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The guy really doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing. The lady picks up on it and promptly nopes the fuck out of there.
Honestly he looks experienced to the point of routine. She ran off as he unscrewed the cap, which is just a protective cover. He started immediately shaking the bottom to help get access to the pull string with no hesitation, he knew exactly what was inside.
I’m doubtful. He just threw a grenade in the open with absolutely nothing in between him and the explosion to stop the shrapnel. I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy had to be rushed to the hospital after that take.
Grenades of that type (M24s) had basically no fragmentation. The warheads were thin bodied metal, and didn’t by default have a fragmentation sleeve. The effects of blast were short ranged.
The throw was shorter than I’d personally feel comfortable with if I didn’t absolutely have to be in that range, but he was likely just fine.
Very broadly generalizing, there are two ranges to take into account in a grenade. The effective kill radius and the danger radius. The latter being far greater than the former. The kill radius is calculated from how far most of the shrapnel still has enough energy to kill reliably. The danger radius is how far some bigger, denser debris that could result from the grenade or what is near the grenade when it goes off can still seriously injure or kill someone but cannot be relied upon for a predictable effect. For reference, the kill radius of a modern M67 grenade is 5-15m, while the danger radius is 230-300m, depending what reference you look at.
Just because you are outside of the kill radius doesn’t mean that it is safe. Even if the Steinhandgranate 's ranges were only half of the M67’s, you still wouldn’t be able to throw it far enough to be safe while standing in direct line of sight with the explosion. The guy didn’t even have eye protection for crying out loud. Mind you, people had a whole different mindset about safety back then.
As I said, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing it outside of an emergency, but the odds are that he was just fine. Comments in this thread are acting like this is certain instant death, when it more like unwise, unneeded risk that something bad might happen.
FWIW I’ve had bigger net explosive weight go off in line of sight, inside of the dangerous distance and it was fine. Would I do it just for a video? No. And I wouldn’t recommend it, but I’m not going to wither and faint that a guy (who is probably so caviler about it because he just went through WW2 and is numb to it) did it 70 years ago.
Would I do it just for a video? No.
C’mon, think about the views you’d get!
Hmmm, actually let me rephrase: I wouldn’t do it for a video anymore.
And where, exactly, does that “thin bodied metal” go when it explodes?
It does indeed rupture, but with the light weight it doesn’t have much force behind it. You get possibly one or two pieces of metal detaching, rather than a fanned out fragmentation spread, with a large surface area but lightweight piece rather than small dense pieces that will go further and faster. Hence words like “minimal” rather than “none”.
says there’s no shrapnel and explains
🧐 Mmm yess but the shrapnel, you see 🧐
has to explain again
Oh, Reddit and Lemmy. Sometimes like brothers, you seem.
There is in fairness, not “no shrapnel”, there is a small- but actual chance of harmful secondary fragmentation hitting you. It isn’t that high, but it is higher than 0%, which is why I personally wouldn’t do it for just a photo op. But to say the person in the video has “no idea what he is doing” is to me, rubbish. He handles the grenade with practiced ease. I would guess this isn’t the first time he’s handled one of these grenades, which would also feed into why he isn’t afraid of the blast. It may technically be within a harmful range, but I’d guess that based on his past experience rather than his ignorance he is willing to do this.
Society: “Why do women live longer than men?”
Men:
Know why I thought those were Russian grenades. Anyway, that distance seemed way too close to be throwing it lol
In WW2, the Red Army did use similar form factor grenades. The RGD-33 looked similar at a glance to a German stick grenade, but used a more complicated fuze mechanism. The German stick grenades used a pull string ignition inside of a wooden handle. You can see in the video how the cap on the bottom is removed to reveal the string. The Soviet RDG-33 used a complicated arming process which aligned mechanisms inside of a metal handle. (The picture below shows an RGD-33 fitted with optional fragmentation sleeve.)
After WW2, there are Soviet anti-tank grenades like the RKG-3 which continue the stick grenade form factor, but are used for a different purpose; the RKG-3 has a HEAT warhead, with the metal handle containing a parachute to help orient the warhead toward the target. This kind of grenade remains seen in modern conflicts.
The German stick grenades in WW2 had relatively poor effects compared to other designs due to the lack of a proper fragmentation sleeve over the thin warhead body by default. This is sometimes colloquially called an “offensive” type of grenade as it can be thrown from a position without cover, as the short ranged blast is the only major hazard presented. The German M24 did also have a fragmentation sleeve, which would make it a “defensive” grenade, but it seems to have been used less often than the Soviet counterpart for some reason, and in any case it is not present in the video, which means the fragmentation hazard is minimal.
It’s amazing that you know this. Is this kind of knowledge profitable for you?
Not in the slightest.
High yield Scottish face removal.
A sober person would throw it…
