Science Time

So in the most noble of gentlemanly pursuits (besides ravaging the female house staff, firing an over-powered rifle into heritage-listed walls and sampling Holst from a Laserphone - a gramophone with a laser in it ), namely that of SCIENCE, I am handing over to my peers the results of my research. My SCIENCE research.

The most explosive compound in all creation is none other than red barrel paint. This startling conclusion, from a long career of video games, most specifically of the First Person Shooter persuasion, but creeping nefariously into any genre, is that the pigment used to colour a 44-gallon drum to any shade of red is bewilderingly volatile.

Now, if you've played any video game at all, you will surely and instinctively know that shooting a red barrel with any manner of projectile will cause it to explode. Since the bitmap graphic days this truism has been hammered into the psyche of every gamer of every level of the Mohs scare of core-hardness. Even your dear mother, having only played Tetris, will know on her first foray into Half-Life that shooting a red barrel requires a radius of safety. It simply goes without saying. Even in settings purportedly more realistic than others, such as the fake-acronym S.T.A.L.K.E.R (realism makes the monsters scarier, yo), you will find any cylindrical crimson container will detonate when disturbed as if it is filled with a gunpowder suspension in nitroglycerine. In short, it will go fucking BANG!

But regardless of setting and what possible purpose the container could have, the same degree of volatility is apparent. A shootout in a meat packing plant where the only reasonable explanation for the barrel is to house pig offcuts too foul for even dogfood, it will still go fucking BANG!

The only logical conclusion is the paint used to colour the barrels red. Which only leads to further questions.
Where is the red paint made? What insane level of Occupational Health and Safety Code of Practice could cover a facility responsible for the production of such a substance.
Why is there yet to be a video game gun battle scenario located in said facility.
But most direly important -

What the fuck would happen if you shot a red barrel filled with red barrel paint?

I propose, as did early opponents of atomic weapons research, that the resulting explosion would be sufficient to spark a chain reaction igniting all the oxygen in the entire atmosphere and irrevocably end all life on Earth.

So lets not do that, unless of course it is done in the hallowed cause of SCIENCE.