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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8096504" data-attributes="member: 16814">Honestly, as far as the barrel being shrapnel goes, the radius at which the overpressure wave will kill/maim you is about the same as the lethal wooden splinter range.  Turns out that wood makes pretty poor shrapnel, and the many stories of wood exploding from cannon shot in ship combats was very unlikely to actually happen.  Now, if you do the metal bits, yeah, you're in business.But, the Gunpowder plot was bad because the perps actually knew their stuff, had good gunpowder, well packed barrels, and planned to place them in a stone walled undercroft where the main hall had a wood floor and wood roof.  The blast, had it been well timed, would have been channeled by the undercroft, magnifying the upwards blast as the entire explosion could only vent upwards.  This would have definitely killed everyone in the building as the floor violently disintegrated upwards, and taken the roof off and, most likely severely damaged the walls as the overpressure wave cleared the undercroft and found purchase in pushing the walls outward.  It was an extremely effective plan -- overkill even, if you'll pardon the bad pun.  Still, the amount of gunpoweder was very large and cumbersome and the effect was really created by a clever method of fusing and using the undercroft to created a rudimentary shaped charge.  They got caught because of the level of effort to do this -- it would have been a hard plot to actually pull off, and they failed at it.</blockquote>

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