Cooking grenades

[Grimbot]

I know there are no grenades.  But it seemed like a cheeky title.

 

I've been enjoying the game so far (though I've been unable to get the online beta to work so it's very lonely) and have manages to survive for a maximum of ten whole days!  After burning down my first home base after a botched attempt to cook a salmon, I ended up in another house surrounded by zombies.  I had a ton of 9mm rounds and no pistol, so I turned the oven on and stuffed it full of ammo, then ran upstairs.  And... I don't know what I expected to happen, but nothing did.  I ended up jumping out the window, busting a leg, and limping away.  The house probably eventually burned down.

 

But it got me thinking about the ways you could use some of the stuff already in-game to spice up home defense.  What if the stoves (some) were gas?  You could turn on the gas, grab a lighter, and go out on a bigger blaze of glory than bleach allows.  You could (if there were grenades or gas cans) pop those in the oven and turn the house into an unpredictable time bomb.  

 

Adding a junction box or sockets and some wire could allow you to electrify doorknobs to keep other players out.  A junction box could also allow a way to turn off a foe's electricity before you raid their base.  Or disable those pesky alarms before you trip them.

 

That being said, it'd be great to have wind-up alarm clocks or some other way to purposefully create a zombie distraction.

 

I guess what I'm saying is... traps.  Yeah.

[Kajin]

http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/185-the-ultimate-thread-of-traps-and-distractions

 

There has been a huge amount of discussion concerning traps and such. That one is the biggest by far. You might find it to be an interesting read.

[Aenye Deithven]

You could (if there were grenades or gas cans) pop those in the oven and turn the house into an unpredictable time bomb.

Actually, it wouldn't be so easy...

 

Explosive devices (such as grenades) consist of two basic types of high-energy material - the primer and the detonating agent. Practical solutions have been devised so that these two come separately, as the detonator (detonating cap would be the direct translation to english) and the bulk "explosive".

 

In order to explain those citation marks, I have to at least mention the mechanism of the phenomenon. Typically if a condensed phase (solid or liquid) releases gas slowly, we will observe the formation and escape of bubbles (example: opening a bottle of pepsi - as the pressure and composition of the gas phase over the liquid change, carbon dioxide dissolved in the liquid is being released until equilibrium). Chemical explosions and detonation follow a similar mechanism - gas is produced (as a result of a decomposition reaction), however, it may occupy the volume of the condensed phase it originated from. This means extreme pressure. Furthermore, decomposition reactions are typically highly exothermic, so if they occur rapidly, a great amount of heat is also produced. A high-temperature, high-pressure gas is not a stable state, so it has to release the energy contained within somehow - typically by simultaneously increasing its volume and exchanging heat with anything colder than itself, such as molecules of the explosive which didn't decompose. Heat + pressure = decomposition of the explosive and the initiation of a chain reaction.

 

The critical factor in the process is the rate at which the "decomposition front" propagates through the material. Extremely slow propagation would result in simple burning (such as coal in a furnace), where the gas actually has enough time to expand and not much pressure is built up. Faster propagation may be similar to gunpowder - if we employ a closed vessel, pressure will build up fast enough to rip the vessel open. Even faster ? Explosions. Faster still ? At some point the mechanism of the gas phase processes begins to change into an adiabatic one. When we have adiabatic transfer of heat, the process is called a detonation - the speeds at which the decompostion fronts propagate are typically of the order of 5-10 km/s. A front of gas travelling at such a speed ? That's the blast wave (or, as a friend once summarised "pop goes the weasel"), carrying a lot of energy. Enough to ignite most materials or initiate detonation of high-energy materials...

 

Now, the question is how much energy is needed to provide a sufficiently fast rate of decomposition for detonation ? If we provide enough to decompose all of the material instantly, a detonation will occur. Decompose half of the material ? Probably yes. A tenth ? Maybe. The amount of energy needed to initiate the process is called the "detonation threshold". If we provide less, the material will decompose, but it will not explode - the most spectacular example of that is being able to burn TNT in a chimney safely (nevertheless, please do not try this).

 

Now, back to the "explosive" - it's because if a high-energy material is to be used for munitions, it needs to be safe. Therefore, it should be possible to store it indefinitely and dispose of it in a controlled way. Therefore, its detonation threshold should be high enough to be beyond the magnitude of commonly encountered stimuli. If we want to detonate the material, we just insert a primer (made of an "initiating explosive material" with a relatively low detonation threshold and, hence, lower stability). The amount of explosive in a primer is small enough to be relatively safe (if any work with explosives could be called safe...) and large enough to provide the energy required for the detonation of the bulk explosive.

 

Going back to grenades in the microwave - should the grenade still have the safety pin, the primer might be located beyond the bulk explosive (depending on technical solutions of course), so if it were to go off, it might not set the grenade off. That and the fact that the primer in grenades is relatively stable (can be stored for some time), can result in a warm grenade.

 

One can just make a mechanical trap to simulate the grenade being primed or use electricity. Many explosives are actually detonated by application of an electric impulse, which actually carries a lot of energy...

 

TLDR: Instead of cooking grenades, just hit their contents with a discharge from a capacitor.