Random swords-into-plowshares thought: plants like bioavailable nitrogen. Most explosives are jam packed with nitrogen.
Is there any overlap in the two? ANFO is literally fertilizer but I imagine the diesel bit isn't good for plants. But the combination is close enough to working that it got me thinking, are there any common explosives that a) plants can metabolize fixed nitrogen from and b) are not otherwise toxic to said plant?
@azonenberg nitroglycerine seems like a good place to start, given that we know it's bioavailable in mammals
@gsuberland yeah but it's a vasodilator. We want something a plant can actually metabolize usefully like it would with a normal nitrate fertilizer
@azonenberg well, I find it hard to believe that it would be a vasodilator in plants, given that they don't have vasos to dilate. so maybe they would be able to use it as food.
I worked with anhydrous ammonia half my career. All it needs is an oxidizer and its LEL exponentially increases. Even if contaminated with oil, the LEL increases dramatically. Fun fact: transport tankers carrying NH3 display a green placard.
I once witnessed a half million pounds of ripening bananas get saturated with NH3 due do a heat exchanger failure. The farmers loved that fertilizer.
@dianea I'm taking about stuff made for military or demolition use not "things that can explode if you mess up but are not normally made or used for the purpose"
@azonenberg
While RDX is toxic if you eat it, I does seem to feed plants.