Explosives

Explosives is a Fallout 3 skill, replacing the Traps and Throwing skills from previous games.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Statistic: Perception

The Explosives skill is used to successfully set or disarm Mines. When setting a Mine (Frag, Pulse, Plasma, or Bottlecap varieties), the higher your skill, the more you automatically "overload" the explosive and increase its damage output. For disarming purposes, whenever you approach an armed Mine, a "countdown beep" increases in speed until the Mine explodes. The higher your explosives skill, the more time you have to disarm it before detonation.

Explosives are those weapons that can either be thrown or planted, usually appearing in the form of grenades or dynamite. Grenades are almost always thrown, though they can be planted. Dynamite, and other such charges, consists of a timer which must be set by the character and then planted.

In Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics, the character’s ability to throw a grenade is directly related to the Throwing skill. The character’s ability to set or disarm an explosive is related to the Traps skill. In addition to increasing your grenade damage, mine damage, and granting access to certain Perks, specific levels of Explosives are required to disarm certain explosive-based traps.
 * 30 is required to disarm hanging Frag Grenade clusters
 * 45 is required to disarm Rigged Computer Terminals
 * 65 is required to disarm exploding baby carriages
 * Your Explosives skill also determines how close you can get to mines before they detect you, as well as how long the mine will beep a warning before it goes off. There does not appear to be a fixed Explosive skill necessary to disarm a mine.  If you can run up to it and click on it fast enough, you may be able to disarm a mine with very little Explosives skill, but if you're slow it will blow up before you reach it.  We could tell you what actual button you need to use to disarm mines, seeing as you're going to be rather rushed because of the whole '1 second until detonation' thing, but nah, it'd be more fun to assume that maybe you'll just be able to make it out in the .05 seconds before you get blown into a Game Over screen.

Explosives in Quests

 * 25 Explosives is required to disarm Megaton's bomb.