Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

[faflec]

My understanding of how stupid boxes work is that the build up of pressure is important, so I don't think they work with macerators without a redesign.

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Little confused about the pressure buildup, the only places where pressure would come would be from the seal (timeless, no buildup) and the box (wooden box = minimal pressure?). Can you elaborate?

 

[Traiden]

Stupid boxes work because unstable material on the cusp of exploding are sealed up and then that seal is placed in a box with other explosive materials such as oil and what ever else you can find that is explosive. The seal is triggered the explosive materials mix and combustion is the result. Pressure waves only happen as a result of the explosion and not the trigger for it.

 

[faflec]

Stupid boxes work because unstable material on the cusp of exploding are sealed up and then that seal is placed in a box with other explosive materials such as oil and what ever else you can find that is explosive. The seal is triggered the explosive materials mix and combustion is the result. Pressure waves only happen as a result of the explosion and not the trigger for it.

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Kagome shrugged uncomfortably, still looking at the ground. "Don't want those stinkers getting her," he said. He shuffled through his backpack and pulled out a wooden scroll case painted white and covered in red danger marks.

"This is a 'stupid box'," he said, holding it firmly and not extending it yet. "Because it's a box, and making it is stupid. Wooden box, full of white-hot coals. Tossed a couple waterskins in. One's full of lamp oil, one's water. Closed the box and sealed it real fast. When you unseal it the skins burn through, the oil ignites, the water turns to steam, the whole thing explodes and sets everything on fire. Dangerous. Burn your face off as soon as look at you. Unpredictable, might go off instantly, might take a couple of seconds. Good thing to have, though. Area denial, distraction, real good at turning any stinkers that might be following you into screaming charcoal. Also good for burning down buildings, as long as you aren't in 'em. Be careful, yeah? Scroll gets damaged, the stupid box will pop out, boom, flaming everything, screaming, pain, death. 's how you trip it -- from range, throw something at it. Not in your hands. That's stupid." He extended the scroll case to Keiko. She took it with all due care and tucked it into her backpack.

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[MadScientist]

This happened on discord:

Radvic-Today at 4:48 AM

To do that though, we'd probably need to solve the aging problem


AugSphere-Today at 4:48 AM

make yourselves a seal-based spelljammer


and away you go


Radvic-Today at 4:49 AM

Which is Noburi's to solve as our medic.


"So Noburi, I know you've spent a few days working with Kabuto now. Could you make me immortal please?"


Langevin-Today at 4:49 AM

Hmm


Hahaha


Well, sealing bodies is the obvious answer


AugSphere-Today at 4:50 AM

you should totes discuss immortality with Kabuto


not even being sarcastic

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And personally I like the idea.

We could discuss it while he's studying us at our doton lessons.

 

[Kalkin]

This happened on discord:



And personally I like the idea.

We could discuss it while he's studying us at our doton lessons.

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That'd be interesting. The only problem I can see is that it's somewhat out of character for us isn't it? And we'd want to ask Inoue what Ninja in general thought of people who pursued immortality.

 

[MadScientist]

it's somewhat out of character for us isn't it?

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Nope. The hivemind is Hazou's character. If we want immortality then so does Hazou.

And we'd want to ask Inoue what Ninja in general thought of people who pursued immortality.

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...

I'll let abridged Kakashi handle this one:



Yup. That's it. No one will persecute us for our evil transhumanist ways if we just don't tell people about it. Edit: Except Kabuto, but he seems pretty on-board with the idea.

 

[elpachosan]

If immortality is a thing that Kabuto has ideas on, I would expect those ideas to be preemptively labeled Top Secret, and possibly throw up red flags for us raising the idea. After all, in the long term it would be a gigantic advantage--imagine a couple generations down the line, when Leaf and only Leaf still has all of its jounin from present day.

 

[Kalkin]

If immortality is a thing that Kabuto has ideas on, I would expect those ideas to be preemptively labeled Top Secret, and possibly throw up red flags for us raising the idea. After all, in the long term it would be a gigantic advantage--imagine a couple generations down the line, when Leaf and only Leaf still has all of its jounin from present day.

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One person who's immortal in this setting would be enough to make huge changes. Applying it to all of your high ranking ninja would be an auto win if they didn't act in their own interest. And you kept it hidden. Actually applying it to all of your Jounin seems like a bad idea. Better to fake deaths and move them into research.

 

[MadScientist]

If immortality is a thing that Kabuto has ideas on, I would expect those ideas to be preemptively labeled Top Secret, and possibly throw up red flags for us raising the idea. After all, in the long term it would be a gigantic advantage--imagine a couple generations down the line, when Leaf and only Leaf still has all of its jounin from present day.

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That's possible. The main point of the idea from my perspective is to grab Kabuto's attention, as someone who understands his worldview at least partially, marking us as a possible future ally.

One person who's immortal in this setting would be enough to make huge changes.

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There are two to my knowledge. Kakuzu (who used earth ninjutsu to turn himself into an undead during the time of the Leaf village founding) and Hidan (who is granted immortality by the god Jashin-sama).

 

[Kalkin]

That's possible. The main point of the idea from my perspective is to grab Kabuto's attention, as someone who understands his worldview at least partially, marking us as a possible future ally.



There are two to my knowledge. Kakuzu (who used earth ninjutsu to turn himself into an undead during the time of the Leaf village founding) and Hidan (who is granted immortality by the god Jashin-sama).

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Both of whom are idiots in cannon. I should have said one person with the right mindset.

 

[faflec]

There are two to my knowledge. Kakuzu (who used earth ninjutsu to turn himself into an undead during the time of the Leaf village founding) and Hidan (who is granted immortality by the god Jashin-sama).

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And Orochimaru, and Madara, and the Zetsu...

 

[Kalkin]

And Orochimaru, and Madara, and the Zetsu...

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Madara wasn't actually immortal. He was resurrected wasn't he?
Zetsu was obssessed with his goal of returning Kaguya.
And Orochimaru was far to open with his actions and never really got to make use of his immortality.

 

[MadScientist]

And Orochimaru, and Madara, and the Zetsu...

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Orochimaru is never actually immortal in canon. He jumps between mortal bodies, and hides his soul inside seals, so while I guess he comes closer than most people, he can still age to death if he spends years locked in a prison with no bodies to jump into.

Madara actually does die of old age in canon. He just gets rezzed afterwards.

I'm not entirely sure that Zetsu is a person. Based on his biology and his strange robotic language, I rather got the impression that he was a chakra-construct created by Kaguya to ensure her return.

 

[faflec]

Orochimaru is never actually immortal in canon. He jumps between mortal bodies, and hides his soul inside seals, so while I guess he comes closer than most people, he can still age to death if he spends years locked in a prison with no bodies to jump into.

Madara actually does die of old age in canon. He just gets rezzed afterwards.

I'm not entirely sure that Zetsu is a person. Based on his biology and his strange robotic language, I rather got the impression that he was a chakra-construct created by Kaguya to ensure her return.

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Orochimaru's body-hopping requirement is as necessary as Kakuzu needing ninja hearts to fuel his immortality.

Madara was immortal while he was hooked up to the Gedo statue. He died only after he pulled the tubes out of his body.

(White) Zetsu (was) a person, converted into a plant thing by the Juubi's tree bullshit...thing.

 

[MadScientist]

Orochimaru's body-hopping requirement is as necessary as Kakuzu needing ninja hearts to fuel his immortality.

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Yeah that's fair.

Madara was immortal while he was hooked up to the Gedo statue. He died only after he pulled the tubes out of his body.

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That's some pretty shiny life support. We should steal it.

Not the type of immortality we want, but maybe we could retro-engineer it into something more mobile?

(White) Zetsu (was) a person, converted into a plant thing by the Juubi's tree bullshit...thing.

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Maybe? I found those chapters kinda confusing.

 

[Sleeps Furiously]

Wooden box, full of white-hot coals. Tossed a couple waterskins in. One's full of lamp oil, one's water. Closed the box and sealed it real fast. When you unseal it the skins burn through, the oil ignites, the water turns to steam, the whole thing explodes and sets everything on fire.

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So, yeah, the steam provides pressure which flings flaming oil over a large area, which is what makes it different from a normal molotov cocktail.

I'm not sure that the macerator can provide the same level of acceleration without aerating the oil to the point that it just explodes rather than setting things on fire.

 

[Kalkin]

So, yeah, the steam provides pressure which flings flaming oil over a large area, which is what makes it different from a normal molotov cocktail.

I'm not sure that the macerator can provide the same level of acceleration without aerating the oil to the point that it just explodes rather than setting things on fire.

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If we can use 5sb to retrieve an implosion seal intact.

From discord:

[12:03 PM] eaglejarl: Also, back in the day there was a small retcon on how implosion seals work. It was pointed out that if the air appears where it was you end up with 2atm, but that is not enough to achieve the observed effects. We ruled that it appeared in a small area around the seal instead. I think it was @Radvic who did the math to determine how small the area would need to be in order to cause the appropriate amount of destruction.


[12:04 PM] eaglejarl: I don't remember what the final answer was, but it was on the order of a meter, not a centimeter or dekameter.

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We could replace the water with the seal. I'm not sure what effect that'd have.

 

[QTesseract]

Maybe? I found those chapters kinda confusing.

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To be clear: People converted by the Juubi's tree thing become white zetsu. It is currently unknown if all White Zetsu come from that, but its at least a reasonable hypothesis.

 

[Radvic]

Hmm... sounds like I might have erred in my action plan writing methids. I can only hope that they get us out of Konoha and back to the science quickly.

If we can use 5sb to retrieve an implosion seal intact.

From discord:


We could replace the water with the seal. I'm not sure what effect that'd have.

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Here's the Math I did back in the day.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with shockwaves, I've just done a fair amount of physics, and the key step of what follows (determining the energy of the shockwave) is just an educated estimate. See future work for details. I will update this based on feedback on assumptions I made.

Outline​

First, calculate the kinetic energy produced by the adiabatic expansion. I'll do this by assuming adiabatic expansion, calculating the work done, and setting that equal to the kinetic energy.

Second, we need to determine how much of that kinetic energy goes into producing a shockwave. I think this will require reasonably involved hydrodynamics which I don't know, so I'm going to make estimates in this section (could use improvement).

Third, I assume the re-released air is just going to provide a steady medium for the shockwave to travel through, which means the shockwave travels normally, through an air of constant density and pressure.

Fourth, I'll calculate how the shockwave's pressure decays. I'll assume the thickness of the shockwave is on the order of 2 cm, and doesn't expand as the shockwave propagates.

Finally, I'll find a value for lethal, wounding, and building damage sudden pressure changes and figure out where exactly that threshold is for these explosives.

Kinetic energy calculation​

So, to start, we want to calculate energy gained from adiabatic expansion, where PV^1.4 is constant. I'll assume the air in a 10 meter radius is effected, which means we'll have:

PV^1.4 = 101300 Pa * (4/3 * pi * 10m^3 - 4/3 * pi * 5m^3)^1.4 = 1.1268 * 10^10 J
Then, in the final situation, the volume is now just the 10m radius sphere, which means we can calculate the pressure as
P = 1.1269 * 10^10 J / V^1.4 = 1.1269 * 10^10 J / (4/3 * pi * 10m^3)^1.4 = 95702 Pa
Then, assuming we have the same amount of air at the end, and that ideal gas laws hold, this means that
P_i * V_i = nRT_i
and
P_f * V_f = nRT_f
which, we can divide the second equation by the first to get
T_f / T_i = P_f * V_f / (P_i * V_i)
Now, since we know T_i is 293 K, P_i is 101300 Pa, P_f is 95702 Pa, V_i is 3665 m^3, and V_f is 4188 m^3
T_f = (T_i * P_f * V_f) / (P_i * V_i)
T_f = (293K * 95702 Pa * 4188 m^3) / (101300 Pa * 3665 m^3)
T_f = 31 K

This means the change in temperature was T_f - T_i = 262 K
Internal energy is given by
U = cnT
where c is specific heat. Technically, c changes as temperature, pressure, and volume change and depends on the atomic composition for air, but these effects shouldn't change it's order of magnitude, and I don't think they'd vary it outside the range of 10-30 J/(mol*K), so I'll assume c = 20 J/(mol*K). At standard temperature and pressure, a mole of gas takes up 22.4 liters, or 0.0224 m^3. This means that n = 3665 m^3 / 0.0224 m^3/mole = 163616 moles.
thus, change in internal energy is given by:
U = cn*(T_f - T_i) = 20 J/(mol*K) * 163616 mol * (293K - 31 K) = 857 MJ

Which is also the work done by the compressing gas. Thus, the kinetic energy produced via the compressing gas is 857 MJ. First part complete.

Shockwave Energy​

I'm sure there's all sorts of complicated hydrodynamics that goes into producing the shockwave. I'd imagine that the shock is produce by the collision of the air from each section expanding inwards to the center, then has some sort of effect as it passes outwards through the gas coming in. I don't know how to calculate that, I don't have the books to let me calculate that, and I don't trust my ability to teach myself it via the internet. What I do know, is that not all the kinetic energy produced by the implosion will contribute to a shockwave. Therefore, I'll assume that when all is said and done, there's a .5m radius sphere at the heart of the vacuum which causes the shockwave, that the kinetic energy is equally spread across the 10m radius sphere (obviously wrong, but I'm not sure of a better approximation), and that all the kinetic energy within the .5m radius sphere is converted into a shockwave. Obviously, I'm flying by the seat of my pants. If someone wants to offer suggestions on improving this section, I'm all ears.

So, the kinetic energy of the shockwave can be calculated as just:
K_shock = K_total * V_shock/V_total
Where the K_total was found earlier to be 857 MJ, the V_total is a 10 m radius sphere (so 4188 m^3), and V_shock is a .5 m radius sphere (so 4/3 * pi * 0.5^3 = 0.524 m^3), so
K_shock = 857 MJ * (0.524 m^3)/(4188 m^3) = 107 kJ

So the energy of the shockwave is 107 kJ

Propogation​

So, the energy of 107 kJ will be spread out over the shock-front. The lethal thing is pressure in this case, and we can calculate pressure from kinetic energy as P = K/V. I'll assume that the shockwave expands as a thick surface to a sphere, and estimate the volume as SA * 2 cm. This means our equation for Pressure is
P = E/V
P = 107 kJ/(4 * pi * r^2 * 0.02 m) = 425739/r^2 Pa

Lethality​

Based on physics stack exchange, ~15 psi will cause lung damage, 40 psi will likely be fatal, and ~ 5 psi is likely to cause catastrophic building damage. Taking these as "injurous," "lethal," and "destruction" zones, and converting to Pa, we find:
103421 Pa --> injurous zone
275790 Pa --> lethal zone
34473.8 Pa --> destruction zone

Using our formula for pressure derived earlier, we find an injury sphere of:
r = sqrt(425739Pa * m^2/ 103421 Pa) = 2 meter radius
and a lethal sphere of
r = sqrt(425739Pa * m^2/ 275790 Pa) = 1.25 meter radius
and a building destruction sphere of
r = sqrt (425739Pa * m^2/ 34473.8 Pa) = 3.5 meter radius

Conclusion​

So, based on my best calculations, a 5 meter vacuum seal which releases the air back to normal when destroyed will produce a shockwave with a 1.25 meter kill radius and a 2 meter substantial injury radius and a 3.5 meter building destruction radius.

Future Work​

There's a lot of not wonderful assumptions I made here. Foremost among them was my calculation for shockwave production. Ultimately, my work says that only 0.0125 % of the energy from the air rushing into the seal is released as a shockwave. If someone knows a better method for calculating the conversion from general kinetic energy to shockwave, I'd be happy to hear it, and the rest of my work should be easy to update.

One reasonable way to calculate the energy would be to estimate a linear distribution of energy, with maximum kinetic energy at the epicenter, and zero kinetic energy at the edges. I think that would increase the kinetic energy to ~0.5%, but I'd need to solve the integral to actually know which.... I'll probably do soon.

For instance, if we assume that 1% of the kinetic energy is converted into a shockwave, suddenly we have a pressure formula resulting in
P = 34098946 Pa * m^2 / r^2
which results in a wounding radius of
r = sqrt(34098946 Pa * m^2 / 103421 Pa) = 18 m
and a kill radius of
r = sqrt(34098946 Pa * m^2 / 275790 Pa) = 11 m
and a destruction radius of
r = sqrt(34098946 Pa * m^2 / 34473.8 Pa) = 31.5 m

If someone knows more than me about shockwave production or other relevant physics, or finds math errors, tag me and I'll update this.

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Thanks, it was fun. And I'm going to try to make another model (using a linear approximation for kinetic energy density), which I expect to return substantially more lethal numbers than I cited in my conclusion.

As far as shockwave propagation goes, I don't think it would change much with the extra air, because of the principles of superposition, which I think still hold with shockwaves. Presumably, the shockwave would just go through a little more dense air, might propogate slightly more slowly, but should have roughly the same amount of energy (and thus pressure differential). Rapid changes in pressure are lethal, not absolute values, so I don't think having a higher overall pressure would change the shockwave lethality calculation much.

It would, however, produce a different pressure differential, which would have it's own effects. An extra atm could probably be modeled as a 1 atm shockwave in terms of damage to the 5 meter radius zone. This means we'd have 101300 Pa of sudden pressure change, which is right around the lung damage value, but not lethal (and the effect would decrease according to 1/r^3 going outward).

So I think the air returning to the 5 meter zone would most likely not seriously effect the implosion shockwave (because superposition), but would have an additional effect of causing lung damage to everyone in the 5 meter zone (and destroying any walls or buildings that were partially in and partially out of the 5 meter zone).

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[Kalkin]

Hmm... sounds like I might have erred in my action plan writing methids. I can only hope that they get us out of Konoha and back to the science quickly.


Here's the Math I did back in the day.

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Sorry, for the trouble but I'm confused.
The wiki says:

Implosion Seal is a specialized Storage Seal. It instantaneously seals all the air within 5-20 m. (Exact radius set at creation time.) Anyone caught in the AoE gets to have their lungs implode as the air sucked out of them. The tag is destroyed by the inrushing air, which causes all the air that it sealed to reappear in a small area, at which point it goes surging out with enough force to wreck a building.

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So did we end up capping the area it seals in? And what's the radius that it releases into?

 

[Jello_Raptor]

If we can use 5sb to retrieve an implosion seal intact.

From discord:


We could replace the water with the seal. I'm not sure what effect that'd have.

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It would be bad. Water isn't actually incompressible, it just requires a lot of energy to compress. Magically compressing it basically means you're creating that energy ex-nihlo.

I'm not able to do the math now, but I'd expect (with a very high variance) a seal that compresses a 5m sphere of water into 1m to be a tiny strategic weapon, with a kill radius in the handful of kilometers.

Someone mind actually running the numbers?

 

[Kalkin]

It would be bad. Water isn't actually incompressible, it just requires a lot of energy to compress. Magically compressing it basically means you're creating that energy ex-nihlo.

I'm not able to do the math now, but I'd expect (with a very high variance) a seal that compresses a 5m sphere of water into 1m to be a tiny strategic weapon, with a kill radius in the handful of kilometers.

Someone mind actually running the numbers?

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I'm referring to replacing the skin that contains water, that when turned to steam caused it to explode, with an implosion seal.

 

[Radvic]

So did we end up capping the area it seals in? And what's the radius that it releases into?

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I don't remember reading a conclusion on that. It pretty vastly changes how much energy the implosion seal releases though. If, say, the air were released in one cubic centimeter, suddenly the kill range increases by ~100x.

It would be bad. Water isn't actually incompressible, it just requires a lot of energy to compress. Magically compressing it basically means you're creating that energy ex-nihlo.

I'm not able to do the math now, but I'd expect (with a very high variance) a seal that compresses a 5m sphere of water into 1m to be a tiny strategic weapon, with a kill radius in the handful of kilometers.

Someone mind actually running the numbers?

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I agree with your intuition, will run math rough math soon.

 

[Jello_Raptor]

I'm referring to replacing the skin that contains water, that when
turned to steam caused it to explode, with an implosion seal.

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Oh, i thought you meant make an implosion seal that implodes water, my bad.

Is there any reason we couldn't just make it so a stupid box storage seal is triggered at the same time as some macerator seals? The stupid box would ignite the fuel air explosive and generally make the explosion much worse.

Edit: keep in mind, the stupid box is basically starting a countdown timer for a violent explosion and then storing the bomb. We can't add more seals to the bomb since it gets stored anyway.

Also, actually, we might be able to make a smoke/flash bomb by just sticking the same white hot coals into a macerator. The way the flash bomb idea works is by taking something very hot and glowing, and converting it into a fine dust that releases all its light at once. Anything that glows brightly because of heat would work.

Edit 2: Ohh boy. If we have something that oxidizes rapidly, like incredibly fine particulate iron, and a sufficiently large radius macerator we could make a bomb that just removes oxygen from the air. Imagine filling a closed room with really fine iron dust, because it has so much surface area it'll really rapidly Fe + O2 -> FeO2 (rust).

Suddenly a large portion of the oxygen on your air is now part of a solid dust and not something you can breathe.

Edit 3: Oh wait, rapid oxidation is just fire. This is just my flashbomb idea again, just turned up to 11 so that it also suffocates people while blinding them. (Rust formation releases heat, and small enough particulates will heat up enough to glow, since they'll be sparks.) I don't know how much heat this would generate though. I expect a flashbomb won't do too much, since it can be much more diffuse than the available oxygen, but if we're trying to actually completely deplete oxygen it might just be a bomb. It also might not be, but I'm not sure.

Does someone know of a way to rapidly sequester oxygen that doesn't generate a ton of heat? Some oxidization reaction that is just barely exothermic and has a reasonably low activation energy?

 

[eaglejarl]

Oh, i thought you meant make an implosion seal that implodes water, my bad.

Is there any reason we couldn't just make it so a stupid box storage seal is triggered at the same time as some macerator seals? The stupid box would ignite the fuel air explosive and generally make the explosion much worse.

Edit: keep in mind, the stupid box is basically starting a countdown timer for a violent explosion and then storing the bomb. We can't add more seals to the bomb since it gets stored anyway.

Also, actually, we might be able to make a smoke/flash bomb by just sticking the same white hot coals into a macerator. The way the flash bomb idea works is by taking something very hot and glowing, and converting it into a fine dust that releases all its light at once. Anything that glows brightly because of heat would work.

Edit 2: Ohh boy. If we have something that oxidizes rapidly, like incredibly fine particulate iron, and a sufficiently large radius macerator we could make a bomb that just removes oxygen from the air. Imagine filling a closed room with really fine iron dust, because it has so much surface area it'll really rapidly Fe + O2 -> FeO2 (rust).

Suddenly a large portion of the oxygen on your air is now part of a solid dust and not something you can breathe.

Edit 3: Oh wait, rapid oxidation is just fire. This is just my flashbomb idea again, just turned up to 11 so that it also suffocates people while blinding them. (Rust formation releases heat, and small enough particulates will heat up enough to glow, since they'll be sparks.) I don't know how much heat this would generate though. I expect a flashbomb won't do too much, since it can be much more diffuse than the available oxygen, but if we're trying to actually completely deplete oxygen it might just be a bomb. It also might not be, but I'm not sure.

Does someone know of a way to rapidly sequester oxygen that doesn't generate a ton of heat? Some oxidization reaction that is just barely exothermic and has a reasonably low activation energy?

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Are you sure about that "fine iron dust turns to sparks"? I did some poking around and everything I found said that the sparks weren't due simply to the oxidation but the cutting of the steel on iron or whatever is throwing off the sparks.