From: billn@hpcvaac.cv.hp.com (bill nelson)
Subject: Re: Picric acid?
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Corvallis, Oregon USA
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 21:44:19 GMT

bill.dehaan@rose.com (bill dehaan) writes:
: 
: BN>Not true. What happens is that it gets contaminated with various metals.
: BN>These metals combine with the picric acid to form very sensitive picrates.
: BN>It is these picrates that hare the hazard.
: 
: I stand corrected. The stuff *does* crystalize, I (and the fireman who
: explained it to us) thought it was a breakdown. Whether it's due to age,
: contamination, or cosmic rays, it's still nothing you want to mess with.

Nope - picric acid is crystaline. It is often/usually sold wet. When it dries,
any of the dissolved acid would form crystals. Your fireman's explanation
shows that he didn't know what he was talking about. He should stick to the
fighting of fires, and leave explosives to the demolitions experts.

As I stated above, the crystalization is not a breakdown - in any way.

: BN>Picric acid is a secondary high explosive. It is a secondary explosive
: BN>because it is not easy to initiate the pure chemical by shock, friction
: BN>or flame.  It is a more powerful explosive than TNT.
: 
: Yeah, that part I remember. They were _very_ careful with it. I'm not
: sure what else they grabbed, but the picric acid was the stuff that they
: were _seriously_ concerned about.

You didn't read very carefully what I wrote. It is NOT very sensitive.
Now, you need to be more careful with opened bottles, since they could
have been contaminated with some metal.

... delided ...

: BN>No way.  If that had happened, you would not have had a football field
: BN>left. There would have been a sizeable crater in the ground when that
: BN>much exploded.
: 
: Yes way. They didn't blow it _all_ up. What happened (as I recall) was
: that they grabbed what they could transport, and took that with them for
: disposal. It was only the stuff that they considered too dangerous to
: transport (what percentage of the original five or six containers, I
: don't know), they just took out and blew up.
: 
: BN>By the way, a bullet does not detonate picric acid reliably. If they
: BN>did so, with some of it, they were fools. Was the football team able
: BN>to play, with picric acid and glass scattered all over the field?
: 
: They were fools, I guess. Maybe they put something that would detonate
: next to the acid, and aimed for that? I wasn't taking notes at the time,
: and students were hardly permitted an onsight inspection.
: 
: What I saw was them take the stuff out of the lab, and about an half our
: or so later, a bunch of cops carried a big box out into the center of
: the back football field and blasted it. Big bang. EOpicric.

Your story is changing. First, it was the fireman - now it is the police.
First, it was 5 or 6 gallons, now it is "the stuff theat they considered
too dangerous to transport". 

: Since it happened in January, on the back football field, I doubt it was
: a serious problem for the football team, since they didn't use the back
: field.  As for scattered glass on the field, the level of vandalism at
: our school was such that a few more hundred shards would probably not be
: noticed. ;-( [and for all I know, those jugs could have been plastic
: rather than glass]

Picric acid is not stored in plastic - it is stored in glass.
If the picric acid was dissolved in water, it will not explode.
If more than a ounce or so was detonated, there would be a big
hole in the field.
The police would not "shoot" the material with a rifle. They would
use a blasting cap.

Yes, I have worked with explosives disposal. By the way, of the
hundreds of bottles of picric acid that have been found and disposed
of - I do not know of a single accidental explosion. It just is not
close to being as dangerous as the media/police would have people
believe.

Bill
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban