A USB stick is not normally held next to your head while being plugged in, and it doesn't have a heavy metal casing strong enough to channel an omnidirectional blast into penetrating directional shrapnel (nor any way to aim it if it did). It could put your eye out or slash an artery if you're unlucky, but barring major advances in chemistry, a couple of grams of unaimed, unchanneled explosive at arm's length is never going to be a really effective way to kill people.
1. I was nearly killed when a small primary Li-ion cell short-circuited, it blew a milk crate size plastic box to bits and what was left of its nickel case embedded itself in the brick wall about three meters away—and that battery wasn't designed to kill people. Had the case traveled directly at me it's probable I would have.
2. Keep this in mind, SanDisk used to make titanium-cased USB sticks—I still have about a half dozen of them. Enterprising people who mean harm could make their own lookalikes.
3. In my early 20s I had a miner's right (permit) and friends and I would go prospecing in old gold mines. For most work, we'd cut a stick of gelignite into between 4 to 6 pieces because one stick was far too powerful for our needs.
4. Before that, I made black powder with my schoolmates and even now many decades later I won't admit how we nearly killed ourselves. (Also, if you want to search, you'll see that ages ago I posted on HN the fact that I had made nitroglycerin in the school science lab—that time I was very careful and everything went well). What I can tell you from that experiment is that a fraction of a gram can do much more damage than one would expect.
5. When I was in primary school we had the police come and lecture us on the dangers of railway detonators as kids had been killed by them (but not from my school). These devices (dummies of which were shown to us) were hardly bigger than a USB stick.
As I said, I don't claim great expertise (although one of my mining buddies did a Mines Department course on the subject and we had lots of advice from him)—but I do have enough experience to know that if you put even few a few grams of mercury, or silver fulminate or picric acid or similar in a sealed metal case and you detonate it near yourself then you will likely be killed. I've had too many close shaves to know that that is fact.
Please speak from fact and not hypothetically,
More importantly, keep away from any of this stuff unless you've been properly trained in using it and are authorized to do so.
Edit: At the time we never thought we were acting gung ho, nor were we ever a threat to anyone other than ourselves. Actually, we were quite careful considering—life-threatening experiences were more the result of ignorance.
How I came to make the stuff is a story in and of itself. My father—a mechanical engineer with no special expertise in chemistry—had been in the Navy in WWII and a colleague had given him a somewhat water damaged disheveled-looking chemistry textbook that had been 'rescued' from a damaged warship. Probably the ship's doctor or pharmacist grabbed the book as he left the ship as clearly it was an important possession (and in my opinion, it still is).
My father gave me the book when I was about 12 and in so doing he briefly outlined the book's history and how it came into his possession but at the time I didn't take much notice—an oversight I'm now forever sorry about (as a kid one doesn't usually pay much attention to such things). Looking back, I suppose my father gave me that background as the book had had an interesting history and he had to explain the reason for the acquired saltwater damage. The first 20 or so pages which includes the table of contents had been waterlogged and so too had its index. When I received the book salt rings/stains were obvious on these pages and they were beginning to disintegrate although they were still perfectly legible back then, however the body of the text was perfectly intact.
I still have the book and I'm looking at it now. It's showing its age, the index has now disintegrated to powder and the table of contents is only just legible but the body/text is still complete and fully legible.
Now to the interesting stuff, its title is A Text-Book of Organic Chemistry† - 'by the late Dr Julius Schmidt - English Edition by H. Gordon Rule, PhD (Munich), DSc Edinburgh. Fourth Edition 1943'. [≈ 900 pages.] Even at the age of 12, its German connections and that Rule's PhD was Munich—and that the book had been rescued from an Allied warship wasn't lost on me. In hindsight, one can understand why someone would have taken the effort to rescue the book, in 1943 it would have been brand new and likely very difficult to replace at that stage of the War. (Moreover, it was clearly a very expensive hardback.)
This is a wonderful book albeit now dated, Schmidt's writing and organization and Rule's clear and succinct translation that's devoid of any unnecessary jargon made it the ideal book for this budding propeller-head. That said, the textbook is no slouch, the first chapter deals with analytical methods: Qualitative Analysis of Organic Compounds and by page 13 we find a heading titled Molecular Structure and Isomerism. At random, page 37 brings forth Resolution of Racemic Compounds, and by page 40 we have Conditions for Enantiomorphism. And only 860 or so pages to go—you get the picture.
Now, you can imagine my excitement at the age of 14/15 when I read in depth Chapter XII - Polyhydric Alcohols, p242, and especially the section later in the chapter on Trihydric Alcohols, Glycerol and Nitroglycerine - glycerol trinitrate. My excitement was 'dynamite'—sorry, that just had to out itself. On p251 there's chapter & verse so to speak including the words 'The reaction proceeds best at 20° to 25° and the temperature must not be allowed to rise above 30°., (which a little later I followed strictly to the letter). Now, with an invitation like that, how could I possibly resist? Some things just have to be done. Don't they?
As I said in a HN post some while ago, I was very careful and measured my reagents out by eyedropper (with the exception of the neutralizing sodium carbonate) and it all 'precipitated' out in lovely oil-like rings in the test-tube just like the textbook said it would. Eureka!
The section on fulminates was also enlightening and descriptive but I heeded the warnings, especially so the dangers of Ag variety, and avoided temptation although for a while I toyed with the idea of doing picric acid but I couldn't do that in secret (in the timespan of one school lunchtime).
Incidentally, in the chapter on Cynogen Compounds there's a section on their use in ore extraction, Au, etc. One paragraph still brings chills to my spine even now as it did when I first read it as a teenager. It opens thus: 'Owing to the recent deamands for potassium cyanide for these purposes..., the sentence then proceeds to describe the quick, efficient large-scale production of said chemical. Whilst its stated use is acceptable, every time I read those words I can't help but think it's likely the method those dastardly bastards at IG Farben used to make the stuff. (BTW, I know the effects of HCN fumes after nearly suffocating myself whilst bleaching photo negatives, I staggered out of my makeshift darkroom—our sealed up lightproof bathroom—and collapsed on the hallway floor.)
(It's interesting to reread some of my comments penciled in the margins years ago. I note sarcastically on the synthesis of citric acid involving the multi stage treatment of dichloroacetone with both HCN and HCl and the intermediate products with KCN "that the final product had better be pretty pure if it's to be used in food production". I've also just read my penciled comments in the chapter on the The Strychnos Alkaloids.* Back then before Woodward's synthesis of strychnine in 1954, it was the 'gold standard' problem child to understand let alone synthesize. The text goes into the then current thinking which is fascinating to read in hindsight. It shows how they were circling and closing in on its structure but nowhere close enough—similar in ways to the ideas about the benzene ring before Kekulé's remarkable insight. Incidentally, that first-class son-of-a-bitch molecule brings back horrible memories, when I was about nine some lowdown bastard poisoned my beloved dog with the stuff—watching his death throes—writhing and convulsing in agony—is something I'll never forget.)*
Sorry for the digression. One aspect that keeps me coming back to Schmidt's text is that unlike modern [general] chemistry texts that usually only outline chemical processes from a theoretical viewpoint, its author(s) don't mind delving into actual procedures and processes which makes it useful for experimenters. And its coverage of topics is wide-ranging, there's even a section on thio esters including mustard gas, and surprisingly for 1943, also one on deuterium compounds.
To say this textbook was formative in my appreciation of chemistry would be a gross understatement.
___
† The title of Schmidt's original 1926 German edition is 'Lehrbuch der Organischen Chemie'.
I claim no great expertise in these matters but I do know C4 is a more powerful charge. I also know how much potential energy is locked up in a bullet cartridge.
When the army instructed us in the absolute necessity of pull-through procedure and barrel cleaning it was drilled in by showing us a rifle with its breach blown to bits because the barrel was blocked. It was pointed out that breach explosions had killed many.