Your main nemesis in this game, explosive wise at least, will be the frag grenades of any type, and the MD-8 toe popper anti-infantry landmine. Although most of the time you will be powerless as to what happens, as that landmine is inside an object you cannot see through, or that grenade came in cooked, there is some information here than can help you and your teammates survive.

Alright, you're fighting in CuChi, you're densely packed in a structure, with no real way out. Suddenly, you see a grenade fly through into the small room, full of the rest of your squad. Everybody knows the way out leads to the man that lobbed that nade in there, so what do you do?

Well, quite simply, you run to the nade and go prone on it. When you go prone on certain explosives in game, it will completely disable the explosion radius, and kill the player lying down within about .1m of the explosive. Yes, this includes the arms of the player model.

If you see a grenade, go prone on it. As long as some part of your torso is on it, you will die knowing you saved the lives of all around you.

Here is an example of this happening.



As you can see, our test subject was blown into many, many fragments, however those fragments deal no damage.

The MD-8 mine operates with a few important parts, a pressure plate, and the ignition mechanism attached to the pressure plate. In game, when you step on the mine, you will hear the safety disengage, and the explosive armed and ready for the pressure plate to release, driving the striker to set off the charge.

If you only hear the click, you can defuse the mine.

If you hear an explosion, you're dead,

The MD-8 can be dealt with in 2 ways, either by defusing it with the action key, or defusal by detonation. But remember, if you lie prone on the mine, it will not detonate until the player on it moves. Meaning that if you see a mine in a doorway, and you see some low levels running at it, you can jump on the mine to save their lives. If you detonate the mine, it has the same explosive properties in game as a frag, so the explosion will only kill the player lying prone on it.

Other people can also defuse activated but not detonated mines.

The MD-8 mines, and frags can have their casualties reduced to only 0 by jumping on them.
Tripmines, Willie Petes, Fougasses, punjis, C4 and claymores do not operate the same way. Those do not use the same systems as the MD-8 and Frags.