Backatcha

December 1, 2023 12:55 PM

This is a fascinating 12 year old video of gun enthusiasts shooting at a pound of Tannerite in the freezer compartment of an old fridge.

I'd never heard of Tannerite before watching it, and it is an amazing explosive.

But what is TRULY amazing to me is the smoke filled vortex ring the comes back toward the shooter after the explosion.

When I slow the video down to half speed and count he seconds between the sound of the shot and seeing the first smoke of the explosion, and then the seconds between seeing the smoke and the arrival of the smok ring coming back, I get a velocity of the smoke ring which is between 5 and 10 times the velocity of the bullet which sets of the Tannerite. Can this be real? It violates my intuition in so many ways, and I’m prepared to believe it’s a result of video editing. But I must confess: I want to believe!

posted by jamjam (23 comments total)

A) That smoke ring is moving a *lot* slower than the bullet. It's possible the bullet hit the Tannerite before the sound of the shot reached the microphone.

B) I suspect the smoke is swirling around a piece of shrapnel from the explosion.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

That smoke ring is moving a *lot* slower than the bullet. It's possible the bullet hit the Tannerite before the sound of the shot reached the microphone.

Just to flush that out a bit: The speed of a bullet from a hunting rifle is around 2038 mph. The speed of sound at ground level is about 761 mph.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:09 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Tannerite will not detonate with a subsonic round.

But also, this is a video of idiot gun dipshits doing really dangerous dipshit stuff. They are intentionally creating large metal projectiles, and people die surprisingly often doing exactly this (blowing up appliances with Tannerite).

Do not do this yourself. Do not be present when other idiots are fucking around with Tannerite bombs, putting them inside ovens or on top of propane tanks.

(And when I say "idiot gun dipshits", I definitely don't mean gun owners, generally. These clowns are the "dumb and dangerous" dregs of the gun community.)
posted by ryanrs at 1:55 PM on December 1, 2023 [20 favorites]

People die surprisingly often doing exactly this

...I've seen a dumbass do this with a lawn mower. A lawn mower. That outcome you're thinking of, right now? Yeah, that's exactly what happened.

Tannerite is a reliable marker for idiocy. Flee at the first mention.
posted by aramaic at 2:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

Christ, I'm not even saying don't shoot Tannerite.

I'm saying don't put it in a refrigerator.

e: or a lawn mower, lol
posted by ryanrs at 2:01 PM on December 1, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'm saying don't put it in a refrigerator.

Or a pickup truck.

It's amazing how Tannerite is legal, given how strict the US is at regulating high explosives.
posted by netowl at 2:24 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

That Tannerite wikipedia page had me shaking my head at the notable incidents. Gender reveal parties ought to be outlawed is my main takeaway.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:58 PM on December 1, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yeah, Tannerite is fine if you're shooting at small, simple jars of it against a rock quarry or something and it's an easy way of saying 'ooh, look who just hit the target'. However, there are some people who just go hog fucking wild with it and you should always stay away from those people on outdoor ranges.
posted by corb at 3:13 PM on December 1, 2023 [2 favorites]

A) That smoke ring is moving a *lot* slower than the bullet. It's possible the bullet hit the Tannerite before the sound of the shot reached the microphone.

Yeah, I mean, I didn't slow the video down, count frames, or turn the sound on. But come on, I can see the smoke ring go from target to camera in about a second, and the fridge is, what, 40m from the camera? Roughly? So we're in the ballpark of 40m/s? And the bullet will have been travelling in the ballpark of 1,000 m/s.
posted by agentofselection at 3:28 PM on December 1, 2023

Holy shit that pickup truck. All that debris was literally past him before he could even turn his head
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:16 PM on December 1, 2023

Nthing the “Mefites who grew up in or around gun culture and do not think well of Tannerite” vote. I am fine with visiting a gun range with friends, but if somebody mentions Tannerite I will politely decline (while rolling my eyes if it’s a phone call and they can’t see me). Tannerite and people who enjoy shooting things is a lot like motorcycles and people who enjoy driving fast: it only takes one jackass with a hatful of hubris to make a good time go bad.
posted by Ryvar at 6:20 PM on December 1, 2023 [4 favorites]

Clicking those links is gonna fuck me youtube algorithm for a good long while now.
posted by slogger at 7:51 PM on December 1, 2023

There's some footage somewhere online showing an idiot who's loaded a refrigerator with explosives (no idea what kind) taking shelter behind a tree as he shoots at it. When there's no explosion, he steps a bit closer and shoots again with the same result. Closer again, and this time's the charm. There's a big explosion and a flying section of the fridge's door shears his leg off.

[The footage looks like it was filmed with the guy's own GoPro helmet. I always wonder if he posted it online himself or if a "friend" decided it would be funny to do it for him.]
posted by Paul Slade at 1:23 AM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ah, I didn't understand why gun people would all know about crazy explosives: it's because Tannerite is the brand name of an explosive target for shooting practice. (They make one for gender reveal parties!)

I don't know how different thermite is from that, but still I am reminded of the famous words...

"At hostpital lost fingat post mote later."
posted by Baethan at 2:10 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thermite is not really an explosive in the same way, it's more of a controlled reaction designed to make a liquid metal (usually a liquid iron for fusing rails) - it's a different class of exciting
posted by mbo at 2:21 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am sure I have told this story before, but...

When I was a kid we mounted a class D solid fuel model rocket engine and a solid clay warhead into a Toblerone bar box with tons of electrical tape and set it off in our schoolyard on a sunny summer day.

It went up much higher than we expected, and we watched in horror as it crested apogee and plummeted towards neighboring houses.

Running down the street, we raced into a backyard and stopped dead at the sight of an old man, raking up some leaves but now standing quite still, staring at a tiny smoking crater in his grass a dozen feet away. We mumbled an apology as we scooped up the wreckage and fixed the sod.

"Don't let it get in the flowers, boys!" he said cheerily as we left, heads down in shame. If that had hit him he would have been very dead.
posted by CynicalKnight at 8:38 AM on December 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thermite is not really an explosive in the same way, it's more of a controlled reaction designed to make a liquid metal

Bingo - if you’re from the part of upstate New York farm country where Army boot camp gun safety is taught word-for-word at age 8 before they hand you a 12 gauge (ow), thermite is a rite of passage you hit around age 11~12, typically. If there’s a rusted out Ford pickup hulk ditched in the woods where you can put it on the hood and watch it start tunneling into the engine block, all the better.

If your dad’s a chemist (check) it might be a father-son project alongside ammonium triiodide and flash powder. For most of my friends thermite was just a pre-teen boredom/rebellion thing.
posted by Ryvar at 9:03 AM on December 2, 2023

Holy shit that pickup truck. All that debris was literally past him before he could even turn his head

I cracked up when I saw it. The cherry on top was when he raised his eyebrow--eh, whatever.
Dumbass.
posted by BlueHorse at 9:18 AM on December 2, 2023

"[Tannerite] consists of two components: a fuel mixed with a catalyst or sensitizer, and a bulk material or oxidizer. The fuel/catalyst mixture is 90% 600-mesh dark flake aluminium powder, combined with the catalyst that is a mixture of 5% 325-mesh titanium sponge and 5% 200-mesh zirconium hydride[1] (with another patent document[10] listing 5% zirconium hydroxide). The oxidizer is a mixture of 85% 200-mesh ammonium nitrate and 15% ammonium perchlorate."

More-or-less the same composition as the propellants we use in amateur rocketry, which we call APCP (ammonium perchlorate composite propellent). The fuel is any of several powdered metals. APCP was formerly classified by the US ATF as a low explosive and so required a permit to buy or store it. But the 2 [inter]national amateur rocketry groups (I belong to both) sued ATF, stating that APCP cannot explode. We won the suit; APCP is unrestricted since 2009.
posted by neuron at 1:06 PM on December 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I had a high-school chem teacher who did the thermite demo for us, might have put a bit too much in it, it (a blob of molten iron) dropped through the stand he had put it on, into the heavy ceramic container he'd put there for that eventuality ... which cracked, it then passed though his bench, and as it started on the floor below our classroom and the one below us was evacuated ....
posted by mbo at 2:59 PM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Context on the FPS Russia car door vid, years later (cw - edgelord comic podcast)
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:39 AM on December 3, 2023

I honestly don't know how you could safely do something like this unless you were like, some comical distance like 500 yards away and just had a camera on a tripod as the only nearby object.

So i have some friends who are "lets go shoot targets from really far away in the woods" enthusiasts. They're really safety oriented and spend a lot of time planning out how they're going to do it, who else has access to the land/range to be, range safety, worst case scenario healthcare stuff, etc.

The story of how they ended up with them is long, but we got a few big pieces of really heavy duty bulletproof plastic from an old bank. The REALLY thick stuff you see on like, the presidents limo. It wasn't 50 years old, and wasn't yellowing or expiring or anything. The building it came out of was just getting abruptly torn down.

And well, it turns out it's designed to save your life, not stop you from being injured. That stuff splinters, spalls, and creates shrapnel.

So the reason i'm bringing that up is, i have no idea how you'd safely do something like this from a short distance and neither do they. shooting that plastic from this distance probably wouldn't even be safe. You'd probably need to be in like, behind some thick ass wall with a tiny slot in it or something.

I totally would have done this as a stupid teenager though don't get me wrong oh my god
posted by emptythought at 5:11 PM on December 3, 2023

I honestly don't know how you could safely do something like this unless you were like, some comical distance like 500 yards away

When I've shot Tannerite, it's been from 300 yards away, which isn't a comical distance but normal target shooting rifle range. However, I also wasn't stupid enough to put it inside a metal object it would then create shrapnel from. You could, however, probably do it from behind some sort of bunker. These people definitely seem like the type to have a bunker.
posted by corb at 3:13 AM on December 4, 2023 [1 favorite]