Dropped ammo detonates...

There’s a lesson here-don’t drop ammo!

Was that a box of WWB with loose rounds? On a slight chance, with loose rounds in a box, maybe a bullet impacted the primer. Or even a primer may have fallen out of its' pocket and was lying loose in the box.

Edit: It would have been nice if however posted on Utube, would have shown a picture of the offending round.

Thankfully this is a very rare occurrence.

I would be rich if I had a nickel for every time one of the campers dropped a .22 round at the range.

kcofohio said:

Was that a box of WWB with loose rounds? On a slight chance, with loose rounds in a box, maybe a bullet impacted the primer. Or even a primer may have fallen out of its' pocket and was lying loose in the box.

Edit: It would have been nice if however posted on Utube, would have shown a picture of the offending round.

Click to expand...

I believe you called it correctly. Loose ammo in a box would certainly run a higher risk, although small, for this opposed to ammo in a tray and box.

Yep, it happens. Basically a firecracker, but I bet it scares the hell out of you when it occurs.

kcofohio said:

Was that a box of WWB with loose rounds? On a slight chance, with loose rounds in a box, maybe a bullet impacted the primer. Or even a primer may have fallen out of its' pocket and was lying loose in the box.

Edit: It would have been nice if however posted on Utube, would have shown a picture of the offending round.

Click to expand...

The picture I saw in the link showed a damaged Federal case and you could see on the primer where the rim of another case had struck it.

Wonder how many changes of underwear were required.........

Lot of good info on what happens to mechanically abused ammunition in the "Stickied" SAAMI video here

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...on-ammunition-and-fire-fighter-safety.687125/

Makes me wonder about those big cardboard drums of loose 5.56x45 I see for sale... With 12,000+ rounds and some guy bouncing it around with a forklift, I already wondered about dented or bent cartridges.

Primers are made to pop when struck. Not always by a firing pin.
I know of ejected rounds falling on a rock and firing, I know of rounds falling off the extractor and hitting the ejector and firing.

They will pop when they get hot, too.
My neighbor's garage burned on Monday. I could hear rounds popping off. The newspaper freaked out at the danger to firemen. I figure they would have been in more danger if a propane tank lit off.

Jim Watson said:

They will pop when they get hot, too.
My neighbor's garage burned on Monday. I could hear rounds popping off. The newspaper freaked out at the danger to firemen. I figure they would have been in more danger if a propane tank lit off.

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Back when I was just a kid, growin' up, one of my household chores was to burn the daily garbage in a burn barrel in the backyard, out behind the garden. One Spring day, my mom decided she was gonna clean out the top shelf of the broom closet and get rid of the junk up there. This was where my dad used to keep all his ammo. Don't know how it happened, but somehow a coupla boxes of .22 ammo got throw in the garbage and when I lit the barrel that day after school, it sounded like the 4th of July. My mom, God bless her soul, made all us kids get down the basement till the ol' Man came home, for fear we were gonna get hit by one of those rounds going off. Needless to say, my Ma was the talk of the neighborhood for a while.

But wait.... they're all still alive. How can this be?

sota said:

I linked the whole article for you to read.

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My bad! But who reads in these days of videos?

I have read that Federal requires lighter strikes than most primers.

My grandfather got curious one day many decades ago and went into his basement. It was literally his man cave as my grandmother had a mobility problem and couldn't make it down the stairs. Thank god too, because she would have flipped out at the amount of scrap wood, dust, and other things that he had accumulated.

He placed a centerfire cartridge (I don't know what kind) in his bench vice and tapped the primer with a small nail and ballpeen hammer to see how easily one could be set off. He refused to talk about it, ever. Of course the noise attracted my grandmother's attention and she got it out of him. Never another word.

I once read of a young lady who described her self defense technique as she carried a loose .22lr round in her pocket and she was going to throw it at the ground really hard in front of a potential attacked if she felt threatened.

If I hadn't seen this incident myself, I'd call BS...

About 10 years ago I was assisting on the range as a Firearms Instructor for my agency's qualification. As the line is loading magazines for the next COF, a single shot rings out. "Who the f#@k just fired a round?! No one should be loaded!".

Turns out an officer dropped a .45 ACP round (Federal American Eagle IIRC...)...it hit the concrete on the firing line, detonated, and the bullet impacted the heel of another officer's boot 10 lanes down.

I saw a kid once throw a 22 rimfire cartridge. He wasn't trying to, but it apparently had the rim hit hard enough against a brick wall that it went off.

There was a story a few years ago about a man lifting weights in his garage. There was apparently a loose round of 22 ammo on the floor that he wasn't aware of. When he sat the barbell down one of the weights hit the primer with enough force to explode. He had a very minor injury where either the bullet, or a brass fragment cut is leg.

jmr40 said:

I saw a kid once throw a 22 rimfire cartridge. He wasn't trying to, but it apparently had the rim hit hard enough against a brick wall that it went off.

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When I was a we lad. We tossed 22lr, shoved into straws up in the air.

Guy I know dropped a round on a carpeted floor and it went off. Primer landed on a carpet nail.

When I was 11 years old, my friends and I would tape steel ball bearings to
the bottoms of 12 gauge shotgun shells and throw them into the air; when
they hit the pavement they went off nicely (as we were under cover).

It was a lot of fun, but certainly not a safe activity....

I would have never believed it if I hadn’t seen this video.

The surface area of a firing pin is very small and it seems to take a lot to get a primer to pop. I guess i could see it with m855 ball or similar but would have said never in a million years for a round nose.

Its amazing it doesn’t happen more.

CDMCKY said:

When I was 11 years old, my friends and I would tape steel ball bearings to
the bottoms of 12 gauge shotgun shells and throw them into the air; when
they hit the pavement they went off nicely (as we were under cover).
.

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Excellent! I never thought of that when I was a kid. (I'm only 68 ... still time.....)

tarosean said:

When I was a we lad. We tossed 22lr, shoved into straws up in the air.

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Lacks the fire power of the ball bearing taped onto the shotgun shell primer , but special mention is deserved.

HB said:

I guess i could see it with m855 ball or similar but would have said never in a million years for a round nose.

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This particular out-of-gun detonation had nothing to do with bullet shape. It was a rim hitting primer freak incident.