Any rational person is concerned about fires. Of course, you want to make sure that both you and your family are safe and kept safe, so, you think about the possibility of fires at your home and with preparing for the (thankfully) unlikely case in which that can happen.
But make no mistake, fires do happen, and if you have firearms and ammunition in your home (since you’re reading this, I’ll assume that you have both), then, you’ve probably wondered what will happen to the ammunition that you have stockpiled in your garage, your den, your gun safe, etc.
It’s a good question, and one that you should be thinking about. Not just because you want to make sure that your family is safe from the dangers of the fire itself, but because you own a firearm. And if you own a firearm, then, just like you have a responsibility to be aware of what is around and behind what you are shooting at (because you want to make sure that you don’t injure/damage any unintended targets), you have a responsibility to make sure that your stored ammunition is stored safely and that it won’t cause even more danger in a fire.
Well, you don’t have to wonder anymore. A group of firefighters set up situations to test what would happen in those kinds of situations (hat tip to here for the lead). You can watch the video below, queued up to when they burned boxed ammunition, followed immediately after by testing the burning of 18,000 rounds (that’s not a type) of loose ammo.
I don’t know about you, but watching the burns in that video eased my mind about the safety of having ammunition in my home (I was going to have ammunition because I need it for my firearms, but I also want to make sure that my family is safe).
It’s great to know, though, that having ammunition stored at my home isn’t really much of an additional danger in a house fire.
So, I guess there’s only one thing to do: Stock up on more ammunition!