What happens if you shoot a propane tank

That is a good thing. When you shoot the tank you poke a hole in it but it happens far too fast to mix the air and the gas to a point where it will ignite.

Only when they went to extreme lengths and were able to disperse the gas rapidly into the air could they get an explosion. I suspect if conditions were right no wind blowing the gas away the second shot might produce an explosion. Not to spoil anything plot-wise, but there is a really great optional scene in Mass Effect that works that way.

Bad guy stops for a moment to consider what just happened, and then Shepherd shoots again to ignite the gas. They had a hell of a time getting the ratios right. Stoichiometry as mentioned by Whack-A-Mole. Hunter S. Thompson did this regularly for recreational purposes.

I know that somewhere I have read a description written by him of what it looked like e. I do remember it sometimes involved attaching a blasting cap or some additional explosive to the propane tank before shooting it. I can find plenty of references to him doing it, but most of them drift off into a story like this before getting to the specifics of the fireball it created.

DO NOT try this at home or anywhere. The science is clear on this but nevertheless playing with flammable gasses in this manner is a recipe for disaster. If you shoot the tank the gas will bleed out. Once mixed with the air there is a great potential for a serious explosion.

That is sage advice regarding almost anything that Hunter S. Thompson did for recreational purposes. What happens if you shoot a propane tank? As Reese drives away from him in a taxi, a government assassin armed with a bolt-action rifle fires two aimed shots; one to puncture the fuel tank, the other to ignite it. The assassin was mentioned as being equipped with armour-piercing ammunition in a previous incident, so it's likely he used the appropriate incendiary round this time.

Sense8 : Justified. Kala shoots at the fuel tank of a car, but it doesn't explode — Wolfgang even sighs that cars don't explode like in movies. She was only shooting at it to get the gasoline to trickle down towards them, which she then lit on fire Torchwood: Children of Earth : Done when the bad guys are pursuing, Gwen uses this tactic to buy themselves some time.

The Transporter has a variant where Frank Martin rams a hydrogen-fueled car, then throws his car lighter out the window as he drives off, igniting the fuel. Vagabond : Tae-ung manages to take out a good chunk of Lily the assassin's hit squad by shooting some fuel tanks that just happen to be there, sitting on a flatbed truck in the street.

Tabletop Games. Warhammer 40, : Ork Burna Boyz carry their flamers' fuel in large tanks strapped to their backs, and prefer to haul around as large a tank as possible to be able to flame for a long while before running dry. This carries a significant risk for them, though, as their fuel is extremely volatile and, should an enemy round find the Ork's tank, will go up in a violent and very lethal explosion. Video Games. Also seen in the original game, where Jakobs fuel storage tanks will explode if shot up enough.

Strangely enough, you can't do this to the cars. The second game of the Tiberian series does this with less-explosive ammo crates. The Far Cry series of games have this as a gameplay element, usually to show off the dynamic fire effects in-game.

Dotted around enemy outposts and towns are a variety of tanks to shoot, ranging from the standard Exploding Barrel to a large propane tank. It should be noted that some of the tanks don't immediately explode when shot; they rather emit gouts of flame from the bullet holes, or in some cases fly around like rockets before exploding. While Every Car Is a Pinto , they don't blow up when the gas tank is shot, curiously.

Final Fantasy Type-0 : The Milites Empire has the only real vehicles around, and so Militesi territory tends to have a few fuel tanks lying around for any soldiers who happen to run out of gas. Class Zero can exploit them to create a sizeable explosion by hitting them with any attack. Or even a melee weapon from the other eight members of Class Zero, although that tends to add to their casualties.

In From the Depths , fuel tanks will explode when destroyed, though the primary advantage of attacking fuel tank is to cause the enemy to run out of fuel and lose power rather than for the explosion itself, which is fairly weak compared to an ammunition explosion.

On the other hand, mobile fuel refineries go off like a bomb when damaged, tipped over, or allowed to generate excessive dangerous gas byproducts. Gears of War : The first game has the player shoot propane tanks to light paths to get around the Kryll.

The second one has the first battle against Locust take place near a pile of these, shooting these will usually clear the area of any enemy and you are far enough away from them when this battle happens, anyway Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas allows you to instantly detonate a car if you aim for the gas cap.

Even if you can clearly see the rest of the tank, as on lorries, only the cap will set it off. Halo : From Halo 2 onward, shooting a Ghost's gas tank will cause it to explode. Of course, a Ghost's "gas" is actually pressurized hot plasma. Lethal Enforcers : Subverted. While you could shoot the gas tank cap on a car stage, doing so only caused flames to shoot out for a while instead of destroying the car. Mad Max uses this as a gameplay mechanic.

Pulling your shotgun on an enemy vehicle is a good way to destroy it more easily. Helps that most vehicles have very exposed fuel tanks. The only real drawback is that shotgun ammo is hard enough to come by until you develop ammo benches for strongholds and have a bandolier large enough to carry more rounds. It may be justified to some extent in this case, as the post-apocalypse vehicles are running on very crudely-refined "guzzoline," which might be closer to avgas than unleaded.

In Mafia II , shooting the fuel caps causes cars to explode reliably after 2 shots with any weapon. Shooting right next to the fuel cap, or into the fuel tank from any other angle has no effect. Mass Effect : A viable tactic. In the first game, there are little plasma, ion, and cryo tanks all over a ton of different battlefields, and an occasional big one with fuel in it.

While facing Blood Pack Pyros in the second game, shoot the rather obvious tank with a lower damage weapon and will light then explode. Shoot it with a high powered weapon such as the Widow sniper rifle or zap them with an Overload or Incinerate tech attack and it explodes immediately. River Raid : Fuel tanks are high-scoring targets in the two games, and they explode when you shoot them but won't destroy any nearby enemies.

Sniper Elite : You can cause enemy trucks and tanks to explode by sniping the caps on their fuel tanks; it's pretty much the only way to defeat a tank. As with the San Andreas example, this is despite the fact that you can very clearly see the entire fuel tank on all these vehicles, though in this case, the fuel tanks in question all seem to be made of metal thick enough for bullets to bounce off harmlessly.

It's also how Karl destroys the last V2 rocket. You even have to wait for the enemies to finish fueling it because only a full tank will create an explosion big enough to wipe out every last trace of the deadly chemical agent it's carrying. Star Fox 64 : In the train level, shooting a fuel car will detonate all adjacent train cars. In Time Crisis 2 you can clear an area of mooks by shooting a parked oil tanker in the background.

True Crime has an unlockable feature that allows you to lock on to gas tanks in Bullet Time for easier destruction. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has a few sequences where Nathan shoots propane tanks in order to cause explosions.

One instance where he's hurling them at the enemy and shooting them in the air was a big pain for Nolan North who was performing the motion capture and voice acting at the same time.

He had to repeatedly hurl an empty propane tank, which isn't exactly lightweight, across the studio to act out the sequence. Valkyria Chronicles : The Boiler of a Steampunk tank does this, though that's not the fuel tank but rather the unarmored radiator. The principle is still the same: shoot it for massive damage, or even semi-decent damage from small-arms. In Warframe , maps are littered with explosive canisters that will detonate nigh-instantly upon being shot, clubbed, cut open, or otherwise.

This can be a good thing shooting a canister to blow up and knock over enemies near it , or a bad thing knocking yourself down by hitting one absentmindedly while surrounded will ensure a swift death. World of Tanks : Shooting another tank's fuel tank won't make it explode unless your gun was actually enough to kill it but, if the enemy doesn't die from it, it will immobilize it until its crew can fix it. This often has he side effect of setting the tank on fire which, with the current patch, will randomly damage modules, injure crew members and possibly cook the ammo for massive damage.

Soviet tanks are especially vulnerable to this tactic, due to many of them mounting external fuel tanks. One shell and it explodes into flames, exactly like how diesel fuel doesn't. Web Original. Averted in The Hire story "Ticker". A helicopter gunship shoots up the Driver's car and punctures the fuel tank, but while there's a Vapor Trail that ignites the Driver speeds away before his car goes up.

However, the punctured fuel tank does add to the subsequent Race Against the Clock , as he races to get the MacGuffin to its destination before his fuel runs out. We're Alive : Subverted twice. First in Chpater 13 when Burt, Angel, and Riley try to use gas canisters as explosives to ward off zombies while they try to get a fire truck started.

The tanks don't ignite when Burt tries to shoot them. Lampshaded by Datu who told them it wouldn't work before they tried it. The second instance happens in Chapter 24, when the Mallers have a fuel truck rigged with explosives driving toward the Tower and Burt tries to blow it up while it's still far enough away to not cause any damage, but once again his shots fail to blow it up.

Again lampshaded , this time by Angel who screams "This is just like the gas cans all over again! Western Animation. Archer : Subverted. In the episode "The Rules of Extraction", Archer tries to shoot a gasoline tank with an M in order to set a fire to scare some alligators.

It doesn't work , the tank just end up with some holes in it. Justice League : Vigilante runs his motorcycle off a hill at the enemy, jumps off, then while flying backwards in mid-air shoots the gas tank with both revolvers akimbo to make it explode at precisely the right time to hit the enemy.

Remember, this is an episode devoted to the Badass Normals of the Justice League. Totally a Moment of Awesome for Vigilante. So the specifics of the myths they bust are very defined. Notice how they always try the myth the way it's told and for the time period, and when that fails, they modify their tests to get the results that are claimed just for fun?

With deeper knowledge and experience, everything becomes more shallow. Yeah, the propane tank myth was about James Bond, and it said that a 9mm could do the job. The 9mm round didn't even pierce the tank. However, I think they used a higher powered rifle, and all it did was release a cloud of propane. I'm sure an explosion could be acquired with a minigun WITH tracer rounds though. I want to see Mythbusters test that. User Info: RT1O2. They used big propane tanks. User Info: ElSpankovich.

Burn Notice kind of explained it. Shooting a propane tank will normally cause a burst of cold propane. An open flame is required for an explosion, so Westen strapped a road flare to the tank before he shot it. I suppose there's the possibility of a high caliber bullet producing a spark to ignite the propane. But I don't know. I'm not going to get hung up on things like this when it concerns Uncharted.

I mean, will shooting tree sap cause a blue-fired explosion? Not to our knowledge. User Info: McGriff Mythbusters also proved that you can't find protection by hiding behind a car door. The bullet just cuts right through the thing. User Info: squiggy I want to agree with you but then we'd BOTH be wrong XD They did that. I posted a link on the first page. More topics from this board