Dust Explosion - Grain, flour, wheat

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Zeta Blaze

@Icelander
I agree most of the spice will be less ready to go but do the allied NPC millers in the city have any more productive thing they could do with there time compared to manufacture weapons by grinding mixed spices not flower in there mills? I also assume most of the spices will be in the same high end bakeries and store houses as the high end superfine white flower. I figure you can scrounge up a quarter ton all told of spices to powder while you find the high quality flower for little extra effort then have it ground and packed in time for the raid. This assumes that the city's millers have nothing more pressing to do ether as millers or as general labor I'm sure they would rather use there trade to help repel the invaders than just haul supplies and dig ditches.

Just a few hours after the PCs and their allies 'liberated' the city by seaborne assault and while the remnants of the previous occupation forces are still holding on to the inner keep while their field army threathens the walls outside, I'm skeptical that the PCs will find many allies. Any civilian NPC that can get away with it probably trying to hide himself, his family and any valuables he owns or was able to loot in the confusion.

If the PCs and their allies beat off the field army, manage to get the previous military governor and his guards in the inner keep to surrender and set up the rudiments of government in the city well enough to keep things from being all Mad Max/Warriors/Assault on 13th Precinct/The Purge, things might be different.

The polity that the PCs are fighting for is composed of neigbours of the civilians in this city, of the same ethnicity and with a long history of political, religious and cultural unity. But just after an invasion and while thousands of soldiers and sailors are running around in highly organised confusion setting up to repel a counterattack, the NPC civilians are primarily concerned with the vast gulf between 'civilian victims' and 'military aggressors'. Their immediate goals will be to avoid falling into the first group by avoiding anything even similar to the second group.

A lot of the inhabitants of the city were actually slaves working on various military projects for the previous occupiers. There are people working for the PCs who are trying to organise work-parties of these slaves to help resist the counter-attack by the field army outside the walls, but many factors complicate that endeavour.

One of the largest obstacles is that a powerful minority of the mercenaries fighting for the PCs are actually idealistic anti-slavery activists who take mercenary jobs to finance direct action against slave nations. And the majority of the other mercenaries generally have little experience with slavery at home or even come from nations where it has been outlawed. So the official position that the PCs have adopted, regardless of the technical legalities of the land they are fighting in, is that any slave captured immediately becomes a free man.* So asking for volunteer work parties is fine, but ordering out all the slaves to the walls is not.

This, combined with the fact that most of the available personnel of the military forces that the PCs brought is still busy unloading ships, moving artillery from the seaward walls to the south wall and demolishing buildings to block invasion routes through the town means that there are going to be few inhabitants of the city free for random projects for the PCs and their allies. Any volunteer workers go to work moving artillery or ammunition, digging and erecting secondary defence lines inside the city, sorting and seizing military supplies of immediate use to repel an assault on a city, etc.

*A slave captured under arms, fighting against then, becomes a freeman in the eyes of the PCs and their mercenaries, but still remains a prisoner of war like any other free soldier captured. On the other hand, while free citizens of the enemy state are ransomed, captured slave soldiers are offered a chance to go free without ransom, simply by swearing not to fight against the PC and their allies again.

[Nereidalbel]

I don't suppose there's a supply of coal or charcoal around? Those do make for impressive BOOMs.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

I don't suppose there's a supply of coal or charcoal around? Those do make for impressive BOOMs.

It's hard for people there to find sources of fuel. Most use some combination of dung from the numerous beasts of burden that follow in the train of the enormous armies that camp nearby, scrounged furniture or other parts of abandoned houses and far too expensive fuel imported by the occupying forces over sea, for officers and their househoulds.

I guess that last is probably charchoal. For an Egypt-esque society where most people are TL1+2 and they import their wood from outlying provinces, it seems like it would be most convenient to convert that wood into a compact fuel before expensively transporting it. Happily for people not rich enough to import charcoal, those areas of the the homeland of the invaders where most of them live have a very warm and mild climate. It never snows, rains only in certain seasons and most days are sunny, still and hot.

It's a tiny bit colder where the PCs are, in the twice-conquered city of Shussel, but it's still the equivalent of somewhere like Malta or Cyprus on Earth. Usually, fuel is only needed for cooking and industrial applications, not keeping warm. If Shussel were thriving, it would import massive volumes of charcoal and coal, as it has historically been viewed as an industrial city, with a long tradition of mining and smithing, for example. Sadly, even before the war, the city had been in a decline for centuries and the economic base has shrunk by about 80% from a height some one millenia ago.

[Nereidalbel]

Dried dung has a higher heat of combustion than wood (4.06 kcal/gram vs 3.59 kcal/gram). 1 pound of dung is ~3.72 pounds of TNT equivalence. The PC that suggested detonating powder drops had no idea just how much explosive power that city really has.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Dried dung has a higher heat of combustion than wood (4.06 kcal/gram vs 3.59 kcal/gram). 1 pound of dung is ~3.72 pounds of TNT equivalence. The PC that suggested detonating powder drops had no idea just how much explosive power that city really has.

Any city will have incredible amounts of explosive power available. Unfortunately, almost any method of detonating it depends on a lot of work and/or precise conditions, usually both. Burning it is easier, but not as effective, unless you can spread it over a lot of enemies.

Just gathering up dung that is mostly stored in individual pieces, several per civilian dwelling, represents a very long time. And it's not as if it's stored in a fine powder or other easily-weaponised form.

How much work is it to turn a typical piece of dried dung that can be used to cook dinner into a weapon of some sort?

Since I doubt normal cooking fuel is a very effective incendiary weapon, as it will burn too slowly, you'd probably have to grind it into a powder and/or mix it with some incendiary liquid to make make-shift Greek Fire.

How long does that take?

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Any city will have incredible amounts of explosive power available. Unfortunately, almost any method of detonating it depends on a lot of work and/or precise conditions, usually both. Burning it is easier, but not as effective, unless you can spread it over a lot of enemies.

Just gathering up dung that is mostly stored in individual pieces, several per civilian dwelling, represents a very long time. And it's not as if it's stored in a fine powder or other easily-weaponised form.

How much work is it to turn a typical piece of dried dung that can be used to cook dinner into a weapon of some sort?

Since I doubt normal cooking fuel is a very effective incendiary weapon, as it will burn too slowly, you'd probably have to grind it into a powder and/or mix it with some incendiary liquid to make make-shift Greek Fire.

How long does that take?

You can mill dung dried for burning just as much as you can mill wheat or corn. Same as per charcoal, only I'd be a little scared to mill that for fear it would ignite spontaneously. I'm not sure what the risk of that is, but it gives me the fear.

Manpower to break either up into chunks that can go in the mill is easy; neither is particularly tough and you can do it with a rock. Your real limiting factor is how many mills are available (and how hard it is to convince the miller to put dung in his very expensive machine).

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Bruno

You can mill dung dried for burning just as much as you can mill wheat or corn. Same as per charcoal, only I'd be a little scared to mill that for fear it would ignite spontaneously. I'm not sure what the risk of that is, but it gives me the fera.

Manpower to break either up into chunks that can go in the mill is easy; neither is particularly tough and you can do it with a rock. Your real limiting factor is how many mills are available (and how hard it is to convince the miller to put dung in his very expensive machine).

Obviously.

But as noted in the thread, no one will be milling the several thousand tons of grain that are in various granaries. There isn't really time to mill anything. Granted, the PC thought of the idea before noon and is planning to use it at midnight, but given all the other things he had to accomplish in between, he was only able to give very general orders to a few NPCs about preparating the dust they would use.

It's plenty of time for readying already ground powder, rigging the bags of it with straps that fit on the harnesses that the flying mages wear, but I can't imagine how anyone would manage to find a whole bunch of millers, get them to stop hiding from the soldiers and start working and then arrange to grind up to two tons of some substance that is not already ground and may not be commonly milled commercially, all in only a few hours.

The reason the PC mentioned using flour specifically is that it's the only powder he could find that was already finely ground. In an area close to the living area for the slaves and servants of the governor's palace, where there were also a lot of bakeries that catered to the military officers of the occupation, there were at least two tons of fine white flour that had been delivered there as the battle for the city started (sadly for the bakers, they didn't get time to start on their morning rolls).

I'm fully prepared to have some other dusts available to the PC (he rolled fairly well for Administration, Freight Handling, Leadership, Scrounging and Urban Survival), but it has to be something that could plausibly be found already ground in large quantities. It helps if it comes in bags and is the finest grade, ground by hand by expert slaves. Spices are finely ground by expert slaves, but probably only a tiny bit at a time.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I'm fully prepared to have some other dusts available to the PC

Other than household dust (which is common but won't be practical to collect) I think most of the other likely dusts are non-flammable minerals (chalk, lime, talc, etc).

[Nereidalbel]

That's the thing, though. You don't need to mill the dung. It's crumbly enough that shockwaves from exploding flower and spices will turn it to dust, and create secondary explosions and flaming shrapnel.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

That's the thing, though. You don't need to mill the dung. It's crumbly enough that shockwaves from exploding flower and spices will turn it to dust, and create secondary explosions and flaming shrapnel.

You may get secondary fires. Without milling and precise distribution, you won't be getting explosions.