Don't want to de-rail a cool thread but I don't believe anything that comes from the UN, especially from the office of disarmament. That's just propaganda to get people to discard ammo and in their disillusioned eyes "save lives"
There is a darn good reason why the UN, Nato, are concerned about old ammunition. The stuff goes Kaboom. Nitric acid builds up in old gunpowder, creates heat, and the stuff blows up. It blows up inside the case or the shell.
There is a interesting article on at this NATO web page, the punch line is:
http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2011/arms-control/Danger-Stockpiles-Ammunition/EN/index.htm
Since 2009, there have been more than 50 recorded incidents of unplanned explosions at munitions depots in 34 countries.
Incidentally a Hizbullah munitions depot when up Christmas Eve!
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Terrorism...depot_explosion_southern_Lebanon_Dec_2012.htm
This is what an ammunition depot explosion looks like:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=13c_1205681217
Just imagine what would have happened if all 6 million pounds of demilled propellant had been hit by lightening at Camp Minden Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant.
http://rn-t.com/view/full_story/210...Louisiana-scare?instance=home_news_lead_story Might have made all the explosions prior seem like a fire cracker!
The October explosion wasn't the first at the Explo facility. A series of at least 10 explosions there in 2006 caused an evacuation of Doyline, shut down Interstate 20 and forced officials to move students to schools in a nearby town
http://www.ksla.com/story/19828119/authorities-investigate-loud-boom
These accounts are from the DECEMBER 2003 Propellant Management Guide:
1-4. BACKGROUND
a. Propellants and propelling charges that we store, transport and maintain warrant our special attention. Among commonly stored energetic materials, only nitrate ester-based propellants (principally nitrocellulose-based ones) have the propensity to spontaneously combust (self-ignite, autoignite) without warning while sitting in storage; catastrophic losses can result. Artillery and Small Arms propellants are perhaps the most dangerous materials that Army installations routinely handle and store. Propellant can be unpredictable, decomposing into an unstable condition within four or five years of manufacture. Inadequate propellant safety programs have contributed to several self-ignition incidents at military and commercial installations in the United States and abroad.
b. When grains, flakes, sticks or sheets of propellant inside a container ignite, sufficient heat and flame is produced to ignite the remaining propellant material in that container. If unstable propellant is present in even minimal quantities (e.g., a single container), it might combust and could lead to ignition of the entire contents of the storage structure. Propellant burns at a very rapid rate in a process that is known as deflagration. Deflagration differs significantly from detonation in that deflagration involves very rapid combustion that takes place on the surface of the propellant. Detonation, on the other hand, occurs due to a different process that involves a shock wave moving at supersonic speeds through the explosive material, thereby causing its nearly immediate decomposition. Simply put, deflagration operates on the basis of heat transfer, while detonation operates on the basis of a shock wave.
During the period 1984 through 1997, seven propellant autoignition events occurred at U.S. Army Materiel Command (AMC) installations.
1. 1984: Lake City AAP
IMR powder that was only 5 years old autoignited and the above ground magazine & its contents were destroyed. More than 100,000 lbs of powder deflagrated.
2. 1984: Lake City AAP
The same lot of IMR powder, a fragment quantity isolated and saved for critical production testing, autoignited two months after the previous fire. Only a small quantity of powder was lost, but another magazine was destroyed.
3. 1985: Blue Grass Army Depot
The local-stocks storage magazine use for demilitarization activities contained high explosives material as well as unmonitored M10 propellant powder. Autoignition of the powder and its resulting deflagration gradually ignited the other energetic materials present. The earth covered magazine and its contents were destroyed.
I only copied the first three examples as they involved gunpowder.
The reason your surplus ammunition was put out on the market is because it was at the end of a reasonable shelf life and was probably getting too dangerous to keep in their bunkers. It was cheap because the smart people did not want it anymore.
First world countries spend a lot of money figuring out which ammunition is still good, and which has gone bad. Collapsed communist countries and bankrupt third world countries either sell the stuff off to Americans, or they let the stuff explode in place.
This publication, minutes of a 2010 NATO meeting, the Bulgarian criteria for the usefulness of ammunition is of interest:
Environmental Impact of Munition and Propellant Disposal
2.2.3 Quantity of Conventional Ammunition in the Expired Term
Long experience from laboratory and range tests on ammunition has established that after 30 years of storage, they are not suitable for battle usage. On this basis, all unwarranted ammunition is divided into two groups – prior to 1975 and post 1975.
http://www.underwatermunitions.org/...f_Munition_and_propellant_disposal_-_NATO.pdf
This also might be of interest:
Field-Portable Propellant Stability Test Equipment
http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/JulAug08/propellant_stab_eq.html
The bottom line is that old surplus ammunition has its risks. I would not have to make this point if this was 20 year old gasoline as everyone has a lawn mower that almost blew a head gasket with old gas. But when it comes to that “life time buy” of cheap surplus that you are sitting on, the denial that your pile is actually a pig in the poke is understandable.