That is not true. The fact is that the shockwave will have a different shape than the blowout of the blast. Often, they can even be inverted. It all depends on what side tamping exists on, versus what side clear air is on, and how the explosive is distributed and even what shapes the rocks underground where the shell makes contact. A claymore is a bunch of HE, and you can stand practically right behind the thing...
Are you really going to die on this hill discussing the dynamics of high explosives with a combat engineer?
I think you will die attacking his hill.
He is right pointing out that Hollywood depicture of explosions where everyone gets thrown out intact is utterly incorrect.
To get thrown (intact) you need to be subjected to relatively small force for extended period of time. But that's not how military ordinance normally explodes. It detonates and creates violent shockwave with very short wavefront. It does not throw stuff around it just shreds it when it passes.
It can throw you a little, but you will be in small pisses.
Now, if you mix air with flammable gas or aerosole and ignite it then it will produce basically a wind which can throw you more less intact. But that's not detonation.
See that's your problem. You don't understand explosives very well either I guess. Actual explosives do two things. They put out a shockwave, yes, but that shockwave is created by expanding gas. When the wavefront passes, there's decompression and that part actually drags shit behind it, a negative pressure zone behind an expanding ball of gas, so you get hit by a wall, and then pulled behind it, and then you will end up getting pushed like a sail.
But the shockwave does not always pop out in a sphere. Depending on available cavities, the shape of the charge, or the surfaces it explodes against/inside, different shapes of both shock wave and gas will happen.
EFPs combine a mass with an explosive that, in the timeframe of the detonation, deforms the shockwave and fires it, the shockwave, and all the hot gas behind it like a bullet fired from Satan's own asshole. You can be practically behind the thing though and not get hurt.
It's the same principle behind a claymore's safe region relatively close. Or, if you like, cup your hand behind your phone and listen to the fact the sound isn't uniform. There are quiet zones, though they may ricochet some of the force from shockwave to air blast.
The point is, you are going to fight on this with someone who got a professional education on how to use explosives, and actually has the mental wherewithal to think deeply about it?
I
wanted to learn the art of using explosives. I loved learning it. I loved watching chunks of dirt bigger than a man's body rain down in front of my own eyes, even through a thick lens, and the dynamics that make that happen correctly.
I loved learning how to use tamping to cause a tiny explosive to throw a huge mass.
I loved learning exactly how to attenuate an explosive to blast a saline bag through a door -- if you don't put a second saline bag behind it, the explosive just splatters saline everywhere; the explosion needs to be forced to go somewhere other than just out.
I admittedly forgot how much detcord gets you through a wall or tree. 1 for drywall, 2 for siding, 3 for metal, 5 or 6 will do concrete? And I'm a little fuzzy on detcord to wood and concrete for chopping. You know, they teach you how detcord cuts itself, so that you can keep it from detaching rather than propagating? I remember that but not how much to use.
If an explosive detonates in a cup shaped depression, the shockwave will reflect against the rough parabola of it and go mostly straight up, some down but not much. I'm pretty sure this is what sends the big vertical dust pillar most explosives shoot up. That part is real. Just a massive conical smoke cloud that isn't there one instant and is there the next.
Then anyone across a more conical region will get blasted with the dirt that formed the rim of the depression. The more sand content in the dirt, the less deadly shrapnel. It'll slam someone, but at a much lower speed than the shockwave because of the same reason you knock a quarter with a dime, the quarter goes slower, and less far. And because it's objects moving through air rather than air moving against air creating a force wave, it is subject to terminal velocity, causing more throw and heat, and less shredding the everything.
Everyone behind that will get buffeted, maybe shot through with the odd bit of rock or casing shrapnel.
At any rate, we don't know what exactly the IDF was firing at them.
At any rate, stop trying to tell me how ordinance does or doesn't explode.
