Explosion

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An explosion is a physical event, generally destructive, that can be caused by several different circumstances. It can destroy nearby blocks, propel and damage nearby players, entities, and their armor, and cause one or more fires under correct circumstances. Explosions produce a "shockwave" particle effect.

Multiple close explosions may propel objects further, but have no cumulative effect on the destruction of a block. This is because explosion damage to blocks is evaluated individually (per explosion), and blocks' blast resistance do not become "weakened" from previous explosions.

The propulsion effect of explosions is often used for TNT cannons, and can also be used to shoot out gravity affected blocks.

Explosion strength

Despite doing damage to entities, fireworks do not destroy terrain and as such are not counted as conventional explosions.

Cauldrons perform a non-terrain-damaging explosion when incompatible liquids are mixed.‌^{[Bedrock Edition only][verify]}

Lab tables sometimes perform a non-terrain-damaging explosion when creating garbage item.‌^{[Bedrock and Education editions only]}

Effect

Model of block destruction

An explosion can destroy nearby blocks. Its blast effect is evaluated independently on many explosion rays originating from the explosion center, as shown in the right figure.

1. A cube around the explosion is divided into a 16×16×16 grid, and rays are created from the center to each outer point of this grid, meaning that there are a total of 1352 rays.
2. Each ray is given an intensity, calculated as (0.7 + [a random value from 0 to 0.6]) × [power].
3. For every attenuation step (0.3 blocks along the ray), the intensity of the ray is reduced by 0.225 (0.3×0.75). If the block passed through is anything other than air, it is further reduced by (blast resistance + 0.3) × 0.3.
4. The ray destroys any blocks that could not reduce the ray intensity to zero at any checkpoint.

From the above process, the following results can be deduced (where is the floor function):

• The maximum blast radius (assuming no block absorption) is = 10.4 (charged creepers), 6.9 (TNT), 5.2 (creepers), 1.7 (fireballs). For example, a TNT explosion can destroy a torch 7 blocks away. However, how many blocks an explosion can destroy is non-deterministic and also dependent on the specific location of the explosion.
• The minimum block resistance required to absorb maximum blast force of an explosion happening in nearby air = . To not be destroyed, a block has to absorb all blast force at the first checkpoint in it.
  • The attenuation steps is subject to collision restrictions. For explosion in air, there is at least one attenuation step. TNT and creeper explosions are always 0.49 and 0.5 blocks away from nearest block (2 attenuation steps), but fireball explosions can happen anywhere (1 attenuation step).
  • Thus, the block resistances are 24.2 (charged creepers), 15.534 (TNT), 11.2 (creepers), 3.284 (fireballs).
  • So water, lava (the stationary block), obsidian, and bedrock are always indestructible, and fences and less blast-resistant blocks can be destroyed by fireballs. These are theoretical values, and in reality less resistant blocks are not always destroyed; there is no such mechanic.

Dropping blocks

Destroyed blocks have a ¹⁄_p chance of dropping as collectible resources, where p is the explosion power. So, blocks destroyed by an (uncharged) creeper's explosion have a ¹⁄₃ chance of dropping. However, dragon eggs, beacons, conduits, heads and shulker boxes always drop from explosions, though the items may be destroyed by subsequent explosions. In addition, explosions from TNT and minecarts with TNT cause a 100% drop rate.‌^{[Java Edition only]}

Interaction with entities

An explosion has different effects on entities than blocks. Entities are damaged and propelled by an explosion if within its damage radius of 2 × power. Note that the "damage radius" is different from the blast radius of explosion effect on blocks.

1. For every entity within a 2×[power] block sphere of the explosion center, the impact is (1-[distance from explosion/damage radius])×[exposure] (see section below on exposure).
2. The entity is damaged by ((impact×impact+impact)×7×power+1) rounded down (armor enchantments for damage are handled separately).
3. After damage, exposure is reduced by (exposure×[max Blast Protection from all armor]×0.15).
4. The entity's eyes are propelled along the ray from the explosion center by the new exposure.

From the above process, the following results can be deduced:

• Entities always get at least 1 point of damage if they are within the radius, regardless of their explosion exposure.
• The maximum damage that entities can take (at the explosion center with 100% exposure and normal difficulty) = (1 × 1 + 1) × 7 × power + 1 point of damage = 99, (Wither newly spawned by the player), 85 (charged creepers), 71 (Beds when using in the Nether or in the End), 57 (TNT), 43 (creepers), 15 (fireballs). When entities are away or covered by blocks from the explosion center, they take less damage.
• The maximum velocity gain that an entity can obtain from a single explosion is 1, at the explosion center with 100% exposure.

Calculation of explosion exposure

1. The entity's bounding box is divided into a [2×width+1] by [2×height+1] by [2×depth+1] grid of unequally spaced points.
2. A ray is drawn from the explosion center to each point.
3. The exposure of the entity is the percentage of these rays that are unobstructed by solid blocks.

The approximation algorithm has sampling error that results in directional asymmetry of propulsion. For example, a typical TNT cannon has maximum range in the west direction partly because the primed TNT has largest sampled exposure in that direction.^[verify]

Causing fire

If the explosion has the ability, it randomly starts fires in ⅓ of all destroyed air blocks that are above opaque blocks.

Prolonged lag

In addition to the initial lag from processing the explosion, which subsides once the explosion has occurred, there can also be a prolonged fallout from an explosion, that consists of dropped items, liquid physics, and increased render-complexity of the crater. Technically, the dropped items disappear after 5 minutes, however those 5 in-game minutes may take a long time to process during extreme lag.

Certain rules and commands can be used to avoid this prolonged lag: setting the game rule doTileDrops to false, for instance with /gamerule doTileDrops false, prevent dropped items from being generated by explosions. Also, the command /kill @e[type=item] destroys all dropped items.

Blast resistance

[edit values]

Typical damage radius

The player receives damage, if within these radii of a 100% exposure ground 1 block, 2 blocks, or 4 blocks of TNT explosion, with the amount of damage labeled on each circle in the figures below.

Sounds

Java Edition:

Bedrock Edition:

History

Trivia

• Explosions with a power greater than 100 look mostly the same from the outside, as only certain lines are used to determine if a block breaks. However, some of those lines continue underground.
• Explosions that occur in flowing water or lava apply propulsion to entities, but don't affect any blocks, regardless of the blocks' blast resistance.
• Underwater explosions don't emit smoke particles.
• Explosions can redirect projectiles, including ender pearls.
• An explosion just after a mob's death can propel the mob's body.
• If primed TNT explodes in a large, solid cube of stone blocks, it creates an exact 3×3×3 cube inside. Experimentation confirms that a TNT detonation causes a 3×3 hole in a solid block of anything with a blast resistance less than that of water, but more than 2.5 (e.g. crafting tables). This implies that 3×3 is the minimum possible result of a TNT detonation without the blast being resisted altogether.
• If a falling sand entity falls into primed TNT when in water, it deals block damage.
• Every block that has a higher blast resistance than cobwebs can block a ghast's fireball and remain intact.