Dynamite. Eplosions. Big bangs.

Okay, hi!
I need someone to tell me a bit about Dynamite and big explosions... if they know anything about it at all.
Two of the characters in my book are going to blow an office building up. Nobody will be in the building, as no-one will get hurt. What they are doing is trying to get their faces on the news so that the Shadow will find them.
They are going to use dynamite, but I have no idea about what dynamite looks like, how it goes off... things like that. Help needed!
Otherwise, the whole planet could be in danger with so much C4 that... anyway. You get the picture.

Thank you!
cosby

Look up "Mythbusters" on YouTube. That should give you a rather large selection of what big booms look like. (There was also a show called the detonators (link to the collection of YouTube videos) that dealt with blowing up buildings)

Firstly, it takes much more than one empty building for nobody to get hurt. The way an explosion works is, the explosive is detonated and pushes a shockwave out, causing damage in its wake (that is a highly simplistic definition, just so you know). That shockwave can travel far enough to damage neghbouring buildings, not to mention the building itself could fall onto a building next to it somewhere.

I doubt Dynamite would be the easiest thing to get ahold of. From what I know it contains nitroglycerin, which is one of the most reactive materials when it comes to blowing things up. Highly, highly dangerous and in most places only the bomb squad has access to it. The reason C4 is used is because it's a plastic explosive and therefore inert; only the shock and heat of a blasting cap (or something that replicates that) can set it off. However, I'd think it'd be very hard to get ahold of as well.

Hope this helps a bit!

~Rosey

Okay, thank you!

From what I've heard, if the explosion is underwater, it's more deadly when your trying to escape from it (in this case, swimming). The shock waves can cause enough force to knock someone unconscious. I've heard one or two other things too. If there's shrapnel, you aren't supposed to put it too close to the charge if each piece is separate because the charge just might disignigrate (spelling?) it. C4, at least the original charges made back in the 1970's had been a little more unstable than the standard dynamite because it was made for more a punch in a smaller package, so different chemicals were used. In a grenade, a small charge is set off in the center, and the outer shell is used as the shrapnel (at least in a fragmentation grenade). Other than that, if I remember anything else, I'll be sure to drop by.