Explosives are a simple form of weapon that primarily deals damage to an area through a combination of a high pressure shortwave, shrapnel, and often intense heat and collateral incendiary effects, depending on the type of explosive used. Explosives range from simple chemical explosives to Nuclear Weapons. Modern varieties tend to utilize battery or super-capacitor technologies as the heart of an explosive revolves around releasing densely stored energy very quickly. Over the centuries, those technologies have surpassed traditional chemical explosives. Due to the particularly destructive nature of such weapons, most colonies, settlements, stations, and ships have detection and suppression technologies in place to mitigate the threat of high energy explosives, drastically limiting their prevalence, even within the Fringe.
Despite the effort of many, nuclear weapons are still held by hundreds of different nations, stockpiled by the millions. Conventional fission-based thermonuclear explosives have become cheaper to manufacture, though are still unobtainable to most people. Thermonuclear explosives are less commonly used on settlements due to the prevalence of orbital defenses protecting planets from missiles and bombs, but thermonuclear missiles are still sometimes employed in fleet-to-fleet combat between armed nations. Fusion weaponry is used when high-yield is required, and a small handful of nations possess the infrastructure to employ weaponry using antimatter. Antimatter weaponry has a significantly higher yield than conventional thermonuclear explosives, and has the benefit of producing essentially no nuclear fallout.