Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

"I think I'll light my high-explosive plastique on fire." is not a
sane concept, sir. Even a super-small test piece would have blown his
hands clean off if he guessed wrong about it not exploding. shrug
I mean, you wouldn't just shave a slice off your stick of dynamite to
start a fire, would you? And it's less explosive.

Horse crap and bull dingles, Larry.
C-4 is mostly RDX, waxes, oils, and dioctyl adapate. RDX, like HMX, burns
quietly unless shocked by an initiator. C-4 burns like a fast version of
sterno, with a perfectly quiet blue flame (tiniest bit of sizzle), no
soot, and no explosions.

To my knowlege, the US military does not employ any HE materials that
will DDT under open-air burning of small quantities. Bets are off if you
light a 100lb pile of the stuff.

And yes, even dynamite can burn, if it's actually dynamite and not one of
the AN 'dynamite-like' stuffs, and it has a high-enough nitro content.
The lower 15% stuff won't burn for **** (or explode when you try to
ignite it). Diatomacious earth/clay/compacted sawdust has a tendency not
to burn very vigorously.

Of course, you wouldn't know this, but even nitroglycerine (IF very pure
and free of any acids or undesirable organic ligands from nitration)
burns like vigorous alcohol. In this case, it would be tempting fate to
arrange a puddle of it, and ignite it by hand.

An urban legend I have not confirmed (but is probably true) has the
chemist who first compounded TNT casting an ashtray of the stuff, just to
demonstrate how insensitive it was.

I've cooked many a C-rat and LRPs on C-4. I still have all my digits.

Lloyd