This is getting stupid

A few days ago I posted that my wife is starting to get nervous with all of the LC M193 I've been buying lately. Well, the topic must have come up with her damned mother somehow because now she's convinced that it's a fire hazard. She is also convinced that if there is ever a fire in the house the ammo will explode and kill us all...

...You get the drill-she's freaking hysterical-and I wish I was kidding...

I tried to explain to her that when ammo "cooks off" it doesn't "shoot" like it does when shot from a gun.

Please, please, please point me to some sort of resource that I can print out and give her. I need to show her what happens when ammunition catches fire.

For the love of god this ammo is stored in sealed metal ammo cans and kept in a locked steel cabinet.

As stupid as this sounds she is dead serious and I'm out of ideas.

She's right, you are all going to die.

TRG

The following are ALL pictures of houses that had ammo stored in them and EXPLODED during a fire.

[img]http://www.startribune.com/stonline/images/news95/1house24.l.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.msfa.org/hotshots/images/090202/snowhill3.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.fortleefire.org/explosion.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.abilenetx.com/firedept/14a.jpg[/img]

You're all going to die in the explosion, man.

TRG

Make SURE you show your wife this thread, ok?

TRG

[LOLabove]

Wish I could help you, but a qiock internet search didn't show anything conclusive.

What the heck did she *think* will happen when ammo gets hot ? Would she feel better if it was only 100 rounds instead of 5000 ? Bullets WILL be flying through the air. On the other hand, if it's so hot that ammo cooks off, you wouldn't be standing close enough anyway.

Wrong When ammunition cooks off outside of a chamber, the brass is what may become airborne, and generally, lacks sufficient velocity to do any real damage.  This is of course standard physics, the brass is lighter than the bullet, so it is what moves, and without the constraint of a chamber to keep the pressures up, a fair amount of the pressure will be expended by expanding and rupturing the case. You should look at casings from housefire cookoffs.

As for explosions, it shoudl not, however if ammunition is stored in airtight steel canisters, then that canister may actually cause th eexplosion, otherwise ammo just burns off nicely making popping noises, and you sit there wishing you had stored it better [:D]

Simply put the cases will rupture as the cartridge will burst rather than fire the bullet in any direction.  The brass will give way at the hot spot, split and the force of explosion will be minimized as smokeless powder requires pressure to explode.  Pour some smokeless out of a cartridge and light it with a match, it will flare and burn rather than explode.  Black powder on the other hand does not require pressure to explode and it would be very dangerous to store in any quantity.

build a burn pit in your back yard. Get a good fire going and toss in a few rounds of ammo. Show her what will happen. you will get a loud pop and see the brass jump.

When i was a paramedic i went in several house fires that had ammo stored. occasionally i'd hear a pop and feel a case bounce off my turnout gear. No big deal.

Having said that tightly pack ammo in sealed cans " could be a problem if conditions were right.

mike

Great...

...I think tomorrow I'll break out the kinetic bullet puller, take apart a round, and light it on fire for her to see.

This would almost be funny if she wasn't freaking out about it.

[B]I HATE MY WORTHLESS MOTHER IN LAW.[/B]

She is a knee-jerk, reactionary, shit-stirring moron with too much friggin time on her hands. She never has anything nice to say, second guesses everything, and has an opinion on every possible subject. I always shudder whenever my wife goes to see her, because without fail she returns completely wound up about something.

I hate her [X]

TRG is right.  I speak from personal experience.  I one time left a box of Wolf ammo (not the new style, but the older stuff that contained gunpowder) next to a George Foreman grill and the explosion leveled my house!  Fortunately, I had stepped out to buy another case of Colt 45's.  A neighbor snapped this picture a few seconds after it blew up:

[img]http://www.ShipItToU.com/images/special/Kaboom01.jpg[/img]

Unless the metal cabinet takes a direct napalm strike, she has nothing to worry about.  I don't know how you could make her understand this.  

I never found that George Foreman grill.  [:(]

OK, I've made more than my share of smart ass posts lately.  Here's something that might be helpful.  National Fire Code permits up to 20 lbs. of gunpowder and up to 500 lbs. of ammunition in a residence without a special storage locker.

Here's an example of a municipal code that's based on the national code:
[url]http://www.codesite.com/LAMC/FPP/fpp@PDF/C5a7d055.pdf[/url]

Uhh, I have well over 20 pounds of powder in the house. I reload for a bunch of shooting buddies and we pool our resources and buy enough components for three months at a time.

What the heck do I do now?

Edit: She should be more freaked out about the powder than the stinkin' ammo. Not to mention the three 20# propane cylinders I have in the workroom.

Federal Cartridge did a video on this back in the late 70's or early 80's.

They loaded a car with about 25,000 rounds and set it on fire. (IIRC)

No sweat!  Just build yourself some pine cubby holes for up to 100 lbs. of powder.  You can have 5,000 lbs. if you store it properly and your local code doesn't forbid it.

This is what I was looking for when I found the link for the previous post:

Thanks for the info. I keep it stored in the bottom of [url=http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=4410]this steel locker.[/url]

Does that count?

I am a fireman. I have been for over 8 years now. In that time I have been to numerous structure fires and I have never been too worried about ammo. The only real concern I would have is if a loaded gun had a round chambered, was stored in a manner exposing me to the line of fire and if the heat somehow managed to set off the round. Otherwise your LC ammo is basically a firecracker. I have seen one instance when a 30-30 casing was propelled at enough speed to bust through a single pane window. And even that was not anything to get really worked up over.

But here's what I would tell my wife if she ever complained to me that the ammo was dangerous....."Well honey, I guess you would not want to know what all of those cleaning chemicals you have could do!". As a fireman I am far more concerned with chemicals mixing somehow during the chaos, unknown cans of gas igniting/exploding, downed power lines, toxic vapors, etc. I usually don't give ammo cooking off a second thought. Oh, and as another poster mentioned, if your wife is close enough to be in danger when it gets hot enough to cook-off ammo, chances are good she will have been exposed to heat 1300 degrees F for a number of minutes! She isn't likely gonna care about the ammo at this point! If you leave the home and stay away from it at a distance far enough to be safe from the fire, the ammo isn't gonna hurt you. And the ammo is not going to cook-off as soon as the heat reaches it. It will take several minutes usually of being exposed to the most intense heat before it starts to blow. This should give her a great deal of comfort.

Again, I am a fireman. If it would comfort her knowing a fireman has lots and lots of ammo in his home, I might be able to send you some pictures! LOL. It seems the last time I took inventory that I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 42,000 total rounds here (counting all calibers). I am more concerned about having all that lead inside my home than I am about any threat it poses during a fire.

-Charging Handle

We got the same Mother-In-Law?!?!

Well this is what I found so far:

The first link is to a news story that has a fireman stating that ammo does not pose much of a risk in fires, but other than that doesn't really give any details.
[url]http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20030913/localnews/252401.html[/url]

Scroll down a little on this next link and it gives a short answer about ammo and fires.
[url]http://cartridgecollectors.org/faq.htm[/url]

The preceeding link, has this link:
[url]http://www.saami.org/ship.html[/url]

When the video title listed in the preceeding link is put into a search engine, I found this:
[url]http://www.saami.org/docs/SAAMI_lit.pdf[/url]

The fireman video and other publications can be found here:
[url]http://www.saami.org/[/url]

You may want to do some poking around on the last link, it may have more pertinent info somewhere on the site, I didn't look to much farther than the front page.

Here is another discussion about ammo and fires here, may be of use:
[url]http://www.machinegunbooks.com/cgibin/ikonboard/topic.cgi?forum=1&topic=2314[/url]

Your library may have old issues of the American Rifleman, look for this article:
"Ammunition and Fire" by Gary D. Sciuchetti, Mar-1996, American Rifleman

I found the following excerpt from some discussion forum:

There is an article on ammunition and fire written by Gary
Sciuchetti (a volunteer firefighter) in the March 1996 issue of
American Rifleman.  

Sciuchetti's test was done inside a 4 foot drywall box, with a
propane torch positioned underneath the platform holding the
ammunition, and a worn-out firefighter's coat covering a bag of
nonhardening modeling clay used as a target.  The ammunition
included some of the magnum rifle and pistol cartridges, aluminum
case cartridges and plastic-hulled shotgun shells that are common
today but not in Hatcher's time.  

Only two projectiles penetrated the outer fabric of the firefighter's
coat.  Both were primers from military cartridges with crimped
primers. Both primers were stopped in the coat's lining and both
produced dents in the modeling clay, equivalent to a bruise in flesh.  

Sciuchetti's conclusion concerning the dangers of ammunition
exploding in fires is the same as Maj. Gen. Julian S. Hatcher's: "It is
not the hazard it is often thought to be."

Well that is about it, as far as what I can find with relatively simple internet searches, hope this helps.

Remind me to tell you about the time I knocked over a box of baking soda while cleaning the coffee maker with vinegar.  [:\]

[img]http://www.ShipItToU.com/images/Special/Kaboom02.jpg[/img]

Here's what you need:


[url]http://www.saami.org/publications.html#primers[/url]

Thanks for the info Charging_handle and Jason. That should help a [b]lot[/b] [:)]

Edit: bigdb1-thank you as well.

Blammo,

That house at the top left portion of that picture looks like a good example of F4 level tornado damage if it was a well constructed home. There were definately some winds approaching, if not exceeding 200 mph there. Glad I wasn't in that home at the time! Yikes.

-Charging Handle

Well, I'd say that's a really good call if I didn't know for a fact that the damage was caused by my baking soda & vinegar mishap.  Trees were snapped like twigs for miles.  It's a good thing I had that umbrella insurance policy.

You can't let her watch tv anymore now. Every time you see ammo go into a fire bullets start flying everywhere and it looks like the 4th of July. Your doomed.

You think THAT was something?

I tried mixing peanut butter and chocolate and the explosion leveled three blocks.  The lawsuit against Reese's is still pending.  I think the judge is gonna rule in my favor.  

We showed these pics at the trial.  They are real, the judge thought they were cool, too.  That is why I will win.

[img]http://www.stampede-entertainment.com/postcards/tremors3/explosion-l.jpg[/img]

I also put an Alka-Seltzer into a Jolt Cola can and it killed three cats. We showed these pictures to the judge and he said we would win that too.

I am going to be rich now.  And I got to kill some cats, too.

[img]http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/photofile-c/jolt-explosion-1.jpg[/img]

TRG

I sneezed and farted simultaneously once.  


Killed the dog and blew out windows in a two mile radius.

CJan:

If the fire is hot enough to cook off ammo in the cans inside that steel cabinet, I would hope that you and yours have long since escaped the house.  And with the fire at that point, you have MUCH more to worry about then the ammo cooking off.

Noah

Without pics, you are a liar.

TRG

[;)]

Good God man!  I should've read your original post more closely.  That LC M193 is the most dangerous kind -- it's hypersensitive military ammunition.  Only the military should be allowed to have that stuff!  I quit using it because of this incident at [b]Matthew_Q[/b]'s Central Texas shoot last year:  [url=http://www.ShipItToU.com/Files/Kaboom03.mpg]Short video[/url].

A follow-up investigation (super-high magnification of the video like they do on spy TV shows) revealed that a butterfly had landed on a live round that was left on the range.

Call the bomb squad [b]now[/b] and have them decontaminate your house!  Or call me, I'll do it.

[Linky fixed]

It could happen.

After all, the probability of dynamiting a stack of logs and winding up with a shack is not zero. [:P]

CJan_NH, maybe you're enjoying the smart-ass replies, but if you want some real info on this matter, you can find it covered in some depth in chapter 21 of Gen. Julian S. Hatcher's excellent [i]Hatcher's Notebook.[/i]

I'll only quote a tiny bit of the relevant section, from pages 532-533 of the 1966 edition:

"... a large number of metallic cartridges and shotgun shells were burned in a fire of oil-soaked wood.  The cartridges and shells exploded from time to time, but there was no general explosion or propulsion of shot or bullets with any great force or to any great distance.  Throughout the test, the men conducting it remained within 20 feet without injury.  This test showed that small arms cartridges, whether they are metallic cartridges or shotgun shells, when involved in a fire, will not explode simultaneously but rather piece by piece; that the bullets or the shot are not projected with any great velocity; and that the material of which the cartridges or shells are made will usually not fly more than a few feet."

Hatcher also did his own tests, setting off a variety of ammo from 12-gauge shotgun shells to 30-06 cartridges, either electrically or by the application of heat, and found that the fragments that flew off would not penetrate a cardboard box he'd placed over the apparatus.

You can rest easy.  The fire may kill you, but the ammo cooking off won't.

Rosstradamus, thank you for your reply. The situation fortunately has been pretty much taken care of. I printed a bunch of info and highlighted the salient points for my wife to see.

Sometimes I wish my mother-in-law would keep her damned mouth shut.

Recently I refurbed the rest of my ammo cans and my wife helped me with the prep and painting. This was her version of a mea culpa for freaking out over this issue.

Like I said earlier in the thread, my rifle ammo is kept in sealed ammo cans and stored in a locked steel cabinet. It doesn't get much safer than that unless I spend $1000 for a fireproof locker.

You're quite welcome.



Glad to hear it.



Personally, I don't think everyone is entitled to an opinion.  I think everyone is entitled to an [i]informed[/i] opinion.



Quite so.

By the way, I highly recommend [i]Hatcher's Notebook[/i] to any serious student of small arms.  It not only covers the subject just addressed but a host of other topics that come up here from time to time:

Chapter 7, Experiments with Barrel Obstructions
Chapter 10, Headspace
Chapter 12, The Theory of Recoil
Chapter 14, Velocity vs. Barrel Length
Chapter 20, Bullets From the Sky
Chapter 22, How Far Will My Gun Shoot?

If you only read one gun book, [i]Hatcher's Notebook[/i] would be hard to beat.

To reiterate what charging handle said……… As an emergency responder for the company I work for, and a Volunteer fire fighter… I would be a little more concerned with your propane tanks and all the cleaners and aerosol cans of whatever you might have in your house!


And yes I have a lot of ammo in my house!

Don't worry about the mother-in-law, in just a few short years your wife will be walking in her foot steps. Been there, almost done that. I miss her.

Let her read some of the warning labels on the stuff that is under the sink. Sometimes that can be even more dangerous.........