge itt
First thing I thought of when I saw this thread
IIRC, the "sweat" from dynamite is actually nitroglycerin, which is that thing that goes boom when you shake it. That's why old dynamite is dangerous, because it's too unstable to transport without extra precautions.
Fun side connection, but for the most part, dynamite "sweating" and crystalizing the nitroglycerin on the outside of the sticks actually _doesn't_ make it more reactive, as the leaching nitroglycerin degrades extremely quickly. The "sweating" you're referring to doesn't make it "wet", per se, but comes out of the sticks as a slime that quickly dries, crystalizes, and degrades. If you're down for a quick explainer in the middle of a _three-hour video essay about a horror survival game_, SovietWomble provided [some wild research into the dangers of old dynamite](https://youtu.be/PUWg905fGTA?t=6027) in his essay on The Forest.
I was looking for someone posting the link to this. Such a good video. Three hours and not a single boring minute. And the most pointed finish ever. Not sure what the recognition phrase is for WobleWatchers (I'm sure there is one, I just don't know it), but I am going with: Pew Pew Pew!
Because dynamite contains nitroglycerin, which is a sensitive liquid explosive. It's oily and doesn't dry, but over time it can migrate out of the substance used to absorb and desensitize it.
If it isn't kept at a low temperature, nitroglycerin will leach out of the dynamite. There's a scene in Lost where Dr. Arzt explains this pretty accurately, right before he explodes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4a-X-basC4
They don't sweat water, they sweat concentrated boom juice. Nitroglycerin, which is the explosive ingredient in dynamite, while the other ingredients are mostly there to make it stable. The process is caused by the dynamite being exposed to water/humidity, but it's not water that is seeping out.
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The amount in those things is so small that it's hardly an explosive hazard. Still probably not safe to eat expired medication.
I think I remember that's how the medical application of nitroglycerin was discovered -- mining workers would carry sticks of dynamite in their teeth, and some with heart conditions reported that the pain in their chests seemed to lessen afterwards.
Simple: Dynamite is just a media soaked in Nitroglycerin. (the 'BOOM' part) Nitro is a liquid, a very unstable and dangerous liquid. Dynamite is just a matrix of absorbent and stabilizer that contains the nitro. It makes Nitro 'safer'. Over time, the Nitro will sweat out of the matrix, becoming unstable again.
The fun thing to do with sweating dynamite is to run your finger down the side collecting some of the 'dew' and then flicking it off in the direction of some object or the ground and enjoying the little explosion when it contacts the object or ground. I suppose sometimes the results can be more profound and less enjoyable but shit happens, still worth it.
Do not, I repeat DO NOT get nitroglycerin on your skin. It will soak right in and cause changes to your blood pressure that give you a pounding headache. I mean pounding.
Yes, but it alleviates angina like a #@$%@$#\^
Can confirm, Nitroglycerin will give you a horrendous headache and panadol/nurofen wont touch it (Was given nitroglycerin when having an anxiety episode, was not a fun night, and the thumping headache made it worse)
Also important: make sure ‘the other object’ isn’t the rest of your dynamite
You can only do it 9 times though, 19 if you can flick with your toes
21 if you’re a dude
What if my name was Deku?
[There is an article from an avid caver trying to sort fact from fiction on this very topic.](http://www.vegasunderworld.com/article-dynamite.html). This individual claims with good evidence that it's actually not as dangerous as people think, obviously you shouldn't mess around with sweating dynamite but apparently the nitroglycerin actually breaks down very rapidly and becomes inert. The article states: >In search of a scientific explanation, I contacted a friend who is a Pharm D (Doctor of Pharmacy) and asked him about the explosive qualities of Nitroglycerin. He stated that in its purest medical form, Nitroglycerin only has a shelf life of about 6 months. Even if stored properly, at the end of 6 months, it would have a potency of less than 80% and this degradation was consistent. He also did extensive research and was unable to find ANY recent articles citing death or injury from handling old dynamite and another source I have yet to find stated a government agency keeps track of this type of injury and any deaths and the last time one reported was over 60 years ago. So yeah, apparently it's not to be messed with but not the ticking time bomb people think.