Quick Fire Questions (A Place to Ask and Answer)

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Do you mean just on the forum?

Simple option for that: Go to their profile, click on statistics, and there's a helpful link there entitled...

"Find all posts by x"

:D
 
Alternatively and probably better if you don't want to trawl all through a mass of other posts by that person.

Go to the Critiques subforum.
At top right click the drop down search menu and select Advanced search.
In the Advanced search page go to the upper right - search by user name- and enter the name of the poster you are interested in and in the box below select Find Threads Started By User.
Then search and you will only see threads started by that user in crtiques.

Incidentally this should probably have been asked in the feedback section. ;)
 
HoopyFrood said:
Simple option for that: Go to their profile, click on statistics
Click to expand...
Even simpler, click on the person's name above their avatar and it brings up a list which includes "Find more posts by [name]" and that will bring them up. Only the last 100, though. Alternatively, using Hoopy's way you can limit yourself to threads started by that member. But, as Vertigo says, if you know what forum you want to search, better to go there and look for all threads/posts.

Vertigo said:
Incidentally this should probably have been asked in the feedback section.
Click to expand...
Ooh, shall I move it...? Nah. Me back's playing up and I've done enough heavy lifting for the day...
 
Hello Chronners,

I have a question and I was hoping your responses would give me some objectivity (and the ability to actually commit one way or another).

My wip requires a small detonation of a London Underground tunnel near to water (not necessarily the Thames). It's the precursor to the heroes' victory. Earlier on in the plot, the main protagonist finds C4 plastic explosives when dealing with an infraction with some street kids. I intended her to use this later to create the flooding of the tunnel.

My story has plenty of scope for the acquisition of the C4 as there is much building and deconstruction going on in sites around London by one of the antagonists, but when I was skim-reading it recently, two things popped into mind;

1) Really? She (the protagonist, a coroner) just 'finds' this
and
2) How difficult would this be to obtain?

I would love to hear your opinions. I am quite happy to scrub the hole tunnel flooding thing if there is too much of leap/Deus ex Machina thing going on here.

Thanks

pH
 
I've no idea how easy it would be to obtain but terrorists don't seem to find it too much of a bother, so I wouldn't turn a hair at your baddie having it (though surely not for "building and deconstruction"), but I'd have thought he'd be a bit more careful with it than just leaving it lying around for street kids to play with. And anyway, would she (a) know what it was when she found it (is it wrapped with a label saying "C4 -- caution" or something?) (b) keep it rather than hand it to the police/bomb squad (if she's a coroner she'll know the law and the penalties for handling it) and (c) know how to use it to blow a hole in anything when she needs to use it?
 
Given the high level of improbability involved, I'd expect, as a reader, a pretty watertight** explanation of the whole supply chain involved in getting the C-4 (and the detonators) into the hands of your protagonist.









** - No pun intended. Honest.
 
I am no explosive expert, but my thoughts are:

The first thing that springs to mind is that C4 is American and beloved of many US TV series. However here in blighty, the British Army uses a similar plastique called PE4 or if you had contacts outside these circles, I believe semtex is the explosive of terrorist's choice. What demolition companies in the UK use, I don't know, maybe C4. (Ask them?)

As for your questions.

Exactly what are the circumstances that your character finds the explosives: as part of her job?; or being mugged and it falls out one of the waifs pockets?

As for acquiring explosive, having pounded the streets of London for a decade - demolition is manual with machinery - particulary in the centre I don't think they use explosives at all (possibly not allowed). Out further out. say zone 2+, when they are getting rid of tower blocks - yes they occaisionally blow them up. They have done a couple in the years I've been living in Hackney.

I guess it depends where you think the source is coming from - a rogue Irish terrorist supplier would probably be the most likely for real plastique. I guess the demolition trade and the British Army is stringently policed. However most terrorist bombing schemes that have come to light have people making it all from scratch using fertiliser and other household chemicals, which would suggest that it's really very difficult to get hold of plastic explosive. The problem with homemade stuff, is that to make a rupture in a tunnel to let water pour in, you'd probably have to stuff an entire tube carriage with all the barrels of chemicals - think of the end of V for Vendetta.
 
As people have said above I suspect you would find plastique quite difficult to get hold of. Also once you've got hold of it I don't think it would be that easy to blow a hole in the roof of the tunnel unless you know what you are doing (I assume that's what you intend). I suspect that if you just stuck it on the roof and blew it almost all the force would go up and down the tunnel. Yes, you'd probably knock a bit of a hole in the roof but probably only a foot or two and probably nowhere near far enough to reach any water above. Unless of course you had an awful lot of it. In which case folk in the nearby stations would quite likely be taken out by the shock wave coming down the tunnel rather than any flood.

Also as Ursa mentioned don't forget you will need detonators as well. And for very obvious reasons detonators are not normally stored anywhere near any explosives. So If she found some explosive she probably wouldn't find any detonators with it.
 
Thank you for the replies. You’ve really helped me and also confirmed my fears about the credibility. I could work around it if I was precious about keeping the explosive in but really it was just a contrivance to get water into the tunnel, so I'm happy to get water into the tunnel in another way.

The demolition occurs in Zone 3ish – Stroud Green/Seven Sisters area. The street gang have raided the North London site and have taken the explosives back to their ‘endz’ in East London (near Walthamstow). The protags come across them trying to steal their car rims in a high-rise block of flats' car park and in the ensuing scuffle, the kids flee dropping the bag. (They were trying to rig the high-rise to blow - a sort of reference to the broken and disenfranchised young people I come across most days in my work, and the Tottenham Riots which occurred on my doorstep).


Regarding the tunnel: It did not have to be a massive explosion, just needed to get water into the tunnel somehow; my wip initially starts as a death-on-the-tube mystery but it heavily references West African folklore, and ends up with a battle between a Sierra Leonean deity (Ayo) helped by ‘Mami Wata’ (who is – for the sake of simplicity in this thread - a good luck or bad luck spirit) and the nebulous ‘monster’.


In African folklore, Mami Wata exists traditionally around where there is water and so for her to assist Ayo, I need to get water into the tunnel.

Funnily enough I was led to the Semtex route simply because a third player is constructing and demolishing various sites around London and the South Coast and I figured it would interweave his role more significantly if I linked his presence more robustly with an additional story thread. I was so caught up in it that I don’t think I saw the goofiness of the idea.

Re igniters etc, I did do my research there, but what I couldn’t find out was how easy it would be to get hold of. Thanks for the reminder of the physics of the blast, Vertigo, that was something I was going to look into later in depth but you have saved me that trial! :D


Okay, afterthought….. there is a minor character who could be integrated because he knows how to use explosive as he is part of a demolition team in North London. I could combine two characters and place him within the team that go underground.

Does any of this make sense? I was trying to avoid a synopsis, which would turn people off from posting their ideas, but I’ll happily fill you in if it makes things easier.

Thanks for the comments and thoughts.

pH
 
How about this as a preposterious way to get explosive into London:

There are many tonnes of high explosive in London you can get for free if you know where to look, courtesy of the Hitler, the Luftwaffe and the V-scientists.

So your demolition expert might have found an unexploded bomb and if a bit of a nutter used it rig a new bomb from it. Possibly cutting out smaller bombs from a big one. Though he'd have to be a real crazy nutter to do this really.:D

Not that if I was in a street gang I'd want to carry 70 year old explosive about with me....but then maybe they don't know.

Anyway, just some far-out freeform thinking :),
 
Venusian Broon said:
How about this as a preposterious way to get explosive into London:

There are many tonnes of high explosive in London you can get for free if you know where to look, courtesy of the Hitler, the Luftwaffe and the V-scientists.

So your demolition expert might have found an unexploded bomb and if a bit of a nutter used it rig a new bomb from it. Possibly cutting out smaller bombs from a big one. Though he'd have to be a real crazy nutter to do this really.:D

Not that if I was in a street gang I'd want to carry 70 year old explosive about with me....but then maybe they don't know.

Anyway, just some far-out freeform thinking :),
Click to expand...

VB, you genius. I love this idea. I will need to think more on this but it is percolating nicely. Coincident to all these shenanigans going around the City of London, there is a parallel story that knits in at the end with the black death and the plague pits. I am seeing a link between finding a nuke in a plague pit. (well, not a nuke but you know....):D

Now, let's discuss your cut ;)
 
That would bring a hole... er... whole new meaning to the concept of a Foundation School.
 
TheDustyZebra said:
How about the bomb a while back that was being used as a school bell? :eek:
Click to expand...

I know someone who caused havoc by taking a live WWII German stick grenade into an antiques valuation day at the local action house - he'd been given it by his father as a souvenir, and had used it as a paperweight and occasional hammer...:rolleyes:
 
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