The ‘e’ in CBRNe stands for explosives. Explosives – or explosive material – is material containing an incredible amount of stored energy. After initiation it will cause an explosion, a rapid sudden expansion. In the recent past, explosives and CBRN were generally treated as separate issues, because the combined use of CBRN agents and explosives was rarely seen. Since the rise of salafist terrorism, many Explosive Ordnance Disposal Services and CBRN units have become aware that these domains show a definite overlap. In civilian environments both domains are becoming increasingly merged because responders dealing with suspicious packages will be confronted with any kind of material. Also, the dispersion of some of the CBRN materials may be based on the use of explosives. Strictly speaking, explosives are either chemicals or nuclear materials with explosive properties, so in theory one could omit the ‘e’ from CBRNe. It is, however, used to mark the distinction between materials with toxic or explosive properties.
History of explosives
The first recorded use of explosives originates from China, where already in the 10th century explosives were used in fireworks and for signalling. The use of explosives as a tool of war was discovered in the West in the 13th century. Since explosives had a tremendous effect on warfare their usefulness was soon perceived by all Western militaries. In 1846 the Italian chemist Asconio Sobrero discovered nitroglycerin, a new very unstable explosive. This property prompted other inventors to work on the stabilisation of nitroglycerin. The Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel finally succeeded in achieving this, by mixing nitroglycerin with an inert absorbent to facilitate handling and packaging of the material. He called it dynamite.
Read more on the history of explosives…
Types of explosives
There are four types of explosives: blasting agents, primary, low and high explosives.