He had a lucrative business inerting civil war explosive ordnance and, unfortunatly, the law of averages caught up with him.
Should have taken an explosives-handling course before messing around with stuff like that. Like I said, live munitions is not a joke at all.
I'm not sure about that one way or the other. I also don't know if the report is accurate. A shell of that magnitude going off all the way would have taken out a HOUSE, not just one person. Plus, the raw powder is much easier to neutralize than the detonator and I'm sure an experienced handler would have been able to do that easily. Good old H20 is an extremely effective way to render any BP charge harmless goo, and if the main metal case is pitted through the charge will be exposed to decades of groundwater. But the detonators don't usually corrode away, and they do get sensitive with age. So an apparently inert shell can still be lethal. I know of two late 19th century shells pulled from the old Angoon village site where the USN bombed the natives. In both cases it was the detonator the bomb squad was most worried about because of its size and sensitivity.
Mr. White didn't use water or any other method at all. He actually DRILLED into that shell, with an extremely high velocity power tool that obviously created much sparks and friction heat. Also the thing was in the driveway. If it had been inside the house, it would have leveled it like an F4 tornado. It exploded on the sidewalk outside the driveway, and of course, it would have scarred and pitted the front of the house, at the same time sending shrapnel flying about like hailstones. It wouldn't have been able to take out a house from that range, because black powder, even though it is compressed beyond comprehension inside it's steel casing, is still a low explosive, with little, if any shock wave. Modern high explosives do much of their devastation with merely the shock wave caused by compressing air in front of the blast "fan". A black powder explosion creates tremendous heat and concussion, but little shock wave effect.
In order for a black powder explosion to be devastatingly effective, it MUST be contained. Modern explosive shells do not have that requirement. When these explode, their shock wave obliterates anything within immediate range. However, black powder, as long as there is plenty of space for it to burn, it is not usually as effective. Lets look at a fort for example. If a black powder shell strikes the fort's outer wall and immediately explodes on contact, it would gouge out a crater within that wall, and inflict a massive char mark. HOWEVER, if that same shell had a delayed detonation device, and instead of exploding on contact, it penetrates through the wall, lands in a small room, and then explodes, the damage done would be far more deadlier and tremendous than if the shell merely exploded on contact with the wall. The small room, and the narrow hallways beyond the room would create the perfect atmosphere for the rapid conflagration of the burning powder, concentrating it's heat and energy within a small space.