Forum: gaming.stackexchange.com
Tags: <minecraft-java-edition>
Title: I've set off some TNT, what should I do?
Question: I accidentally set off a large pile of TNT. I managed to hit escape before the explosion. Is there any way to prevent it going off?

Answers:
sents: text: If you open your world with MCEdit , you can select the area containing the TNT and use the “Delete Entities” operation to delete all the activated TNT in that area.
text: (Note that Delete Entities will also remove any minecarts, boats, and wolves in the selection.
text: MCEdit will show entities as transparent red blocks, but not what type of entity they are.)
text: Without such editing, by the physics of Minecraft, there is no way to stop activated TNT.
text: However, you can prevent the explosion from having any effects on other blocks , including other TNT, by dumping water in the space where it will explode.
text: (This probably can't help you fast enough unless you have a full bucket on your hotbar already.)
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/5962/Kevin Reid
score: 13
sents: text: Hitting
text: Alt+F4 would have been the wiser choice because by hitting Escape
text: you invoked the game to save your world.
text: Alternatively you can quit the game, then delete (and backup)
text: your level.dat and rename your level.dat_old to level.dat .
text: The problem is that you don't know from when the level.dat_old is.
text: I just know that this saved my house from burning it down accidentally and the game was set back about 10 minutes.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/6728/Exa
score: 8
sents: text: If you encase it in obsidian it will prevent the explosion going outward, encase it in water and it stops the damage that the surrounding blocks receive.
text: I'd recommend worldguard because it can prevent the ignition of TNT.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/11538/alexyorke
score: 3
sents: text: Just thought I'd answer with one more solution: if you have Single Player Commands installed, you can use the /defuse
text: all command to remove all the TNT that is activated.
text: The TNT blocks will disappear (since after activation, they are considered entities and not blocks ), but each previously activated block will drop a TNT item in its place for you to pick up.
text: This is a nice solution because Single Player Commands pauses the game when you bring up the console with T , so you don't need to frantically type the command before it goes off.
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/18/Kevin Yap
score: 3
sents: text: This answer had been previously posted on this question As said in this link , you could try to use :
text: /gamerule setExplosionDestruction false This command would prevent any Creeper / TNT blocks to damage other blocks.
text: If you want to re-enable block destruction, use : /gamerule
text: setExplosionDestruction
text: true NB : You need to play at least at version 1.4.2 Minecraft to have access to gamerule command
answer_details: author: gaming.stackexchange.com/users/240440/damadam
score: 2

Summary of the answers:
Open your world with MCEdit and select and delete the area with the TNT. You can also use a Single Player Command like /defuse. 
There is a variety of solutions to prevent the TNT from going off