[tetha]

Mh, chemical stability is usually meant in a more delicate way.

There are explosives that need other explosives to set them off. If someone gave you a pound of C4 and then evacuated your neighbors, you would probably need to do some research to set it off. With the amount of explosives moved around in the world wars, easy storage and fairly safe logistics even by minimally trained soldiers are very much a priority.

On the flipside, there are explosives which won't let you finish a sneeze in the same room. Or which decompose into the latter. You wouldn't want to move thousands of tons of these around.

[shmeeed]

Re: your last paragraph called to my mind the great french thriller "The Wages of Fear" from 1953, in which two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin need to cross rough terrain, and the viewer finds himself holding his breath quite a lot...

[genocidicbunny]

Also remade as a pretty good movie in 1977 -- Sorcerer. Had a great soundtrack by Tangerine Dream as well.