What Stupid Looks Like

I have done some not too bright things around explosives.  Last week a particular individual did something incredibly stupid.

Initially I was going to just leave it at the comment I made over at Caleb’s place.  Then there was this incident brought to my attention by Lyle.  That gave me the inkling to do a post, then Weer’d posted the video of what exactly happened in the FPS Russia incident.   After watching the video I had to pick my jaw up off the floor at this idiocy.

First a note, do not recreate anything in this video, if you survive it will be either because of blind dumb luck or because God has a soft spot for you and your idiocy.

If you want to skip to 4:46 to save yourself 4 minutes and 46 seconds of pure garbage.

Does anyone see what he did wrong there?  Anyone?  Bueller?

He violated the first rule of explosives.  He placed something between him and the explosive.  You see when you detonate an explosive inside of something it propels the surrounding material out at extremely high velocity.  This is the basic principle behind a pipe bomb.  The pipe itself becomes extra shrapnel in the explosion.

This is why when we Idaho Stress test an object we ALWAYS place the explosives in front of the target.  We never place the object in front of the explosive, that is how you take shrapnel to the face.

This is serious and this isn’t a joke.  That camera man is lucky he isn’t dead or more seriously injured right now.  Just because the object is larger in size doesn’t mean that it’s safe.  What is a safe distance then?  Lets use the 2008 toilet as an example.

We shot that toilet from approximately 400 yards away.  When I say we in this case, I mean the entire shooting line.  We found pieces of that toilet well over 100 yards away.  Note we found them in a field meaning they had to be big enough to be easily seen above the grass.

We can also look at the pumpkin examples.

I know we had approximately 6 lbs inside the large pumpkin in the second video.  We found chunks, not bits, 125 yards away.  Many of those chunks were also relatively light in weight and had a lower B.C.  In that case we were shooting from about 30 yards, however it should be noted the object was not metal or dense in nature.   Metal merely rips and turns in to shrapnel which is nothing more than a knife flying through the air.

Given those above examples, I honestly wouldn’t blow anything up that had metal in it from within 200 yards, and due to my love of cushion, I’d double it to 400 for extra safety.

Joe, Ry, and I all almost made this fatal mistake by accident.  That is a wonderful example of how much power and force there is behind explosives and why you really need to pay attention.  So please, if you want to go out and play with explosives, pay attention and pay heed to the first rule:

Never Place Anything Between You and The Explosive.

Remember to be careful out there and use your head.  Sometimes well all forget to think things through, but the more you think about it, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

Update: Ry just posted a reminder of the results of an experiment he and Lyle did.  Note what it did to the steel and how far it went.

Those Whacky Squirrels

So TMW and I were sitting on the couch and she was rolling through the blogs and came across this from RNS. After she reaches the end and busts up laughing she tosses the laptop to me and says read.

I had a couple different comments for different things. First was that the whole thing revolved around remaining in “condition yellow“. Second was that when something unforeseen like this happens the first order of business is not to panic; no matter how much it hurts. Third that was the most awesome possible result when he finally got rid of the squirrel. I say the squirrel sailed into the cruiser because of Karma(we were watching My Name Is Earl). My last comment was, “People wonder why I prefer to shoot the bastards with as much distance between me and them, THAT’S WHY!” Not to mention the fact that hitting them when they’re further away is considerably harder.

I must say though, for the rider at least it wasn’t a pack like this. Best way to deal with squirrels like that is to make clouds of pink mist. Maybe it is my philosophy on dealing with squirrels that has kept any from showing up around my house.

I had someone ask if I realized that was a story. The answer is yes, doesn’t mean you can’t glean anything from it. Besides, at Philmont those squirrels were down right freaking evil, wouldn’t surprise me if a squirrel attacked someone. Also I’d probably let that squirrel live, any squirrel that freaked out two cops that much is OK in my book.