Can you make an explosion from the scene described?

[kilopi505]

Because I really want to type out the aftermath of the possible kind of explosion that would result from the scene I made below:

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The mansion did not fall to the ground. It is sucked into a…a flying ball of material as big as a basketball in size and as smooth as a billiard ball.

“…we could have been killed by that.” I hear the pigtailed girl comment from somewhere to my left.”

‘Agreed’ ‘Annie’ thoughts to me.

And then suddenly the ball of former mansion…pulsed with the sound effect of an electronic beep.

“What now?” Connla says, in a cautious tone.

The ball continues pulsing with beeps.

“Is it just me or is that sound…familiar?” Thuc asks.

…now that I think about it, he IS right. It seems familiar…

“It’s like the beeping of a time bomb in the movies.” The fleshed out girl says from one meter in front of me.

A second of silence passes.

“Oh Shit!” I yell, at the same time slinging ‘Annie’ on my right shoulder and then taking hold of the girl’s left hand, pulling her along with me to safety.

In that same instant I glimpse Yung Ho carrying the older sister over his shoulder again. The only difference is this time the older sister is hugging Yung Ho’s rucksack.

“Take Cover!” Annan yells from somewhere to the right and behind me.

A few seconds later all of us are about 2-3 steps into the woods that surround the Shinozaki estate when the ball emitted a continuous beep.

“Down!” Me and two other voices yell.

At the same moment I yank the girl towards the forest ground, and then throw myself on top of her.

Better me than her, if something happens.

A second later, something like an explosion happens.

I hear lots of objects snapping, and flying and falling.

And something grazes my shoulder, followed by a stinging sensation.
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So...just humor me guys, ok?

Can one make an explosion from a lot of rotting wood, some iron and porcelain and whatever gas is inside a mansion with lots of dead rats, which got magically compressed to a ball of material the size of a basketball?

If some figures are needed...well...the mansion is perfectly square, and is two stories high with a basement...so I think from basement to roof about 1530 cm in height...assume that is also the length.

...thoughts?

[Simon_Jester]

I don't know how much the mansion weighs, but something like a single-story 12x60 mobile home would weigh about 6-7 tons. The mansion is about three times as high and presumably several times wider and probably longer too. It most likely weighs hundreds of tons. Just compressing hundreds of tons of stuff into a basketball-sized volume is going to be unstable, requiring truly unreasonable amounts of pressure and force.

So it doesn't have to go boom chemically. All you have to do is remove whatever is holding it in such a tiny volume, and decompressed bits of it will blow all over the place.

[Starglider]

Volume of a basketball is about 7.5 liters, so density is 13.3e6 kg/m3 for a 100 tonne mansion. That is about 100 times denser than the core of the sun, although about 100 times less than electron-degenerate matter. Pressure to keep that confined will be on the order of twenty trillion bar. Removing confinement would release energy on the scale of a thermonuclear weapon, I'd guess in the 100kt to 1MT range. Protagonists should be momentarily stunned and blinded, then pleasantly surprised to discover that they are immigrants from Krypton, because nothing else is going to survive the blast.

[Simon_Jester]

Translation: you can get as big a bang as you like; I suggest using a bigger ball.

[Korto]

So, I would imagine the ball would have started fusion reactions? Which are also being contained, for quite a lengthy time.
Assuming you make the ball bigger, also look for the thing bursting into flame/charring/melting from the heat of compression. I'm just going off arse instinct here, but I'm thinking that will happen if it's compressed anywhere near enough to produce an explosion like you want.

[Starglider]

So, I would imagine the ball would have started fusion reactions? Which are also being contained, for quite a lengthy time.

Good point; with 100 tonnes of random matter containing a fair amount of light elements, and several seconds of confinement, fusion yield is probably into the gigatons.

Compressing solid matter (after squeezing all the air spaces out) inherently produces ridiculous pressures. Stuffing 100 tonnes into a 2m diameter sphere is still twice the mean density of earth's core, but 10 tonnes in that volume is just a sphere full of sand. For sanity I would just assume that the rubble is squashed into a large solid ball, but not significantly compressed, and that the explosion comes from a temporary reversal of whatever mysterious force caused the implosion.

[kilopi505]

I don't know how much the mansion weighs, but something like a single-story 12x60 mobile home would weigh about 6-7 tons. The mansion is about three times as high and presumably several times wider and probably longer too. It most likely weighs hundreds of tons. Just compressing hundreds of tons of stuff into a basketball-sized volume is going to be unstable, requiring truly unreasonable amounts of pressure and force.

So it doesn't have to go boom chemically. All you have to do is remove whatever is holding it in such a tiny volume, and decompressed bits of it will blow all over the place.

Hundreds of tons?

...it's only rotting wood, rusted nails, antique 50's electric wiring, porcelain from the sink and toilet, gas from dead rats and whatever air is inside.

That's hundreds of tons? I thought it would not even go past 25.

[kilopi505]

So, I would imagine the ball would have started fusion reactions? Which are also being contained, for quite a lengthy time.

Good point; with 100 tonnes of random matter containing a fair amount of light elements, and several seconds of confinement, fusion yield is probably into the gigatons.

Compressing solid matter (after squeezing all the air spaces out) inherently produces ridiculous pressures. Stuffing 100 tonnes into a 2m diameter sphere is still twice the mean density of earth's core, but 10 tonnes in that volume is just a sphere full of sand. For sanity I would just assume that the rubble is squashed into a large solid ball, but not significantly compressed, and that the explosion comes from a temporary reversal of whatever mysterious force caused the implosion.

...I only wanted something on the order of a ton or two of TNT!

*hits head on the desk. Repeatedly.*

[kilopi505]

...ok. So the suggestion is make the ball of material bigger, is that right Simon Jester? And...what else must happen for the bang to be more like a frag grenade rather than a nuke?

[Korto]

I got curious, and started trying to work out the mass of a house as described. I assumed walls using 4x2's, 600mm centres, wood 0.7 tonnes per m^3, assumed wood panelling on the walls, worked out the mass of 3 metres of wall... then said bugger this and googled it instead.
How Much Does a House Weigh
I decided to use 121 pounds per square foot of area, for a 51 x 51 foot house, and converting that to a decent measurement system gives 143 tonnes. So there's a ballpark.

I would suggest that if the air couldn't escape, it got compressed to almost nothing while the solids weren't compressed but were instead pulverised, then as soon as the imploding force was released it would probably explode quite nicely from the compressed air. It would also be calculable, when you decided what volume the air took up in its compressed state. And you could still have the thing burst into flame from the heat of compression, because I think a hail of fire in all directions might be cool. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

[kilopi505]

I would suggest that if the air couldn't escape, it got compressed to almost nothing while the solids weren't compressed but were instead pulverised, then as soon as the imploding force was released it would probably explode quite nicely from the compressed air. It would also be calculable, when you decided what volume the air took up in its compressed state. And you could still have the thing burst into flame from the heat of compression, because I think a hail of fire in all directions might be cool. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

...if the solids were pulverised, does that mean they would function as a sort of...it would mostly be from wood, so...like gunpowder? There's a lot of carbon there, along with iron and whatever makes up porcelain....so like an Fuel Air Explosive?

Or would the powder act like very miniature shell fragments? Sorta like Mass Effect projectiles in size but not effect.

[Starglider]

...if the solids were pulverised, does that mean they would function as a sort of...it would mostly be from wood, so...like gunpowder?

No.

Or would the powder act like very miniature shell fragments? Sorta like Mass Effect projectiles in size but not effect.

You are overthinking this. Just have a terrifying maelstrom of shattering and flying debris and crushing and then exploding. A swirling vortex with a glimpse of a floating car-sized ball of wreckage-then-sand-then-stone, followed by a whup and a dusty explosion that blankets the place in stinging hot fog. No reader is going to care about the exact physics of the compressed mass, when they are asking 'what crazy technology did that and where did it come from'.

[madd0ct0r]

^this^

It's actual, magic being used here, so just go the maelstrom route.

[kilopi505]

You are overthinking this. Just have a terrifying maelstrom of shattering and flying debris and crushing and then exploding. A swirling vortex with a glimpse of a floating car-sized ball of wreckage-then-sand-then-stone, followed by a whup and a dusty explosion that blankets the place in stinging hot fog. No reader is going to care about the exact physics of the compressed mass, when they are asking 'what crazy technology did that and where did it come from'.

It's not tech, like maddoctor said. It's the book that in-universe, is what the Necronomicon is based upon. A magic book made by French and German witches and sorcerers during the height of Europe's Witch Hunts, that...well to me (from watching the Corpse Party: Book of Shadows: Blood Drive) seems to like going Skynet on whoever uses it.

And yes, I'm using the word "like", as in it seems to be a thinking being, because in the video the book laughed when the two girls who are trying to use it for ressurrection purposes failed with the spell, and are going to die from that failure.

Literally laughs, complete with the drawing of a mouth and eyes on the book cover turning real, with a tongue going out of the mouth when it did so.

[Lord of the Abyss]

If you want to tone down the explosion, just have whatever force is holding the sphere together let loose relatively slowly. Or layer by layer, so you have a continuous roaring expulsion of hot material as the sphere "evaporates" rather than a huge explosion.

[kilopi505]

If you want to tone down the explosion, just have whatever force is holding the sphere together let loose relatively slowly. Or layer by layer, so you have a continuous roaring expulsion of hot material as the sphere "evaporates" rather than a huge explosion.

So...a series of fiery explosions that sound less like explosions but an automatic 16 inch cannon?

...Ok. But what would the hot material be? Is it fire or dust heated to temperatures that would give one third degree burns instantly and would scald you to death by breathing it or getting the dust on your skin?

[kilopi505]

So, Lord of the Abyss, everyone, is this description of the explosion acceptable?

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I recognized the explosion as that of a fougasse (the most violent one I had ever experienced now that I think about it), and the heat that I felt and the light that can only come from flames confirmed it.

A few seconds passed, and the fire was slowly dying out.

I was halfway getting off the girl when another fougasse-like (this is not a fougasse in the first place, hence the word 'fougasse-like') detonation happened.

I immediately dropped down, again, causing the girl to let out a gasp of air in shock and pain.

"Sorry kid." I muttered.

"It's alright." the girl said back to me.

After a few more seconds passed, another explosion happens, and this time I had the novelty of being pelted by heated powder coming from the direction of the former mansion.

And another explosion happened.

Then another.

And another.

It is now around 5 minutes after that first explosion happened, and I count the one that just exploded as the 30th explosion.

"How many more petroleum does that ball have!" I hear Yung Ho shout from somewhere to my left.

"I don't think there is any petroleum there in the first place!" I yell back at him.
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Thoughts?