The part I had the biggest problem with was the 'hearing a boom.' Deep blasting doesn't go 'boom,' just surface demolitions...well, that or a DUmmie trying to weld a damaged gas tank...
I was within the radius of an earthquake once in SC. It did sound like a boom and I felt a single ripple through the floor. It reminde me of being near a heavy caliber artillery strike where there was only a single round fired.
Fracking, however, is another matter altogether.
In every well I ever worked we used water, a specially-engineered sand, a gel and occasionally 15% hydrochloric acid.
The water mixes with the gel to expand the latter. It is then blended with the sand which is forced down-hole where is it pushed between the stratified layers of earth. The sand is engineered to hold its shape even under such tremendous pressures. This allows the product to filtrate through as one might expect water to pass through a field of ball bearings. This is a process that takes hours, sometimes days, with no potential for a sudden effect.
The closest thing to an explosion is the wire-line. Once the hole is drilled an iron casing runs the length of the annulus. Between the casing and the annulus a cement mixture is pressed for the purposes of zonal isolation; to keep the gas/oil from seeping out into unrecoverable layers and to keep sediments from seeping in. However, as you might imagine a cement-iron casing keeps the oil/gas from coming up as God intended so they have to blow a hole through casing.
For this the wire-line service sends down a long iron pole ~20' long with divets staggered along its length. In these divets are placed small shape charges about the size of a tea light candle. Collectively the charges can blow through the casing but that is all they are capable of doing. Anything stronger would damage the earth formation and defeats the purpose of the exercise.
I'm sure any fellow oil field workers would point out any errors I may have introduced but that's how I remember my job.
Proglodytes, however, despise facts.
