Haha! I’m dying! That’s hilarious! Of course it could’ve gone very bad, but everyone’s guardian angels said not today.
One day in the army, some officer thought it would be a good idea to demonstrate the power of an anti tank mine. We got the whole company out in jeeps, some MLs and on the way out to the field we hit a buck. We threw the buck in the back of an ML (medium lift) truck and kept going. When we got to our destination we took 2 mine’s and stacked them. Then we took a problem Jeep (maintainers had enough) and we parked it over top. We took the buck and sat him in the driver’s seat with his front hooves through the steering wheel. We all went back about 300 yards and then the OC told the engineer to light it up. That thing vaporized, but before we could stare in amazement and wonder where it all went, we were flattened by the blast. Thankfully the guy in the second rank behind me softened the fall. We all pick ourselves up and the OC was a bit stunned, he then asks what did we learn today? Someone piped up and yelled loudly “too damn close Sir!” We all had a good laugh. Even the engine block was vaporized. We never found any parts. To this day I cringe thinking of how much flying metal and deer and his antlers that all l missed us and how lucky we were.
I guess what I’m trying to say is yes, I feel your pain of that day lol.
I had a son-in-law who played with explosives that claims when he first heard of the OK City bombing he tried it out and mixed up a 5 gallon pale of the stuff, set it out in a field and rigged a delayed gun powder detonator to it and got the hell out of Dodge to watch from a distance.
I do not recall his story’s size of the hole, but it was several feet deep and several feet in diameter with dirt and rocks zooming into the sky a hundred feet or better.
The point is, once I realized how powerful this stuff is, I knew for sure my guardian angel was watching over us on that sewage lagoon job. My recollection is the cop mixed about two cups of the stuff, which would have dismembered all of us.
I’ve never played with explosives simply due to the danger of accidents and not knowing what I’m doing. We don’t even light fire crackers.