Thermite is an an exchange reaction. The oxygen comes from the mix.

FE2O3 + 2Al  gives  Al2O3 + 2Fe + copious  amounts of heat.

It requires a lot of heat to get started, usually ignited with a  
magnesium ribbon.

It was concocted to do field welds on railroad rails and was also  
found to be very handy for sabotage. The reaction produces molten  
iron, it doesn't burn through anything,   its just melts it. I had  
thermite grenades taped to the bipod/tripod legs of all my machine  
guns and mortars in Nam for quick access to destroy the weapon if we  
ever got overrun, which, fortunately, I never had to do. I did once  
raid a small NVA base camp and the thermite did a great job when left  
on the engine blocks of some old French trucks they had.

I have no experience specifically with thermite inside a safe, but my  
feeling is that  with the containment, the temps would get up to  
several thousand degrees long before it melted through the steel  
walls. There's no such thing as 'milder thermite' you would just have  
to limit the amount or possibly contaminate the mix with something  
inert like sand to slow it down..

cheers ... BBR

On Mar 17, 2008, at 2:49 PM, William Chops Westfield wrote:

>
> On Mar 17, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Chaoua, Rashid wrote:
>
>> I figure if you have reached the point where you must destroy the
>> contents of the safe you probably don't care much for the surrounding
>> area. However, the surrounding area is a mobile environment and if  
>> the
>> thermite grenade is detonated it will most likely destroy the vehicle
>> once it burns through the safe.
>
> Thermite grenades don't "detonate" (technically speaking.)  However,
> my impression that the typical "thermite grenade" is aimed at
> destroying heavy equipment (truck engines/etc) by burning a hole
> through the metal parts, and is therefore poorly suited to
> destruction of more distributed but more sensitive material like
> paper and electronics.  It really ought to be possible to "tune" a
> safe/thermite combination to heat the contents of the safe to
> temperatures sufficient to destroy everything inside without melting
> through the safe itself (though the outside will certainly get plenty
> hot.)  My initial thought is simply to use a milder thermite or
> "gasless delay" type composition is lining for the entire safe -
> silicon/lead oxide for instance.  I would be surprised if there isn't
> something available from suitable "security" providers (thought it
> may require some interesting licensing...)
>
> BillW
>
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