Flour explosion

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

Hey everyone,

So this is a later scene in my iceberg story. What's happened so far: a sailing ship has become trapped against an iceberg which has sprouted two "arms" of ice around the ship. The arms join and the ship is left floating in a little lake, unable to breach the ice.

The villain, who's hiding on the berg, wants to seize the undamaged ship. He causes more ice to grow up around the ship, so now it's like the ship's inside a giant snow globe. He might also start smoke materializing inside the globe, to suffocate the crew.

I was thinking of the crew using their cargo of flour and the confined space to cause an explosion. If, from the deck, they created a cloud of flammable material and ignited it, could that break the globe? I don't mind pieces of the yardarms or gunwale flying in all directions, to smash through the ice.

My other question is, how much flour might they need? Just a ballpark idea would do.

Thanks muchly.

Helix · Mar 20, 2014

I can't answer the question, so I'll cause a distraction by asking how they are going to keep safe from the explosion.

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

Helix said:
I can't answer the question, so I'll cause a distraction by asking how they are going to keep safe from the explosion.

Hide in the hold?

At this point they figure they have nothing to lose (the villain's magic is pretty powerful), so they might as well fight back even if it means risking their lives. They also know that he needs an undamaged ship to get him off the berg, so they won't really mind if a mast comes down.

Helix · Mar 20, 2014

Would the hold be full of flour dust? Might get a bit ugly! Could they fashion a cannon out of something and use flour as propellant?

Sorry, QofS. I'm just thinking out loud here because I'm not able to provide any real help. (And I'm procrastinating.)

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

Helix said:
Would the hold be full of flour dust?

Would it? I was under the impression that flour would be shipped tightly packed, to reduce the amount of oxygen available to the particles and the likelihood of an explosion.

Even if that isn't the case, I can always have the hold divided in two : one part for the flour and the second for the other types of cargo.

Might get a bit ugly! Could they fashion a cannon out of something and use flour as propellant?

That might take some time. I'd like to have everything happen quickly after the globe appears, because the villain won't be sitting back and waiting patiently while they build a cannon. He wants them dead fast.

Sorry, QofS. I'm just thinking out loud here because I'm not able to provide any real help. (And I'm procrastinating.)

No problem.

Torgo · Mar 20, 2014

Looks like dust explosions can be pretty powerful. What I would worry about on a ship, though, is that they create huge fireballs, and that's about the last thing you'd want if it was wooden.

Mythbusters did some experiments with this - google 'creamer cannon', it's kind of fun - but I think it might be tough to get enough bang to break through walls of ice and not blow the ship to bits.

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

You wouldn't need to blow up the ice though, would you? You just need enough force to cause a big crack in it and then it will fall apart under its own weight? Or am I talking out of my bum?

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

Hmm. I wonder if I could have the explosion inside a barrel, which would propel whatever was inside out at a speed that might break the ice. Unfortunately, no compressed air. I don't mind a fireball, though - most of the crew won't be on the deck and they'd rather destroy the ship than allow the villain to seize it.

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

mirandashell said:
You wouldn't need to blow up the ice though, would you? You just need enough force to cause a big crack in it and then it will fall apart under its own weight?

Even a big crack would provide air to the crew, meaning the villain couldn't suffocate them. I just want something a little more dramatic than the crew chipping away at the ice with pickaxes while the villain's not doing anything.

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

Hmm... doing it in a barrel would be tricky, wouldn't it? I thought it was the flour particles being in the air that was the problem, not compressed flour in a barrel?

I think throwing a lot of flour in the air and igniting it with fire arrows to cause a big crack and the ice cracking like windscreen glass around a stone chip would be pretty spectacular. And a lot quicker than chipping, I think.

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

mirandashell said:
Hmm... doing it in a barrel would be tricky, wouldn't it? I thought it was the flour particles being in the air that was the problem, not compressed flour in a barrel?

I was trying to figure out how to get shrapnel into the air and moving at high enough speed to break through the ice, but if your idea works that would be fine. The crew has a small catapult on board which they were using to try to smash through the "arms", except the villain defeated that plan by just growing an ice globe around them, and they've used up their projectiles.

What they still have, though, is the flour. If they were able to suspend all that flour in the air and then ignite it with a fire arrow (nice touch!) and the ice cracked, that would be fine with me. Even if the sails or yardarms ignited, the heat would just weaken the globe further.

Helix · Mar 20, 2014

What about attaching sacks of flour to the masts or filling the furled sails with flour and then rigging* some sort of fuse that opens the sails and ignites the suspended particles?

* arf arf

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

Both ideas sound good. A fireball is always a good thing in a fantasy novel!

Well... not for the characters but you know what I mean! LOL!

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

Thinking about it, depending on the amount of floor, the fireball could be massive. If you could throw a lot of barrels up, they all break at roughly the same time, air full of flour....3 or 4 fire arrows in different directions.... HUGE bang!

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

I have no problems at all with a bang that echoes across the stretches of the iceberg like a boom o' doom.

The villain can be most disconcerted to realize that the heroes fought magic with science.

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

Sounds good to me!

jclarkdawe · Mar 20, 2014

Here's a report from the International Ice Patrol:

On May 1, 1925, eight men on the US Coast Guard cutter the Tampa climbed into a lifeboat, rowed 500 yards through waves in the treacherous North Atlantic Ocean, boarded a large iceberg drifting silently in the Labrador Current, and planted a floating mine at the edge of the ice. The International Ice Patrol, a US Coast Guard division with 14 participating nations that was set up after the Titanic sank in 1912, was conducting iceberg demolition experiments over the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, near the world's busiest
shipping lanes and some of earth's richest fishing grounds. The small group from the Tampa maneuvered their lifeboat away from the iceberg as they ran a hundred yards of wire from the mine on the berg's ledge to their precarious position bobbing in the waves. And then, as officers and crewmen from the
Tampa's deck watched and took photographs, they detonated the mine. A spectacular geyser of ice, water, and smoke shot into the air and sent out small waves toward the boats as bits of ice peppered the area. The men in the lifeboat rowed back to the Tampa, climbed aboard, and moved on. A few hours later, they approached another berg and converted it into a "shooting gallery." The crew pounded the iceberg with thirty rounds of three-inch artillery shells. Despite sounding farfetched, dangerous, and even ridiculous, the Ice Patrol had noble intentions with these iceberg explosions: they hoped
to hasten the demise of bergs before they floated directly into the steamship lanes and created a menace for international shipping and transportation. They were trying to ensure that another Titanic catastrophe never again occurred.

The main problem with bombing bergs is that it just didn't work. Not even close. And it was dangerous. But it to ok the Coast Guard's Ice Patrol nearly a half century to figure that out definitively. The typical outcome of iceberg warfare was what Coast Guard yeoman Leo Shubow witnessed with these two assaults in 1925. The impact of the mine planted by the Tampa, he concluded, was "unnoticeable." And "after all this hubbub and shooting" at the second iceberg, Shubow asked: "What happened to the berg? Only a few chunks had been shaved off the ends, but the berg proper seemed to remain impregnable and adamant. Nature itself would have to be more cooperative in undoing these icy mountains through rain, fog, surging waves, and the approaching warm Gulf Stream." In fact, Shubow was more insightful and forward-looking than he might have imagined. Almost forty years later, the International Ice Patrol finally abandoned a half century of experimenting with iceberg obliteration.

You crew would do better to take an ax to the hull.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

It's not a berg, though. It's a dome.

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

mirandashell said:
It's not a berg, though. It's a dome.

Yes, unless a dome of ice (which is not solid beneath the dome) behaves just the same as an iceberg which is solid all the way through, I'm sure a detonation under it would have some effect.

If the crew takes an axe to the hull, they're probably all going to die. I don't mind them being prepared for that outcome, but the story will end if they all do actually bite it. So if a dome reacts just the same as an iceberg, then I'll have to scrap this idea.

King Neptune · Mar 20, 2014

I have read about large flour explosions, and they can be huge. The problem would be getting enough flour floating in the air. If your crew can get a ton of flour into the air and put fire to it, then there would be a substantial explosion. I suspect that most readers will accept that as a possibility, and that's what's important. If this were the real world, then I would worry about broken eardrums and other such injuries.

jclarkdawe · Mar 20, 2014

Unless the doom is ready to collapse, which does happen as ice melts, it's not going to make much difference. A surface explosion against ice is like a surface explosion on a rock surface. In other words, you don't get much damage.

An explosion in ice, where you have drilled into the ice and inserted the explosive, can be more effective, but ice is just hard to deal with.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

mirandashell · Mar 20, 2014

But what about a fireball? Would that work? If it melts enough for weak spot to appear there could then be a crack? And the dome doesn't necessarily have to be very thick if the idea is suffocation.

King Neptune · Mar 20, 2014

The pressure from an explosion could easily crack something as brittle as ice. I don't know how big the dome is, but increasing the pressure for a half second should work.

Marian Perera · Mar 20, 2014

jclarkdawe said:
Unless the doom is ready to collapse, which does happen as ice melts, it's not going to make much difference. A surface explosion against ice is like a surface explosion on a rock surface. In other words, you don't get much damage.

I'm leaning towards the "fling a crate of flour into the air and ignite the flour as it bursts out" method, but I could always have pieces of metal in the crate with the flour. I doubt a ship would be carrying caltrops, but they were expecting a boarding party. They should have some kind of pointed metal around.

If even sharp, hot metal being propelled against ice at speed makes no difference to the ice... then I guess I'll just have to take my chances with the readers buying the scenario.

jclarkdawe · Mar 20, 2014

Literary license is a wonderful thing. All you want to know is when you're using it.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Flour explosion

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