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Old 01-13-2019, 07:55 AM   #131
Rupert
 
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

'Proper' grenade fuses are likely to be a problem. Industrial high explosives range from quite low powered (ANFO - it's cheap and fairly safe) to as good as that used as filler in grenades (PETN, etc.). The good stuff it likely to be doped to make it easy to tell who made it, and thus make it easier to work out who supplied it to the people who used it, etc.

Casings, notched wire fragmentation coils, & etc. will be easy to make. They are not a problem. Note that if fragmentation is where you expected to get most of your wounding from, even a fairly weak explosive like ANFO or black powder will do.
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Old 01-13-2019, 09:34 AM   #132
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Default Re: 'Home-made' Grenades and Other Ordnance

In most industrial applications, if you want a bigger boom you add more explosive. Yes, that seems obvious, but the lack of ability to do that (e.g. because it has to fit inside a warhead, or be carried by a complaining squaddie) is what drives military explosives to greater REF, which is basically just energy density.

I believe RDX shaped charges are commonly available for shattering recalcitrant rocks.

As I understand it, you need a permit for commercial explosives even in the USA, but it shouldn't be too hard to arrange if there are appropriate industries in the portfolio.

Why don't we see terrorists doing this stuff? Because making explosive devices that are two-way reliable (don't go off until you press the button, do go off when you do) is quite hard to get right. And again, if they can get a guy to the target wearing a dynamite vest, they don't need a smaller package to carry the same boom.
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Old 01-13-2019, 09:51 AM   #133
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Default Re: Sidearms for Monster Hunters (actually, also their security)

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post

I knew I had no interest in shooting them, as I don't like the ergonomics of the pinky-free grip.
If you didn't like that you should try some really small pistols such as a number of recent .380s. In my hands (which are probably proportional to my size 12 feet) a Kel-tec is a 1 and 1/2 finger grip and it's not alone.

The Kel-tec's grip is also skinny and hard and I heard one shooter compare firign it to catching a pitched baseball without a mitt.
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Old 01-13-2019, 10:44 AM   #134
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Default Re: Sidearms for Monster Hunters (actually, also their security)

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Originally Posted by Icelander View Post
While this is no doubt idiosyncratic, it's not confined to you alone. When I last was in the US, I did some research by going to a New Hampshire gun range and shooting some guns that are popular with PCs in my games, and I found that accuracy at ranges up to 25 yards* was substantially easier with SIG Sauer pistols than Glocks, in the same caliber.
Heh. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.

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Colt 1911 in .45 was accurate enough, but like the .40 S&W weapons I tried, far too slow on follow-up shots. If I had been able to use a proper modern technique two-handed grip, it might have been different, but with one hand disabled, I got by far the best results with a sidearm chambered in 9x19mm.

Granted, I'm assuming that the Monster Hunters will be substantially better trained than I am, as I'd only shot .22s, air guns and shotguns before this. Plenty of people claim to be able to shoot .40 S&W and .45 ACP fast and accurately with enough training and while the Monster Hunters can't actually spend all their time training like CAG/Delta, many of them will arrive already with such training and I'm hoping maintaining that level of proficiency will be possible.
For what it's worth, I don't notice any difference in speed and accuracy between 9mm and .40 S&W. Of course, this might be because I myself have a rather burly frame and the recoil doesn't mean as much to me with my extra mass as it would to some slender waif.

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Old 01-13-2019, 01:56 PM   #135
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Default Re: Sidearms for Monster Hunters (actually, also their security)

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Heh. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one.

For what it's worth, I don't notice any difference in speed and accuracy between 9mm and .40 S&W. Of course, this might be because I myself have a rather burly frame and the recoil doesn't mean as much to me with my extra mass as it would to some slender waif.

Luke
Well, this slender waif weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 lbs. It's not that the recoil was too much to handle, in some abstract sense. It was that in the time it took to come back into battery for an accurate follow-up shot was 0.5 second vs. 0.3 seconds.
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Old 01-13-2019, 02:12 PM   #136
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Default Re: 'Home-made' Grenades and Other Ordnance

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
'Proper' grenade fuses are likely to be a problem. Industrial high explosives range from quite low powered (ANFO - it's cheap and fairly safe) to as good as that used as filler in grenades (PETN, etc.). The good stuff it likely to be doped to make it easy to tell who made it, and thus make it easier to work out who supplied it to the people who used it, etc.

Casings, notched wire fragmentation coils, & etc. will be easy to make. They are not a problem. Note that if fragmentation is where you expected to get most of your wounding from, even a fairly weak explosive like ANFO or black powder will do.
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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
In most industrial applications, if you want a bigger boom you add more explosive. Yes, that seems obvious, but the lack of ability to do that (e.g. because it has to fit inside a warhead, or be carried by a complaining squaddie) is what drives military explosives to greater REF, which is basically just energy density.

I believe RDX shaped charges are commonly available for shattering recalcitrant rocks.

As I understand it, you need a permit for commercial explosives even in the USA, but it shouldn't be too hard to arrange if there are appropriate industries in the portfolio.

Why don't we see terrorists doing this stuff? Because making explosive devices that are two-way reliable (don't go off until you press the button, do go off when you do) is quite hard to get right. And again, if they can get a guy to the target wearing a dynamite vest, they don't need a smaller package to carry the same boom.
Kessler has a controlling interest in quite a lot of mining companies. In the 60s and until the 80s, he was involved in a lot of mining in post-colonial areas. If there are civilian firms using RDX for blasting, Kessler likely owns, for perfectly legitimate reasons, more than one of them.

Of course, the point that such explosives have tags and other methods to monitor if it turns up in the hands of terrorists and criminals is well taken. Of course, having a shipment disappear, allegedly into the hands of some revolutionary faction would not be too difficult, given that some of these companies are genuinely operating in areas with widespread violence and even civil wars.*

Basically, the cover story they'd need is simply taking a real tragedy and changing a single line item on the report about it, i.e. the location of a store of explosives when an attack was made.

The fuzes might be a bigger problem. I don't know how easy grenade and mine fuzes are to make if you can't buy obviously military things, but do have access to everything that construction, mining or petrochemical firms might need.

It's been established that there is a highly skilled armorer on the Penemue, a former SAS man who became a gunsmith when he retired. Of course, his specialty is custom small arms and making small lots of custom match ammunition, not heavy weapons or explosives, but he's a gifted machinist and he did receive some explosive training in the regiment.

Then there are two former combat engineers, one Navy SEAL and one French Foreign Legion. There's a fair chance that one of the as-yet-undetailed hunters might have a combat engineering or demolitions background, as well.

I suppose I could roll dice on whether Kessler managed to recruit a highly skilled engineer skilled in demolitions, perhaps someone from his mining companies. What background would one need to be able to make professional quality fuzes?

*Granted, at the time an insecure situation turns to civil war, they'd want to evacuate, but in the already established background, that hasn't always worked and employees of one of Kessler's mining concerns have been kidnapped and killed.
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Old 01-13-2019, 03:22 PM   #137
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

It depends what kind of fuse, really. Your basic timed fuse for mining and demolition purposes will be dead-easy to get for a mining company, and plenty of people will know how to get them. They need not be super safe when set in the explosives, because that's only done as the final part of readying the charges.

Fuses for grenades are a different matter - they're set to a much shorter time (a few seconds rather than tens of seconds or even minutes), and need to be compact, easy to arm and actuate (ideally as part of the act of throwing them), yet safe and difficult to arm accidentally.

If you're willing to have grenades that have to have their fuses lit, fireworks style, you'd just need an old-style fuse that's fast-burning and cut to the right length. I'm not sure if fuse of that sort of speed (inches per second, rather than either effective instant or many seconds per inch) is common these days. If it's not, then it'd have to be made. I'd say that this would be Explosives (Fireworks).
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Old 01-13-2019, 04:50 PM   #138
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
It depends what kind of fuse, really. Your basic timed fuse for mining and demolition purposes will be dead-easy to get for a mining company, and plenty of people will know how to get them. They need not be super safe when set in the explosives, because that's only done as the final part of readying the charges.

Fuses for grenades are a different matter - they're set to a much shorter time (a few seconds rather than tens of seconds or even minutes), and need to be compact, easy to arm and actuate (ideally as part of the act of throwing them), yet safe and difficult to arm accidentally.
They'd want both high-quality grenade fuzes and fuzes to make the equivalent of Claymore anti-personnel mines.

A billionaire has had thirty years to consider the problem of how to acquire military style ordnance, for those exceptional cases when Monster Hunting cannot be done without going in really heavy.

Well, actually, considering that before he set up the Monster Hunters, he had already spent thirty years employing mercenaries for illegal things in Africa and elsewhere, I expect that he had acquired the odd mortar, case of grenades and other ordnance before, through the black and grey market.

Granted, maybe he just kept acquiring things from his network of contacts. I'm just trying to determine how technically difficult it is to make an unlicensed copy of common grenades, mines or other ordnance.

What kind of people would have the skills to make unlicensed copies of military grenade or mine fuzes? Assuming that they had a few years to go from whatever their civilian profession was to applying the same principles to running an illegal bomb factory, I guess.

What kind of equipment do you need to manufacture fuzes? And is any of it so controlled that it cannot be legally bought through mining companies, construction companies or anything other than huge defense contractors?

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
If you're willing to have grenades that have to have their fuses lit, fireworks style, you'd just need an old-style fuse that's fast-burning and cut to the right length. I'm not sure if fuse of that sort of speed (inches per second, rather than either effective instant or many seconds per inch) is common these days. If it's not, then it'd have to be made. I'd say that this would be Explosives (Fireworks).
If proper fuzes cannot be made outside of the Top Secret laboratories of defence contractors like Lockheed-Martin or Northrop-Grumman, then they'd have to acquire ordnance on the black market. Firework style fuzes are not an option.
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Old 01-13-2019, 06:06 PM   #139
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

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p
If proper fuzes cannot be made outside of the Top Secret laboratories of defence contractors like Lockheed-Martin or Northrop-Grumman, then they'd have to acquire ordnance on the black market. Firework style fuzes are not an option.
Good as original fuzes for hand grenades should be makeable with simple tools and modest chemistry.

Pull the pin and release the spoon and a spring causes a lever to strike a percussion cap. That ignites a 4-5 second pyrotechnic fuze. That sets off an equivalent to a commercial blasting cap and the filler goes "Boom".

The German system used in WWI and II used a pull-string connected to a friction igniter that lit a pyrotechnic trail.

When working on grenade myths the Mythbusters tended to use decommissioned grenade bodies re-filled with C4.
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Old 01-13-2019, 06:17 PM   #140
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

One system used a spiral groove with a cover. Hole in the top lights one end of the fuse in the spiral light, hole in the other side ignites the blasting cap.

Claymores should be easier, you don't have to have a delay, hit the remote or someone hits the tripwire and boom.

Really small pistol, NAA Sidewinder https://gastatic.com/digest/wp-conte...12/Photo-J.jpg

Last edited by dcarson; 01-14-2019 at 12:06 AM.
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