Firefighting, CO2 bomb maybe?
 

I was bored and got to thinking, is a carbon dioxide bomb feasible? What I'm thinking of is a bomb which, when thrown near/over a fire, would explode, and the explosion sucks up a ton of the oxygen in it (and making carbon dioxide as a result), thereby taking the air a fire needs to continue burning. Fires can be killed if you remove their fuel source (like stuff it can burn) or their oxygen (usually via water, unless it's a chemical/electrical fire, in which case you need some other chemical to put it out with). It might work sort of like those current fire extinguishers that spew out a dry chemical, but on a much larger scale.

I suppose this would be risky for fighting fires in an enclosed building, because if there's people inside, this would also wipe out their air supply. Not to mention it's risky for the firefighters themselves (unless they're already carrying their own air supply, which they probably are if they're running inside a burning building).

This could probably work for forest fires though. In addition to dumping water/chemicals over it (along with the controalled burning ahead of it to try and stop a raging inferno already), it would help kill off the fire without endangering too much life/property/trees (I suppose animals underneath wouldn't like it, but chances are they've probably escaped from the fire already). Plus the CO2 would help the plants out, as that's the air they "breathe", and it's not "hazardous" either (well, in the immediate area, yeah, but again, hopefully there won't be any people down where the bombs go off).

I realize there's a lot of air the fire can draw from in the open, which is why the bomb would have to cover a wide radius so that the fire can't just suck in more air right away (like maybe a 500 yard radius around the fire or something). But snuffing out a huge forest fire could probably be done faster with these devices.

So, how practical would a CO2 bomb be? Yes, there's probably some factors I'm forgetting to address (and please, feel free to point them out to make more discussion), but this could be yet another weapon designed to lower the damage from fires (or at least forest fires, cause again, I don't think this would be too effective on a house fire cause people need oxygen to breathe). And this item wouldn't be designed to replace current firefighting techniques, just one more thing that could be useful in putting out a fire.

I think the major downfall with this idea - especially in a forest-fire application - is the huge (hrm... that's probably an understatement of gargantuan proportion) quantity of CO2 that you'd need.

I would say it would be much easier to implement this in a house, because theoretically you could seal off the house well enough to fill it with co2 and displace the oxygen.

plus, this would be more fun:

http://www.alaskajournal.com/images/031504/747fire.jpg
Evergreen's 747 supertanker (just an artists conception, the plane actually flies, but has not been used to fight forest fires, yet).

http://www.desastres.org/waterbomber/photomedia/18.jpg
GER's IL-76 waterbomber, this is from a NATO training exercise.

A couple of years ago, a firm was working on research and development of a Tomohawk-style cruise missile that would be filled with water and/or fire retardants. The missile would navigate via GPS and detonate over forest fires, dispersing its payload and putting out the flames. Initial estimates put the cost of such a device at $400,000 per unit. Not too bad when you stop and consider that the initial cost of a modern fire engine is $400,000 plus an additional $6,000,000 to staff and maintain for 20 years. These firefighting cruise missiles could, in theory, be prepped once and kept in a launch facility until the time comes to deploy them.

Some feel that wildfire fighters could also utilize high explosive bombs to crater areas around an uncontrolled blaze, denying a fire the fuel it needs to cross that barrier. This is already done by hand--back burning--but it time consuming and can be dangerous to the firefighters.

Did anybody see the videos (IMAX iirc) of how they put out the well fires in Iraq after the first gulf war?

They'd shove a shitload of explosives right into the middle of the wellhead, and KAFUCKINGBOOM they'd go off, and suck up all the oxygen around, extinguising the flaming wellhead.

It'll work but it leads to another problem. Wouldn't a CO2 bomb send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere? With all the hype about global warming, I don't think it'll make people too happy.

I don't think dumping diarrhea on a fire would help much.

It does look funny, but it's probably fire retardant.

Well, it would, but my argument would be, "But letting a forest fire burn would probably contribute worse stuff than CO2 (you know, from the smoke and what not being burned up)".

And yeah, you probably would need a ton of CO2 to make it work. But if it could help slow down large fires, then that'd help a lot.

An alternative solution might be to let controlled fires run through areas regularly. Nature's been doing it for years now (ala trees getting hit by lightning and catching fire), but with all our stuff saying "forest fires = bad", it's let a ton of plantlife and underbrush accumulate over the years, so that when a fire does start (whether it's by someone forgetting to put out their campfire, or lightning once again hitting a tree and setting it on fire), all that stuff suddenly becomes combustible material for the fires to rage through.

Sure, it wouldn't look pretty doing controlled burns, but better that than letting a wildfire go crazy (and taking out a large chunk of trees in the process).

Trees process CO2 -> Oxygen.

By saving a large amounts of trees through a massive CO2 bomb, the trees would, and should reduce it's impact.

If i'm right, trees can produce an immense amount of Co2.. so, it ain't that bad, I'd say.

There's a movie called Hellfighters (John Wayne 1968) that was based on a guy, Red Adair, who masterminded the whole idea of "blowing out" oil well fires with explosives. At 75, he was over in Kuwait putting out the oil fires after the Gulf War. Totally awesome.

Thanatos, did you just say that "trees can produce an immense amount of Co2?" I'm in a state of confusion.

Yeah, don't trees put produce oxygen?

Although through some process they do not need any creature to produce their Co2, unlike humans who need plants to produce o2

Aiks, mistake of mine.

I meant to say, process Co2, through some chemical reaction into oxygen, so technically saving trees, negate the effect of releasing so much co2 into the environment...