The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend on 01/11/05 ITV

[Beswad]

Richard Hammond, of Top Gear built a full-size replica of the 1605 House of Lords, with 9ft-thick concrete walls.Then blows it up with the exact amount of Gunpowder that was used during the plot. Quite wasteful I thought but I wonder how much it cost in total make build, buy the materials including the barrels of Gunpowder (from Spain I think) to make the whole programme?

[spaced]

Not sure, but I fell asleep before the end. Was it a big time explosion? would he have succedded in killing people? How did it end?

[Drusilla]

I thought the programme was twice as long as necessary, but it was interesting to discover just how professional Guy Fawkes was and how devastating the explosion would have been had the plotters succeeded. It was also fascinating to watch modern day explosive experts enthralled at seeing a major explosion caused by gunpowder for the first time in their lives.

[spaced]

well, was the explosion huge? and would it of succeeded?

[Philtaz]

I was also initially concerned at the amount of waste(650 tons of concrete and all that timber) but having seen the end result I feel it is also of importance to learn exactly what(subsequently) devastating effect that amount of gunpowder would have had and the blast damage to surrounding buildings in London at that time.

Costly yes, but if you're going to do the experiment you've got to make it as real as possible and the programme did its utmost in that regard.

[Philtaz]

To answer your question spaced.

Yes, it certainly would have succeeded. All 200 people in the Parliament building at that time would have been killed, all buildings within 400 metres would have lost their windows, including Westminster Abbey and the blast would have been heard at least 5 miles away. Until the prgramme I had never realised that King James 1st would have been seated about 10 ft above the barrels. I always knew he would have been somewhere in the vicinity(obviously) but not directly above!

[spaced]

Thanks Philtaz!

Any chance of this programme being repeated on ITV2, 3 or 4? If so, when?

[bernardo]

Yes - it was brillig - and I don't think it was a waste. The explosion was even more powerful than they had expected - two of the walls were blown out completely (rather than being merely broken). The shape of the barrels caused the force of the explosion to be concentrated upwards, and the strength of the barrels caused the pressure of the burning gunpowder to be contained for longer than expected - in other words, it made a bigger pop when it eventually burst out. The floorboards would have been accelerated to about 160 miles per hour within a tenth of a second. The scene of the explosion afterwards was awesome and gruesome, with the mutilated limbs and body-parts of numerous crash-test dummies liberally scattered over a wide area. I had not realised how small the building was; it is no exaggeration to say that they would all have been killed - not just most of them.

[bernardo]

P.S. spaced:

No, it would not of succeeded
Yes, it would have succeeded

[Mortartube]

I thought it was a wonderful programme. I used to work in a firework factory and it really was an eye opener, even though we stored nowhere near that amount on the premises. The data gathered will undoubtedly be put to good use in the design of modern explosives magazines. Most modern explosives process rooms have strong walls and a weak roof, the idea being that everything goes upwards in the event of an explosion. I think this illustrates that that doesn't always happen if the amount of explosives are sufficient.