User blog comment:MyOpinion:/Redwall's future/@comment-2065021-20100516101321

Now, I didn't say, that Redwallers or Salamandastroneans would be very able, to create gunpowder. And the formula for gunpowder is 75% Salpetre, 15% Sulphur, and 10 %. I am no chemist, but even my science teacher knows that.

Now, lt's see... ah: Charcoal is the easiest to get: It's practically nothing else than charred fire wood. Salpetre comes from about the same place, where the inhabitants must get their dairy (Redwall cheeses) products from: the unseen dairy (and other producing) animals. Sulphur is a more tricky one; Natural Sulphur is found not too often, but in big quantities, e.g. in Poland, Sicily, Iraq, and in southern North America.

Let's therefore think of a scenario: An Otter farmer, who lives far in the south, stumbles across a Sulphur deposit, takes some samples, 'cos he's curious, and arrives at home. He continues working on the field with the cattle, and collects the dung from the arid ground, for making fertiliser later on. In the evening, he brings all the droppings into his hut, and puts the sacks under the table, for further handling. He empties his travelling kit on the table, and inspects the sulphur fragments. He then continues to make a fire for the evening. But he has an accident, and spills the hot charcoal all over the wooden ground near the table and the linen sacks. Soon, his house starts fire, and he escapes, to get water from the near waterhole. Meanwhile, the wooden table collapses under the heat, and spills the sulphur fragments upon the salpetre, the charred wooden table fragments and the hot charcoal, and they start melting due the heat. The linen sacks burn away, and, by a miracle, the hot charcoal, dung/salpetre and the molten sulphur unite, in the very unprobable ratio of 10:75:15, and... boom?

Remember, I am not a chemist. I know it's much more complex than that (If ifs and ands were pots and pans there'd be no work for tinkers :I ). But it is not not possible... just not very probable. It still CAN happen ;)