you want to place the entire grenade inside of an empty can, just tight enough to hold the spoon in place. then you remove the pin, and you secure the can, so the string pulls the grenade out of the can, and the spoon kicks itself off.

actually for the least resistance to the tripwire, you want to pull the can off the grenade

if you're particularly diabolical, you'll replace the grenade fuse with a smoke grenade fuse which has no delay

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Intresting. With a no delay fuse, you'd have to have the can as close to the opening as possible, otherwise it'll go off without direct line of sight to the ~~victim~~ pranked and they might ~~survive~~ not fully appreciate the joke.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

why would that happen?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I guess the effectiveness and line of sight also depends on which way the door opens, standards on this differ wildly between countries. If the grenade explodes as soon as it exits the can, and the can is more than a grenade-length away from the door, much of the direct detonation shockwave and shrapnel would be blocked by the wall being between the explosion and the pranked person, especially if the door has to be pulled open. If the door is pushed open, chances are that at least the opening hand and arm is exposed.

It also depends on the material and thickness of the wall, of course. I have personally been about three feet from a hand grenade going off, with no I'll effects other than some dirt falling on me. There was of course a bit of reinforced concrete between me and said grenade. It was also outdoors which obviously makes a huge difference on experienced pressure.

Hitler, for example, survived a pretty big indoors explosion just a few yards away, only because he was mostly shielded by a table. Some windows may have been open which affects lethality more than one might assume. Didn't Mythbusters test exactly this?

It is also quite possible I've given this a lot more thought than I should've. When you know a lot about a subject, you want it to be correct. This is not such a subject.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

the setup I was describing, I've only ever actually seen used outdoors, along suspected lines of travel

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

You know this from experience? You seem like my kinda guy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Let's not think about the thin painters tape

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I’m no grenade expert, but don’t you need to go squeeze that bar down before pulling the pin out? I always assumed that’s how the mechanics worked

[–] Tyfud 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The pin holds a thing called the "spoon" in place. It's secured with a hole in either side of it as it attaches to the "neck" of the grenade where the pin going through it secures the spoon to the neck of the grenade.

When the pin is removed, the spoon is free to come away from the grenade. Usually this takes more than gravity, but not "too" much more. Sometimes the force of removing the pin is enough to rattle the spoon loose/off from the grenade neck, triggering the fuse, in the case of most frag grenades like the one pictured above, the fuse length is pre-cut to be around 4 seconds, until it reaches the payload of TNT at the core of the fragmentation casing, exploding.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

So if you squeeze the spoon to the body of the grenade and pull the pin, the countdown doesn’t start until after you throw it, correct? When the spoon comes off, those four seconds are roughly the amount of time it has to reach where it was thrown?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Depends on the grenade. Lotta people who talk about “grenade no work like that” are talking about a specific type of grenade they are familiar with.

Some grenades have very easy pins to pull, some grenades start the fuse as soon as the the pin is pulled, some require the spoon be depressed for the pin to be pulled.

Reality is, there are many types of grenades that work in different ways.