Crude fertilizer bomb

Google ammonium nitrate disasters.
Ammonium nitrate can explode if heated and certainly with an initiator such as TNT. It is a more powerful and effective explosive if intimately mixed with a fuel, but under the circumstances you describe you should get a decent kaboom.

ANFO needs to be properly mixed to be effective. Barrels of ammonium nitrate with diesel splashed over it is not going to provide a significant bang. It is going to produce a significant problem, however, if exploded with TNT or Tovex. What's the purpose of the explosion? You always start looking at explosives by looking at what you want to accomplish. Then you choose the best option that is available to you.

Personally after dousing it with diesel in the setup you're describing, I'd then add in some gasoline. But I'd dump it out of the barrels or add the diesel inside the barrels. Just letting the diesel soak in will accomplish a lot of mixing. It's mixed with 94% ammonium nitrate and 6% diesel, although usually you'll go higher on the diesel.

Realize that getting hundreds of pounds of ammonium nitrate is a problem. Even farmers can have problems with acquiring it.

Jim Clark-Dawe

Just as a point of research, the biggest chemical explosion disaster in U.S., and perhaps world, history, occurred in the port of Texas City, Texas in 1947 (I believe that was the year) when a fire broke out in the hold of a freighter loaded with ammonium nitrate. It eventually exploded. killing people as far as a mile or more away, and setting ablaze a second freighter with similar cargo, which also exploded later. The entire dock area was obliterated, and more than 500 people were killed. This wasn't any kind of precise ANFO mixture, just a hell of a lot of ammonium nitrate.

Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma city bomb wasn't very sophisticated, either. Just good enough for his purposes.

caw

http://www.livescience.com/6413-fertilizer-bombs-work.html
It needs to be precise. Accidental explosions happen when the conditions are right, and is rare. It will also need to be directed in some way, if you want specific damage.
I would say go to youtube and watch some blow up, you will get an idea of how things work. Find out about fert bombs, then read the cases of supposed fert bombs, and come to your own conclusions about how/if they could have worked in those scenarios, and how it would work in yours.

'Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma city bomb wasn't very sophisticated, either. Just good enough for his purposes.' Funny stuff, almost as funny as a plane hitting the Pentagon, or to be more timely- not as funny as the US Army sharpening Dylan Roof into a weapon.

tommyb said:

'Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma city bomb wasn't very sophisticated, either. Just good enough for his purposes.' Funny stuff, almost as funny as a plane hitting the Pentagon, or to be more timely- not as funny as the US Army sharpening Dylan Roof into a weapon.

Click to expand...

Funny? It certainly wasn't intended to be funny. Just factual. What exactly was your point in this comment?

caw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion

The link is to the West, Texas disaster that happened in 2013. Damn near leveled the entire town. Ammonium nitrate was being held in an unsecured warehouse near the railroad tracks. We were more than 60 miles away at my daughter's softball game and heard the kaboom.