Dynamite vs. Gasoline

[Russ]

Has anyone ever felt like the effects of blowing up a stick of Dynamite vs a Gas Marker in this game seem like they are kinda reversed from what they should be? I'm by no means an expert in explosives, but I feel like a stick of dynamite is WAY more dangerous than a container of gasoline!

But the Dynamite simply causes any model in that space to do a saving roll, (and for some reason the Zombies have a whopping 5 in 6 chance of death, and the Heroes have a wild two thirds chance of survival!) And it does absolutely NOTHING to adjacent spaces.

Gas Markers, on the other hand, instantly kill anything in the space! Meanwhile, everything standing in adjacent spaces has a two thirds chance of death. (At least it's consistent this time.)

This has always bothered me! If a full stick of dynamite blows up and you're right next to it, I'm pretty sure you're dead. Like, very dead. Like, it's gonna be a closed-casket funeral, and the casket might be missing some parts of you that they couldn't find. (And most of the artwork implies that it's actually THREE sticks of dynamite combined!) And it's not hard to imagine that things only slightly farther away from the blast are at risk of getting dangerously pelted with shrapnel.

A gasoline explosion is mostly just an impressive looking fireball that doesn't last very long.

Now, I know that the game isn't supposed to represent reality, it's supposed to represent cheesy-ass movies. And in the movies, bullet + gas tank = enormous and deadly explosion that sends nearby action heroes flying back like twenty feet. So honestly, I'm kind of ok with the game overselling it. But shouldn't the dynamite still be more powerful than the gasoline? Even by movie physics?

And while I'm on the subject...the text on the Gasoline card drives me crazy too:

"discard to douse space with gasoline."

DOUSE! That implies that the hero isn't just setting a gas can there but unscrewing the cap and dumping it out. That would take, like, forever, yet you can do it for free in the middle of your movement. And the result would be a big puddle of gas. That wouldn't blow up! It would just light the puddle on fire! Even in the movies that's usually true! (Though I guess it would at least explain the adjacent spaces rolling for damage as the burning puddle spreads out.)

I kind of can't believe they didn't amend the card text in the 10th anniversary edition to simply read something like "discard to place a gas marker in space..." I know it's a small thing and I'm being super neurotic about it, but I can't be the only one who's bothered by it! A bunch of people must have looked at the language on that card and been like "Yup! Pouring out all the gas! Makes perfect sense!"

To anyone actually reading all this, thank you for listening to my TED Talk. I'll try to make the next one less ranty.

[BigDumbYak]

So now my training as a firefighter comes in handy!

It's not the gasoline that burns, but the vapour. When heated, gasoline vapour escapes faster. So what you've got is an expanding chain reaction in open air. More heat, more vapour. more vapour, more fire. (this is different if the container is sealed and heated, but a Jerry Can is anything but sealed. Read up on BLEVE if you're interested)
A gallon of gasoline has the potential to explode with the force of over 10 sticks of dynamite. (don't quote that as exact, but also dont f*** with explosives and fire)

Gasoline makes a bigger explosion, and has the added effect of lighting everything on fire, but the expansion of gasoline fire is 0.34 m/s flame speed for gas burning in the air.
Dynamite explosions have a much higher velocity (6,940 m/s), but a much smaller spread. Also the PSI is what kills you and that drops off quickly at range (force applied over area)
So it actually makes sense that gasoline has a higher death rate and larger spread distance, but I agree that the failure rate should be much higher for those in the same square as the dynamite. Maybe dead on a 3-6, but adjacent squares should only maybe lose a bit of movement or suffer some hearing loss.

[Russ]

(03-20-2023 05:20 PM)BigDumbYak Wrote:  So now my training as a firefighter comes in handy!

Wow! Thanks for the expert knowledge there! I def learned a few things!

[Raynor]

Wooow. We had almost this same conversation back in early days playing except we lacked the information on how gas explosions work. Thanks for the info.