Since the discovery of gunpowder by the Chinese, the world as we know it has made more efficient and powerful weapons. Throughout the history of warfare, from the Middle Ages to the present day, explosives have been used as offensive and defensive weapons. When a castle or army was under siege, the attacking army would surround the objective and cut off all supply lines and try to starve the enemy into submission. With the invention of gunpowder he made the siege obsolete. This was augmented by cannon and other forms of field artillery, which allowed the target to be brought down quickly. Military-grade explosives are also used for benign reasons. In recent years the emphasis has been on demining war-torn countries and unclaimed and unaccounted for mines placed by the host nation. This action is taken to make countries safer for the citizens of those countries. Throughout history stalemates have occurred during war, engineers or soldiers with knowledge of explosives have been called upon to end the stalemate. This essay will cover one such incident during the Battle of Crater and the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia during the American Civil War. The Civil War is considered the bloodiest war in the history of the United States of America with 618,000 deaths and numerous injuries that left many maimed and handicapped on both sides of the war. Due to the four years of war, tolerance for war had become very low as time passed among the citizens of the United States. Many military and political officials were falling out of favor with the citizens, and with drastic times comes drastic measures. The siege of Petersburg, Virginia, dragged on from eig... halves of paper... and explosive-shaped penetrators. The use of these explosives has created new risks for coalition forces conducting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When explosives are used as an offensive weapon they can be effective and very demoralizing. Speaking from personal experience, this can cause the individual soldier to question what he or she is doing and thus undermine the effectiveness of the military. From a defensive perspective there are a multitude of uses, including falling trees to create an abati and crater charges used to make a road impassable and slow down the enemy. Works Cited Horn, John, The Petersburg Campaign, Combined Books, INC., 1993 Corrigan, Jim, The 48th Pennsylvania at the Battle of the Crater, McFarland & Company, INC., Publishers, 2006Kinard, Jeff, The Battle of the Crater, McWhiney Foundation Press, 1998