> actual m80's that were like a quarter stick of dynamite

Not even close.

A military M80 [0] is ~5g of flash powder, an inconsequential amount of low-explosive albeit enough to seriously injure yourself. The consumer "M80" are even weaker. These are used to simulate real explosions by the military.

The smallest standardized military demolition charge contains ~110g of TNT, in a similar small cylindrical format. There are multiple orders of magnitude difference in power between an M80 and these demolition charges.

A "quarter stick of dynamite" isn't a standard thing. But if it was, it would probably come in around 50g of TNT equivalent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-80_(explosive)

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Fezzik 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You could sure make decent explosives with OTC fireworks though - in the early 90s we would buy hundreds of those whistling fireworks, hammer them, cut the bottoms off, and then fill various bottles with all the powder. We made a shockwave with one of our makeshift bombs and decided we should probably stop after that.

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sidewndr46 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

In most states you can go buy all the tannerite you want. That's an actual explosion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VaLtf_EIVQ

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jandrewrogers 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The old school whistling fireworks were often based on picrate chemistry. Picrates famously have the ability when burned to hover between normally deflagration and true detonation; the whistling is a side effect of this. One of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history (see below) was a picrate explosion. These aren’t used anymore for safety reasons; they don’t have a great stability profile and picrates are true high-explosives.

Over the years they have found alternatives for and phased out most high-explosives used in fireworks. Many high-explosives will just deflagrate/burn but can spontaneously detonate with considerable power if the conditions are right, which makes them dangerous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

	▲	dmurray 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Have advances in explosives, fuses and quality control made fireworks safer in the last 40 years? Or perhaps the safety improvements are offset by sellers now offering bigger fireworks (either because those are now actually safe and both buyers and sellers are more comfortable with them, or just because of a general hedonic improvement). Or perhaps they are safer for their users, but worse for starting fires or interfering with low-flying aircraft. Either way I would be interested in reading more about this, something more nuanced than "fireworks dangerous". At the least it's a counterpoint to what happened with illegal drugs which seem to have become more dangerous as a result of regulation and bans.