How powerful are thermal detonators anyway?

In the Shadows of the Empire novel and other old novels they explain that those small thermal detonators have a powerful explosion which sounds to me about the same power as an atomb bomb or whatever.

Then in the Clone Wars cartoon they have those tube sized thermal detonators that explode like a regular grenade.

So whats up with that?

 

No, I don't think it was ever intended to be compared to an atom bomb. I always thought of them as being about the same as a grenade. So, in "Return of the Jedi", Leia would've killed both herself and Chewie and injured most of the court.

 

Yeah, most EU seems to go with the hand grenade=thermal detonator equivalency. Maybe the SOTE ones were packed with baradium or something.

 

SOTE is the most retarded thing I've ever read. Sorry just had to get that off my chest.

 

The one Leia had was powerful enough to destroy a skyscraper if it were detonated near the building's ground floor.

 

A real grenade has a human lethal radius of 15 feet or so, with a casualty radiius of something like 3 times that amount.

A thermal detonator stat says its blast radius is around 60 feet, with custom versions being as much as 300 feet(!). If it can bring down a 102 story SW skyscraper then it is hardly a grenade equivalent.

 

^ Yes, which means that it would have to be like an atom bomb or something... which I guess ties back to that silliness mentioned above from SOTE.

 

Well, you don't need an atom bomb to take down a skyscraper but you will need a bigger blast than a standard grenade; there is a pretty huge difference between the blasts of those two. This is assuming you blew it on the lower levels of this skyscraper where the support beams are located, by the way. An atom bomb seems pretty crazy for something that directly resembles a grenade. While a thermal detonator could be more powerful than a grenade, I doubt it's that powerful. If you blew a grenade up at any level of a skyscraper, it wouldn't bring it down or even threaten it, really. This leads me to believe that "Shadows'" analysis is far from correct.

 

Well last time I read the Shadows of the Empire novel Luke had a thermal detonator in his hand and was showing it to Xixor in Xixor's palace before Luke and gang escaped. The description was pretty intense since even Xixor was afraid of a thermal detonator.

it's sad that a small round thermal detonator shown in Return of the Jedi and Shadows of the Empire has the most powerful destruction that it can destroy a nice building like Xixor's palace while in the Clone Wars new season all they had for thermal detonators were those tube kinds and they blew up like a regular real life grenade.

 

the one Calo Nord had in KOTOR 1 must have been pretty powerful since your characters are so far away from him in a huge hangar bay and he assured you it "will blow us all to bits."

 

There are several classes of thermal detonator. The one used to bring down Xizor's palace and the one Leia had in ROTJ are the teh most powerful type. Most of them are about as powerful as a hand grenade, but everything in the blast radius is vaporized, with little to no damage to anything outside of the blast radius.

 

^^^
What's your source for this information?

 

On the other hand, the thermal detonators available to the player in KOTOR aren't that powerful... and I don't remember Calo Nord killing me.

 

...Yeah. I know I posted here, but:


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Comparing the Thermal Detonator to an atom bomb is going waaaaay too far. As stated above, the most powerful representation seen thus far is from SotE, where it brings down a huge building. You don't need an atom bomb for that, but it is obviously way more powerful than a grenade. I think it would be something like a missile hit.

From the scene in ROTJ, I get the sense that the Thermal is more powerful than a simple grenade. Everybody in there panicks, and those are hardened criminals, well accostumed to a bit of firefighting and dodging explosions. You get the feeling that the whole place would get pretty much vaporized if that thing went off.

In the RPG (at least the WEG system), Thermal Detonators are two times more powerful than a grenade, wiping out most things in its path.

The Thermal Detonator first lost in potency in video games like Dark Forces and its sequels, where it was used just like a normal grenade. This was picked up by the Clone Wars show, unfortunately.

 

Is it safe to assume that thermal detonators are either 1) extremely rare and expensive to make and 2) emit some kind of distinct and easily detectable radiation (using some sort of sensor) because otherwise everyone would be carrying them everywhere to cause all sorts of havoc, and Leia smuggling one into Jabba's palace becomes a whole lot less impressive.