Manx- ANFO Info

  MCQUEEN SAT AT THE TABLE WITH THEM IN THE DARK. HE HAD the bag of detonators in his lap and had removed one and held it in his hand. Lou was not reassured to see that the detonator in no way resembled the high-tech devices used to ignite explosives on 24 or in a Mission: Impossible film. They were instead little black timers from Home Depot, with curiously familiar-looking brass-ended wires dangling from them.

  “Uh, Mr. McQueen? Dude?” Lou asked. “That looks like the kind of timer I use to switch on the Christmas lights when it’s getting dark.”

  “That’s all it is,” he said. “Best I could do on short notice. The sacks are prepped, which means the compounds inside have been soaked in diesel and wired with a small charge. You just tie in the line, same as you’d tie in your Christmas lights. The black hand tells you what time it is. The red hand tells you when it’ll turn on your lights. Or, in this case, go off with about twenty thousand foot-pounds of force. Enough to tear off the front of a three-story building, if the charge is placed right.” He paused and looked at Vic. “Don’t wire them until you get where you’re going. You don’t want to be bouncing around on your bike with these wired up.”

  Lou wasn’t sure what frightened him more: the knapsack full of ANFO or the way the guy looked at his daughter, his watery pale eyes so clear and cool as to have nearly no color at all.
...

  “Minimum safe distance for an open-air blast—that’s a bomb on the surface of the ground—is a hundred feet. Anyone within a hundred feet will have their insides jellied by the shockwave. Have you scoped out this joint? This Christmasland? Do you know where you’re going to place your charges? It’ll probably take an hour or two to safely wire and set these things.”

- Christmasland: Inside