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Researchers Experiment With Explosives To Fight Wildfires
aesoteric writes: "Australian researchers are a step closer to demonstrating whether explosives — rather than water — can be used to extinguish an out-of-control wildfire. The research uses a blast of air to knock the flame off its fuel source — a technique used in the oil & gas industry for decades. The latest tests were conducted in New Mexico. Firefighters are reported to be quietly optimistic about the research's potential."
Always puts out the fire....
.....for a while, anyhow.....
Michael Bay?
in New Mexico?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
if it doesn't work at first, add more rockets.
Good advice for any situation.
The reason it works with oil fires is that the oil cools rather FAST once the flame is out.
Wood... not so much. It is a good insulator and will preserve the heat - thus the vapor from wood will still be there - and HOT. Once the oxygen gets to it, it will flame again.
I have always wondered why this is not standard practice. If you want to extinguish a candle, the established method is to blow it out. After all, we used explosives to put out the Iraqi oil fires. Carpet bomb it, massively. If the fire is already to big for that to be practical, carpet bomb as wide and as much of a perimeter as you can and let it burn itself out.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
This is basically just a faster way to do that - by removing the oxygen as opposed to the carbon from the carbon+oxygen+heat equation.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Do I know some people in NM who are going to love this! And the fact that theyr'e next door to the NM firefighters' training academy ain't gonna hurt, either.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
So in addition to scorched earth and stuff, but there will be a big debris field, and a huge hole. Depending on the size of the blast, maybe folks will get beachfront property out of the deal!
"After the flames were extinguished, the explosives did nothing but create an avenue for the fires to spread during those first critical hours: Buildings and walls that might have served as firebreaks had been demolished.
The explosives also raised a dust that choked the lungs and impaired visibility. But perhaps the worst damage was the creation of even more fires as flaming debris ignited ruptured gas lines. Unwilling to admit responsibility for their collective mistakes, the Mayor, the Army, and the Fire Department all pointed fingers at each other, adding fuel to the administrative confusion that reigned during the fire."
http://mceer.buffalo.edu/1906_...
I though I had this idea first.
We used explosions to put out all the oil well fires in Iraq.
Combining burning things with blowing them up? I'm surprised there aren't more volunteers to conduct this experiment! Where's Johnny Knoxville when you need him?
Watch an old nuclear weapon test footage with trees in it. First you see the flash of light, and instantaneously the trees erupt in flames due to the intense radiation. Then a few seconds later, the shockwave (basically a strong air current) arrives and it puts the fire out.
You can substitute nuclear with a fuel-air bomb, which has the added benefit of sucking away all the oxygen in the area.
Firefighters are reported to be quietly optimistic about the chance to play with explosives.
Where do I sign up to become a firefighter now?
Next is napalm
..."What could possibly go wrong?" comes to mind.
what could possibly go wrong?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
In the movie Fires of Kuwait, my favorite part showed a modified tank called "Big Wind".
Instead of a cannon, "Big Wind" has two jet engines from a MiG fighter plane, and it uses those to blow out fires the same way you might blow out a candle on a birthday cake, only at epic scale.
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/stilling-the-fires-of-war
It's probably more practical, for wildfires, to use a helicopter to deliver explosive devices rather than drive a tank around. Setting up the water reservoirs in advance would be a problem also. The tank worked very well in Kuwait, though!
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
What happens when you play with dynamite..
The sound of raining whale pieces parts is hilarious.
On Mythbusters, we see if you can put out a fire with an obscenely large explosion!
Any basic firefighting course will teach you there are two components to fire: oxygen and heat. If you remove either you will put out the fire. However, if there's enough heat left fire will reignite. That's why firefighters keep pouring water long after flames have been extinguished.
So an explosion will not stop the fire unless it also creates enough airflow to cool down whatever was burning. That will work for some materials but not for everything. Just remember how easily blowing at the barbecue charcoal brings back the flames.
Nice slogan. What's next, Nuke The Whales?
I can think of a couple of of important differences off the bat...
1) spewing oil wells very quickly displace hot oil with cool oil, while a forest fire fuel just sits there, remaining hot
2) burning oil gushers are very compact, while forest fires are generally spread out
Deprive the fire of oxygen, that is, after you try flooding the viper launch bays with boroton.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"Our reporter is live at the scene of the forest fire"
KABOOM
"Oops, not any more."
Instead of hard work of digging trenches, lugging hoses, etc they'd get to blow shit up??!!! SIGN ME UP!! I WANNA BE A FIREMAN WHEN I GROW UP!
right?
Discovered and researched by rednecks?
Table-ized A.I.
Oil well fires are stationary points of flame a few tens of meters wide - lots of pressure behind them, but not much territory, and a single point of combustion where the fuel is coming out of the pipe. You can surround them.
Wildfires have flame fronts that are hundreds to thousands of meters wide, irregularly shaped, with a wall of flames and fuel sources that may be 5 to 30 meters high (or higher), and can be moving 60kph or more.
Look at this picture: http://media2.abc15.com//photo...
Tell me where you will put the bomb to blow that fire out.
So, recycle the old air force B52s into firefighting carpet bombers?
There is already a proven technik by a german company that uses Hoses that have smal ammounts of explosives inside and are filled with water.
Those hoses are placed alongside a fireline and the susequent explosion send the vaporized water into the fire.
The technik is still developed and I have read multiple newsitems over the Years,
Currently, after I quick seach I could only find this old article from 1995:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/15/news/15iht-five.html
The last time I read about it the news was that although the technik was proven, goverments around the world felt not happy with permiting explosives in these scenarios.
This Problem should hit the Australian Method as well.
Actually the Geramn company even tried to build up an infrastructure that would have made it possible to keep the explsoves under military/starte controll and send the material out with experts only, when the need arises. Still as fas as I know no country has taken to that technik yet.