I often ask myself why impacts from rockets, missiles or grenades often look like a small explosion without a lot of destruction the moment they hit something , like seen here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riF1szCa6Ho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riF1szCa6Ho)
And in the end the aftermaths of something like that are waaay bigger and more severe than seen in the second of the impact. Does it have to do because buildings collaps some time after being hit by a weapon?
If I see videos of explosions I think: Ok wow, luckily the explosion wasn’t that big so nothing bad must happened.
And then later when seeing the aftermath in the news I’m like: FUCK, how did the building completely vanish?
In: 9
Bombs and rockets are almost never used one at a time. There are also a wide spectrum of explosive sizes, and when shooting news footage it’s common to go out of the way to find the very biggest crater to take your picture in. Was this a bigger bomb? Maybe two bombs that coincidentally fell in the same place? It doesn’t matter to the newsy.
Those are small mortars at a distance or something. Also a lot of ordnance is armor piercing or “bunker busting” meaning the ordnance penetrates the target and continues burrowing down to the heart of a ship or to the inside of a building/bunker etc to destroy the target much more effectively. You don’t see much upon initial impact with ordnance of this kind.
Much of the destructive effect doesnt come from the big fireball you’re expecting, but from the air/gas expanding from the point of impact, which isnt always as visible.
Well for starters those are already relatively small explosions from small artillery or rockets, but the real reason you think they look small is that Hollywood has fooled you. When you see an explosion in a movie or on TV, it’s a giant fireball, right? That looks impressive and cool on screen, but that’s not what actual high explosives look like. High explosives like the ones used in actual weapons produce most of their destruction from the shockwave, but that doesn’t look cool and impressive so Hollywood uses gasoline or some other fuel, which makes a big fireball but not an actual detonation.
tl;dr – movies have tricked you into thinking that explosions are giant fireballs, but the actual explosives used in munitions are meant to do maximum damage, not look cool, and don’t produce giant fireballs.
I was shocked the first time I saw a grenade explode. When I first joined the Army we had to throw two live hand grenades in Basic Training. After we hard thrown them, we got to go into a bunker with blast-proof glass and watch others toss theirs, since we obviously couldn’t watch our own explode. I had been raised on 80s action movies, where Chuck Norris would toss a hand grenade into a window and *huge* fireballs erupted out of every door and window before the walls blew out.
Imagine my disappointment when I saw the real thing. There *might* have been a *very* brief flash of fire where the grenade had landed, but I might have imagined it. In reality there was a grenade on the ground, then a puff of smoke and dirt spreading away. If I hadn’t heard the blast, felt the shockwave, and heard the shrapnel hitting window I would have thought it was a dud.
Major ordinance was a disappointment, too. Again, 80s action movies all had the sound effect of an explosion having a double bang, followed by an echoing rumble. In reality it sounds like King Kong taking a single whack at a snare drum. One loud *crack!* and maybe a bit of bass reverberation depending on the environment. Nothing like the movies.
There is also the case of secondary explosions that result from the initial impact.
Things like gas lines, propane tanks, and other incendiary items can pop off after being struck causing additional damage.
If you ever want to see what it looks like when a natural gas pipeline explodes look up some photos of the aftermath where entire blocks of houses of vanished after gas lines exploded.
Big fireball explosions are not the real destructive ones. The explosions that cause the most damage do so because the explosion is very rapid, and creates and extremely compact air pressure wave. It is that dense, high pressure wave that blasts apart stuff.
So that kind of explosion that ignites and burns the fuel much quicker, than if you were to light up a drum of gasoline, for instance; which would create a spectacular fireball, but be far less destructive to structures.
Hollywood has lied to you. Real weapon explosions are efficient chemically. They don’t want there to be a big fireball with lots of smoke. The weapons have very precise amount of oxidant and explosive so it is highly efficient.
The idea of the weapons is to create as big and powerful of a pressure wave. It is what causes destruction and kills things.
If you have ever burned something like pure alcohol. You see that the flame is basically invisible. Basically all of the alcohol fume burns. Making it efficient and there is no carbon to be released.
I often ask myself why impacts from rockets, missiles or grenades often look like a small explosion without a lot of destruction the moment they hit something , like seen here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riF1szCa6Ho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riF1szCa6Ho)
And in the end the aftermaths of something like that are waaay bigger and more severe than seen in the second of the impact. Does it have to do because buildings collaps some time after being hit by a weapon?
If I see videos of explosions I think: Ok wow, luckily the explosion wasn’t that big so nothing bad must happened.
And then later when seeing the aftermath in the news I’m like: FUCK, how did the building completely vanish?
In: 9
Bombs and rockets are almost never used one at a time. There are also a wide spectrum of explosive sizes, and when shooting news footage it’s common to go out of the way to find the very biggest crater to take your picture in. Was this a bigger bomb? Maybe two bombs that coincidentally fell in the same place? It doesn’t matter to the newsy.
Those are small mortars at a distance or something. Also a lot of ordnance is armor piercing or “bunker busting” meaning the ordnance penetrates the target and continues burrowing down to the heart of a ship or to the inside of a building/bunker etc to destroy the target much more effectively. You don’t see much upon initial impact with ordnance of this kind.
Much of the destructive effect doesnt come from the big fireball you’re expecting, but from the air/gas expanding from the point of impact, which isnt always as visible.
Well for starters those are already relatively small explosions from small artillery or rockets, but the real reason you think they look small is that Hollywood has fooled you. When you see an explosion in a movie or on TV, it’s a giant fireball, right? That looks impressive and cool on screen, but that’s not what actual high explosives look like. High explosives like the ones used in actual weapons produce most of their destruction from the shockwave, but that doesn’t look cool and impressive so Hollywood uses gasoline or some other fuel, which makes a big fireball but not an actual detonation.
tl;dr – movies have tricked you into thinking that explosions are giant fireballs, but the actual explosives used in munitions are meant to do maximum damage, not look cool, and don’t produce giant fireballs.
I was shocked the first time I saw a grenade explode. When I first joined the Army we had to throw two live hand grenades in Basic Training. After we hard thrown them, we got to go into a bunker with blast-proof glass and watch others toss theirs, since we obviously couldn’t watch our own explode. I had been raised on 80s action movies, where Chuck Norris would toss a hand grenade into a window and *huge* fireballs erupted out of every door and window before the walls blew out.
Imagine my disappointment when I saw the real thing. There *might* have been a *very* brief flash of fire where the grenade had landed, but I might have imagined it. In reality there was a grenade on the ground, then a puff of smoke and dirt spreading away. If I hadn’t heard the blast, felt the shockwave, and heard the shrapnel hitting window I would have thought it was a dud.
Major ordinance was a disappointment, too. Again, 80s action movies all had the sound effect of an explosion having a double bang, followed by an echoing rumble. In reality it sounds like King Kong taking a single whack at a snare drum. One loud *crack!* and maybe a bit of bass reverberation depending on the environment. Nothing like the movies.
There is also the case of secondary explosions that result from the initial impact.
Things like gas lines, propane tanks, and other incendiary items can pop off after being struck causing additional damage.
If you ever want to see what it looks like when a natural gas pipeline explodes look up some photos of the aftermath where entire blocks of houses of vanished after gas lines exploded.
Big fireball explosions are not the real destructive ones. The explosions that cause the most damage do so because the explosion is very rapid, and creates and extremely compact air pressure wave. It is that dense, high pressure wave that blasts apart stuff.
So that kind of explosion that ignites and burns the fuel much quicker, than if you were to light up a drum of gasoline, for instance; which would create a spectacular fireball, but be far less destructive to structures.
Hollywood has lied to you. Real weapon explosions are efficient chemically. They don’t want there to be a big fireball with lots of smoke. The weapons have very precise amount of oxidant and explosive so it is highly efficient.
The idea of the weapons is to create as big and powerful of a pressure wave. It is what causes destruction and kills things.
If you have ever burned something like pure alcohol. You see that the flame is basically invisible. Basically all of the alcohol fume burns. Making it efficient and there is no carbon to be released.
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