Explosives are a rather young industry. Despite the stereotype of it being primarily used for military purposes, it has come to be applied in a variety of fields. It stand to reason that explosives have given belligerent parties a strategic advantage on the battlefield, yet their application is well documented in areas other than the military industrial complex. It is quite difficult to envision the peaceful demolition of decrepit structures that are up for destruction due to the degrading state of the framework. The extractive industry is dependent on explosives inasmuch as mineworkers need their way cleared or portions of rock splintered. Nor can the military complex dispense with explosives, as became obvious after bombing of Japan in 1945. Even extremists abiding by a highly radical ideology have gone as far as to detonate explosives in civil buildings to do serious damage and send a political message. The point is that explosives evolved significantly over the past century being applied increasingly in civil and military industry and the acts of terror.
The Civil Use of Explosives and Major Historical Landmarks
One of the major directions of explosive use is the civil, non-military field. According to Federation of European Explosives (2012), a number of European producers made the attempt of replacing dynamite with ammonal explosive in the early 20th century. The staple element of the latter is ammonium nitrate combined with trinitrotoluene in lieu of nitroglycerine as a result of synthesis. Dynamites had not lost the status of the single most efficient explosives until after the discovery of the aforementioned ammonium nitrates fuel oil and water gels in the 1950s and 1960s respectively. The ammonium nitrates fuel oil, otherwise known as “Anfo” became an important market product in 1955 becoming the first explosives sold commercially to claim a large segment of the dynamite market.
The disaster at Oppau as far back as 1921 was the thing that allowed identifying the fact that ammonium nitrate could explode due to its contamination with paraffin and paper. The first company to put the observation to use was the American company Dupont Nemours. To this end, the used the combination of wood meal, BNT, and coal as inert solid combustibles. Following the WW2, the industry succeeded in combining liquid combustibles with ammonium nitrate eventually addressing two major issues, such as the improvement of the retention of liquid oil and the prise en masse by the ammonium nitrate in hopes of achieving a better mix. Being low in strength, density, the pressure and velocity of detonation, Anfo was safe to deal with and cost-effective. The application of Anfo is restricted to dry holes since its major flaw is water-permeability. Over the years, the producers of explosives have done their utmost to provide clients with more powerful, albeit safer products. Emulsions are far from being the last landmark in explosives evolution, as they are still falling behind dynamites from a hundred years ago. Even following four decades of development, dynamite is still the best explosive being difficult to do without when it comes to small boreholes or situations, whereby plenty of strength is needed (Federation of European Explosives, 2012).
The Demolition Potential of Explosives
Demolition Services Inc. (2012) stated that explosive demolition was a practice with young historical origins stemming from around the 1930s. Industry history (2002) suggested that the 1900s was a turning point in the application of explosive for building demolition. Around the time, the first-ever skyscrapers were being erected in major American cities, which means there would have to be removed at some point in the future. When San Francisco was experiencing the effects of one of the most notorious and destructive earthquakes on April 18, 1906, the authorities had to resort to dynamiting in order to have flames conquered by firefighters. In order for firefighters, military troops, and miners to choke the flames off and check its proliferation, they had to blast separate city blocks. Large western sections of the town were saved in the process although thousands of other buildings were razed to the ground or devastated by the fire. Besides the fire-abatement approach, demolition specialists were considering explosives as a tool of bringing down structures like walls within their own perimeter.
Experts could achieve their aim in two different ways, such as the preliminary weakening of columns and walls and detonating them inward or blowing up one wall at a time. To quote an example, an explosive was used by destroying Delaware, the Ohioan city hall devastated by the fire beyond repair. Demolition experts conducted the explosion in one of the busiest city sections, without harming a single observer. Industry veterans considered such projects the first building implosions in the USA. These were early attempts owing the pros of using the explosive technology in emergency response operations. Such external forces as tornadoes, fire, collisions, earthquakes, the acts of terror, sinkholes, and low quality construction all necessitated the application of explosives. In the course of the 1910s and 1920s, at a time when experimental explosives were in a budding state, traditional dynamite was acquiring the reputation of an essential instrument for the demolition of large-scale industrial structures, such as railroad bridges, smokestacks, and mine head frames. The 1930s is considered by many the golden age of exploration in the history of explosives (Industry history, 2002).
The Industrial Use of Explosives
More than that, the technology made it possible to increase the depth and width of harbors, to expand roads and railroads into the wilds, and erect dams to provide electricity which facilitated the national development in the 20th century. Dynamites became the sinews of all American industries in the 20th century, including gas and oil exploration, mineral mining, power production, and the construction of highways, pipelines, and tunnels. No engineering instrument appears to have excelled the accomplishment of dynamite in terms of efficiency in the years between the Civil War and the end of the WW2. Dynamite was not the only workhorse of the industrial progress harnessed over the past century, with more effective and less hazardous emulsions and water gels applied additionally. Over the past century, mineral harvesting, electrical energy, and roadway construction have become the areas, in which explosives are used most (Institute of Makers of Explosives, 2014).
The Application of Explosive Substances in the Military Field
Unfortunately, atoms are not always applied for peace, as appealed for in Dwight Eisenhower’s address in 1953 when the possibility of the application of the destructive potential of atom harnessed by the production of nuclear weaponry was strong. Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology (n.d.) noted that scholars started considering nuclear fission and atom splitting in the 1930s after discovering the potential of uranium in the preceding century. Albert Einstein became the one to encourage the USA and the UK to produce an atomic bomb, for he was growing concerned with the diabolic plans of Adolf Hitler. The recognition of the danger came several years thereafter when Roosevelt perceived the growing ambitions of Nazi Germany.
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer and American General Leslie Groves were in charge of conducting the bomb project in 1941. The project involved the classified synchronization of scientists throughout the entire country and the workforce of thousands of workers to fulfill the project by keeping a low profile. As of 1942, scholars has a ready list of fission bombs up for testing. The principal experimental factors were the reactions of various uranium isotopes. After the initial tests had proved successful, a gun-type uranium bomb was used in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 to reason the Japanese imperial forces into eventual surrender. Simultaneously, implosion-based bomb and the plutonium appeared more efficient after getting a test run at Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 (Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology, n.d.). Such was the area of application of the nuclear bomb claiming human lives in attempts to bring the worst military conflict to date to its end.
The Use of Explosives in the Acts of Terror in the 20th Century
Apart from the military field, explosives found their destructive application in the acts of terror committed in the 20th century. According to Joseph (2014), costing 2 million in damages, the Wall Street Bombing was an attack perpetrated by terrorists in the financial district of New York on September 16, 1920 that produced the death toll of 38 individuals as well as leaving upwards of 400 people injured. What inflicted such serious damage was a horse-drawn wagon rigged with 230 kilos of slugs and 45 kilos of dynamite, which proved enough to kill clerks, brokers, stenographs, and messengers on the spot and destroy the interior part of the JP Morgan building in one fell swoop.
The St. Nedelya Church Assault was a 1925 attack, by which a group of Bulgarian Communist Party members detonated a St. Nedelya Church dome wounding 500 individuals and killing as many as 150 people, of whom the prevailing part were leading military and government functionaries. A number of isolated attacks were implemented via 25 kilos of explosives previously installed in a package above a column of the major dome. The US Embassy Bombings was a series of terrorist attacks on the embassies of the USA in Nairobi on August 7, 1998, the year that symbolically marked the 8th anniversary of American forces arrival to Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda was reported responsible for the detonation of bombs previously laden in trucks carrying from three to seventeen tons of high explosive substances. Perhaps, the most notorious of all acts of terror involving explosives, the Oklahoma City Bombing had place on April 19, 1995 in the Alfred Murrah Federal Building whose debris buried 168 people alive perishing either from the blast or under the pile of ruins hours after the detonation (Joseph, 2014).
Conclusions
Explosives have a versatile potential being applied in various fields, whether civil or military. Dynamite is one of the most effective initial products of the explosive industry. This is not to say that its strength and efficiency kept developers from seeking new ways to develop the products of the industry. European producers made the attempt of replacing dynamite with ammonal explosive in the early 20th century. Ammonium nitrates fuel oil and water gels developed in the 1950s and 1960s offered a viable competition. One of the most widely known ways of utilizing the destructive potential of explosives is the demolition of old buildings or the ones consumed by fire. Not to give flames a fighting chance, firefighters applied dynamites to blast living quarters to curb the proliferation of fire in the wake of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.
In the 20th century, demolition experts learnt to take advantage of a number of demolition techniques like the preliminary weakening of columns and walls and detonating them inward or blowing up one wall at a time. Tornadoes, fire, collisions, earthquakes, the acts of terror, sinkholes, and low quality construction are the external forces that rationalized the application of explosives in building demolition. The explosive technology enabled the USA to extract cement, limestone, and concrete that went on to replace cobblestones and bricks. The erection of electricity providing dams, the expansion of the networks of roads and railroads, and the increase in the width and depth of harbors all became possible in the past century through the employment of explosives. Beyond that, explosives found their application in the military field, with atomic bombs developed during the WW2 and the years preceding the conflict. Hiroshima and Nagasaki became field tests in 1945 when the USA dropped bombs on the Japanese cities to make the Japanese Empire accept the terms of surrender. There was more to the lethal use of explosives in the 20th century than that. The Wall Street Bombing in 1920, the St. Nedelya Church assault in 1925, the US Embassy Bombings in 1998, and the Oklahoman City Bombing in 1995 are only a handful of examples showing the dark side of explosions that inflicted serious property damage and claimed thousands of human lives. Overall, explosives have critically evolved over the past century used in military and industrial fields and the acts of terror.
References
Demolition Services Inc. (2012). Boom: A brief history of explosive demolition. Retrieved from: http://www.demoservicesinc.com/boom-a-brief-history-of-explosive-demolition/
Federation of European Explosives. (2012). History and future. FEEM.info. Retrieved from: http://feem.info/?page_id=316
Industry history. (2002). The birth of explosive demolition. Explosion World. Retrieved from: http://www.implosionworld.com/history2.htm
Joseph. (2014, February 17). 25 worst acts of terrorism ever committed. List 25. Retrieved from: http://list25.com/25-worst-acts-terrorism-committed/
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology. (n.d.). The bomb: World War 2 and the Manhattan project. Proteus.Brown.edu. Retrieved from: http://proteus.brown.edu/13things/7690
