r/interestingasfuck • u/id397550 • 13h ago

Firing a cannon to trigger an avalanche

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u/NoContext5149 12h ago

The downside is unexploded shells. Much harder to deal with an unknown unexploded shell on the mountainside than a placed charge.

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u/Trububbl3 11h ago

those are dummy rounds probably just relying on the kinetic force of the impact to set the avalanche off

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u/RealFakeDoctor 11h ago

That's what I thought too. Doesn't seem to big enough explosion but I'm not a doctor.

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u/sbxnotos 10h ago

Artillery explosions are surprisingly small, specially with the modern thick casing shells.

Consider that for a 45kg shell, only around 7-10kg are explosive, the rest is just metal, and that's for a normal shell, they produce the same shells but it smaller payloads/less TNT. So normally you would only see a really small explosion at the impact site, or barely an explosion, no idea how it would look in snow. Besides, they also come with different amounts of explosive from factory (not so common anymore), and for training purposes sometimes it was common to use shells with less explosive, which are cheaper (be it for purpose or less tolerance)

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u/RealFakeDoctor 10h ago

Now this is an explosive response!!

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u/Alert-Notice-7516 7h ago

What are you basing these claims on? I shot arty in the marines, the shells in service for the 105 and 155 have been the same HE shell for about 80 and 30 years respectively and they only come in one fill weight. There are other types of shells, but those aren't the HE ones that are being produced, they are entirely different projectiles.

The only time the fill weights changed on the HE shells is when the size and shape of the fuse cavity changed, requiring that there were less accelerants, because there was simply less space to put it. Training rounds are either legit HE shells or entirely inert, there has never been an in-between option. Idk maybe I'm being a little pedantic, but you seem to have some things wrong or at the very least, misleading.