Boston Bombing

[bwaites]

I'm no expert, but I do have a little experience playing with both black and smokeless powder. :eek:

I once ignited a few ounces of smokeless powder. It burned very hot and bright, with the flame reaching about 8 feet high, but generated no smoke.

I did the same thing with black powder, which produced a very small flame, but copious amount of billowing white smoke like that seen at Boston.

Interestingly, when I placed a similar quantity of black powder into a cardboard tube ~5 inches in diameter and confined the ends of the tube, the result was a loud explosion with no smoke.

Considering that conflagration would not create nearly enough pressure to cause the amputating wounds at the marathon, IMO it's more likely that there was a genuine explosion of at least a portion of the powder, with perhaps the remainder conflagrating after the container ruptured.

Also, besides the flash and smoke seen in the video, objects near the explosion appear to move as would be expected when hit by blast force. That wouldn't happen with conflagration only.

Watching New York Times video taken from the finish line closely, you can see that it takes about .02 second for the flame front to move about 10 feet, and if my math is right, that is a velocity of about 500 FPS or 340 MPH. That's subsonic and consistent with gunpowder. High explosives generate a supersonic wave front, and detonate at about 3-9 kilometers per second. The windows directly behind the blast are destroyed, but in photos put up by AP you can see that the window above and to the left of the bomb location, only about 15-20 feet away, is damaged by debris in the right lower corner, but not blown out. The doors further left are also intact.







So yes, explosion without competent detonation. Thus conflagration. Other video shows flame in the smoke cloud almost 2 full seconds after the explosion, no way that's supersonic unless there was some kind of secondary fuel mix.

And yes, I'm picking at nits. 3 people were still killed, and almost 200 were injured.

I do find it interesting that the 3 US government workers killed in Benghazi were completely ignored by the MSM, who repeatedly pounded the fact that these were the first terrorist attacks on noncombatant civilians since Obama took office.

And yes, an explosion of this type would cause amputation type injuries to nearby people. This was effectively a big pipe bomb, crude, but effective to some level. Sophisticated in the detonation method, though, apparently.

Lots of pipe bombs have caused amputation type injuries to people nearby!