Honestly, I’m watching a war movie and a dude got hit by an IED. It got me thinking though, and I don’t quite get what is the lethal factor in an explosion?
There always seems to be fire in the movies, and it’s clearly a lot of force. But my question is what ACTUALLY happens to (I guess anything) that gets hit by a large bomb/explosion from a play by play/physics situation?
I feel like this is kinda dark, but I just had one of those curious moments and felt like this was the appropriate place to ask
In: Physics
3 things:
1. Heat (only matters if it’s a really big bomb)
2. Shock (matters a bit more, but not much)
3. Debris (matters the most)
Heat we can safely ignore. Since the bomb is (probably) not a nuke, you aren’t vaporized. The movie bombs make these huge fireballs that are only possible if the bomb is utterly surrounded by gasoline or some other flammable.
The shock might throw you into the air. But unless the bomb is a nuke it won’t do anything direcly harmful (but it might disorient you or throw you off a cliff)
The debris is like bullets. Bullets = danger. The debris is basically the metal fragments of the bomb (or more if it’s like a frag grenade.)
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