[Thermodyne]

Baron Munchausen said:


The way I heard it from a guy in the reserves (who apparently had real training experience but I didn't go check his credentials... ) is that C4 needs BOTH fire & 'shock' (percussion, physical jolt) to detonate. You can burn it and it's perfectly safe. You can pound it with a hammer and it's perfectly safe -- as long as it's NOT on fire when you pound it! If you light it on fire and then pound the burning chunk of chemicals it will explode. So those guys warming their coffee over a chunk of C4 had better not drop anything on their cookfire fuel.

This relatively stable nature is what makes C4 so useful to the military. There are certainly other explosives more powerful, but these are apparently much more dangerous to handle.

It takes energy. Put enough pressure on it and it will go off.