KABOOM!

[jsbowden]

Please be advised a simulated explosion scheduled for this Wednesday, March 25th between 9:30 am and 12:00 pm near the Key Bridge in Washington, D.C. for the filming of a TV pilot. The explosion will produce a 20' to 30' fireball that will last for approximately two minutes.

Ah, the joys of working inside the Beltway...

Comments

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

If it produces a 20 to 30 foot fireball, the explosion is not simulated.

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Sure, but you know what they were trying to get across with that message as well as I do.

[tober.livejournal.com]

Well, strictly speaking, a fireball doesn't require an explosion. If you burn, for example, unconfined gasoline vapor in air, under the right circumstances you get a very nice fireball but that doesn't constitute an explosion (a true explosion requires rapid change in volume of something confined, such that a significant pressure wave is created). Indeed, high explosives (e.g.- of the sort usually used for demolition) usually don't make pretty fireballs. Sometimes TV and movie pyrotechnics do involve bona fide explosions, usually quite small ones (and usually using low explosives such as black powder), but not always.

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

A gasoline fireball may well be ignited by something explosive, though.

I thought fuel-air mixtures of the right kind did constitute explosives, though?