12-05-2022, 04:10 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
In WW II, the loss of one capital ship was blamed on the detonation of black powder. It was used to power a catapult to launch aircraft.
If you know what charge the explosive arrow carried, GURPS has rules for calculating the damage of a given weight of black powder.
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12-05-2022, 04:21 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Indaiatuba/SP Brazil
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
Quote:
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12-05-2022, 05:24 PM | #13 |
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavķk, Iceland
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
Color me curious. I want to know more about that incident.
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12-05-2022, 05:32 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
Looks to be the USS Arizona, lost at Pearl Harbor (and might have been lost regardless).
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12-05-2022, 05:56 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Indaiatuba/SP Brazil
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
No freaking way!
for some reason, i've always judge black powder as "weak" |
12-05-2022, 06:09 PM | #16 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pioneer Valley
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
It's why I'm glad to be working with a game system that's based on fact, rather than WAGs, shibboleths and suppositions. Suffered through too many gamers in the early years who saw no shame in asserting that 25 lb swords were used in battle, that katanas could cut through tank armor ... or that a substance that was used for industrial blasting right up to the 20th century was insufficient to the task.
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12-05-2022, 06:38 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
It is. It's a low explosive, and weight for weight it isn't terribly powerful. However, (a) quantity matters, and (b) in the case of the USS Arizona, the main role of the black powder is that it's relatively easy to ignite, and therefore it catching fire caused the rest of the magazine to explode.
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12-05-2022, 07:40 PM | #18 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
I doubt it. Hale invented the thing more than twenty years before dynamite was around, and seven years before nitroglycerin.
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12-05-2022, 08:02 PM | #19 | |
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Indaiatuba/SP Brazil
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
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12-05-2022, 08:04 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Indaiatuba/SP Brazil
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Re: Explosive Arrows and Ancient Rockets
Quote:
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