Home explosion in Indianapolis - 80 homes damaged

[Sawin]

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1962902658001/

Several homes completely destroyed, around 80 in the area have experienced damage. They've ruled out a meth lab and bombs.... if it's not gas related, what else could it have been?

Let's say the home owner was a reloader with a bunch of gun powder and primers... What kind of quantity would he have had to cause an explosion of this magnitude?

[merl]

would smokeless powder in any quantity explode without being inside a sealed container? Say someone filled a 8' cube in the basement with gallon jugs of smokeless and lit it. I think you'd still only get a huge whoosh (and a house burned to the ground)

[Circuits]

would smokeless powder in any quantity explode without being inside a sealed container? Say someone filled a 8' cube in the basement with gallon jugs of smokeless and lit it. I think you'd still only get a huge whoosh (and a house burned to the ground)

You are correct. If not contained, no sub-ton amount of smokeless powder could cause such an explosion. Black powder, on the other hand, could do it in large enough quantities.

[Ah Pook]

That's just scary.

The blond talking head was annoying.

[rondog]

The only thing that could cause a blast like that would be an underground gas leak.

The blond talking head was annoying.

And you'd hit that like a horny chimp, and you know it!

[hatidua]

It's amazing that only two people died in light of what the aerial images show.

[Danimal]

I was looking at that, crazy. I think that I am going to erect a sarcophagus over my house to protect me just in case.

[CrufflerSteve]

The broadcast says they have ruled out a bomb. Black powder leaves lots of residue and quite a smell. I once had a job working with more modern explosive and they also had a recognizable smell and residue. I'd assume that fire fighters know this stuff well.

It could have been some fume combination somehow mixing with air to turn the whole house into a bomb. When I was a kid I took some Coast Guard training in small boats and a boat with a bilge or compartment is liable to blow up. The instructor claimed that one cup of gasoline could equal a stick of dynamite. If the whole house filled with explosive fumes and then was trigger by a spark that might have done it. If someone there was on oxygen that could have contributed to the force.

Steve

[SA Friday]

One of the ways explosives are categorized are by their ability to produce a shock wave. The speed that the shock wave travels is the delineating factor in how 'powerful' the explosive material is. There are two basic categories of explosives based on shock wave; deflagration and detonation. It's a little more complicated than this because some explosives can transition from one to another based on the conditions, but for the basic understanding of this, it's easier to relate the basics. Deflagrating materials don't produce a sonic shockwave, they flash-burn. Detonating explosives do produce a sonic shock wave. Tri-nitro-toluene (TNT) and black powder are typically considered the materials sitting at the line between deflagration and detonation. Smokeless powder is considered a deflagrating material and therefore requires sealing encapsulation during flash-burn to produce maximum pressures. 80 lbs simply couldn't cause this type of damage even if encapsulated in a vessel made to maximize it's potential. A high yield explosive like C4, P3, RDX, that produces a sonic shock wave could do this type of damage, but probably not the same burning damage. A subsurface pocket of methane or propane would also be able to cause this level of shock wave, and would also have massive fire production.

[Ashton]

Looks like there was a problem with the furnace.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/12...est=latestnews