Barrel

The exploding barrel is a relatively common hazard found throughout many Doom levels; a cylindric metal barrel containing what appears to be green slime or "nukage". Barrels form part of the "dangerous Doom environment" described in the game booklets:


 * Exploding barrels: Scattered around the base are drums containing fuel, toxic waste, or some other volatile substance. If your shots hit one of these barrels, it's kablooey time! It might take several bullets to set off a barrel, but a single blast of any of the other weapons usually does the trick.

A barrel takes damage like a monster, and when its hit points reach zero, it explodes, accompanied by the sound effect DSBAREXP. The explosion inflicts damage to all objects within the blast radius of 128 units, including monsters, players, and even other barrels (exploding one barrel in a closely-arranged cluster of barrels often leads to a chain reaction of explosions). Each barrel starts with 20 hit points, which is the same as the Trooper.

A useful tactic, sometimes called a "barrel frag", is to wait until one or more enemies are close to a barrel, and then shoot the barrel to detonate it (this tip is given in the user manuals). Barrels are extremely effective and efficient weapons when used correctly: a well-timed chain reaction can produce thousands of hit points of damage from a single shotgun blast, for example.

Exploding barrels can lead to infighting even between monsters of the same type. If an Imp's fireball detonates a barrel and damages another Imp, the two will fight to the bitter end. The fireballs they throw at each other will do no damage, but once they close to melee range they will claw each other to death.

Doom II added the burning barrel. However, these are just animated obstacles. They do not explode or inflict damage in any way.

Heretic's pods and Hexen's mushrooms play the same role as Doom's exploding barrels. Strife also has exploding barrels.

Demo

 * [[Media:BLDYBRRL.WAD|A level demonstrating how an exploding barrel can leave bloody remains when crushed]] (file info). It features several such barrels placed under a crushing ceiling; walk over the silver touchplate to see the effect.