nein51 said:
It looks just like a gas leak explosion. Sadly there are plenty of videos of gas leak explosions. Violent.
yep. film shows a classic "heaving explosion" typical of detonation of low explosives.
commercial explosives like TNT, PETN, Semtex, etc.... have very fast burn rates, and make a sharp or "snap" type explosion with small fireballs. low-explosive compounds like gunpowder or gasses tend to make much larger fireballs, the classic being the "fuel-air explosive" as seen on the MOAB - a binary weapon which perforates a container of flammable gasses which rapidly dissipate into the air, followed by a second detonation charge to ignite the gasses. It creates a huge fireball and shock wave, particularly when compressed into a small area. Gunpowder works primarily thru the compression effect. It is compressed into a small brass cartridge, which is placed into a steel chamber with only one available outlet (the barrel). When the powder is ignited, the expanding gasses drive the bullet down the barrel. The low-ignition rate of the gunpowder is key to the process....it keeps chamber/barrel pressures containable. Were one to use a high-explosive like TNT (or other) to do the same thing, the chamber/barrel would be completely unable to contain the rapid expansion of pressure. The gun would simply blow up in the face of the user. But take that gunpowder from a shell and pour it out on the ground & light it? It doesn't go "snap." It makes quite a large flame column and a lot of smoke that takes a few seconds to burn out. Not terribly powerful....unless you contain it.
High-explosives require precision placement. A skilled EOD tech could drop a standing tree very precisely right where wanted. Put the charges in the right places, and you could literally drop the tree trunk on the trailer of an 18-wheeler. It's all about where one directs the energy of the charges. Can't do that with low explosives. But you can make things "go away." Put a 55-gallon drum of fertilizer soaked in diesel in the back of a van and ignite it.....and (poof) the van is there one moment, gone the next, faster than the blink of an eye. Just the chassis frame left to show a van was once there.
I saw a report on this story describing an armored vehicle using a penetration tool to punch thru the wall of the house a couple of times. I'm guessing a gas line was perforated on the first penetration, then, on a second perforation, either a spark occurred on penetration, or perhaps a smoke or flash/bang device was used to pressure the suspect to capitulate. Latter would certainly have been enough to ignite gas suspended in the air inside the house, creating exactly the kind of heaving explosion seen on the tape.
Bottom line, though, the term "high explosive" vs "low explosive" are counter intuitive. They refer to the burn rates of the fuels, not the size of the explosion. If you want to see what low explosives can do, google up the videos of the 2020 Beirut explosion driven by detonation of ammonium nitrate in silo. The silos just "went away," and a most impressive blast wave that shattered windows for hundreds of yards all around.
