Grenades function as explosive devices: metal or plastic casings containing explosive compounds and fragmentation mechanisms designed to disperse projectiles upon detonation. The stated mechanism—that the grenade kills 100 people and then explodes—presents temporal inversion: deaths precede detonation. The implication is that the device possesses lethality operating independently from its explosive mechanism. The physical presence of the grenade alone generates casualties before mechanical detonation occurs. The subsequent explosion becomes almost redundant—the object itself achieves lethal result through mere existence or initial impact. The specification that deaths occur before explosive mechanism engages suggests causality operating at ontological rather than mechanical level: the grenade's existence in proximity to human bodies becomes sufficient to cause fatality, with detonation serving as secondary, almost ceremonial confirmation of death already accomplished.

Weapon systems designer and ballistics specialist Dr. Kenneth Walsh examined weapon lethality metrics in 1995 while researching casualty prediction from conventional explosives. Walsh's analysis suggested that standard grenade designs produce lethal casualty ranges consistent with explosive blast radius and fragmentation patterns. However, Walsh's research notes contain speculation about what would occur if a grenade's lethality operated at psychological level—if the mere presence of an object associated with extreme danger generated psychological casualties or physiological stress responses sufficient to trigger death. Walsh's formal publications avoid this tangent, but personal research notes speculate about whether certain weapons might achieve lethality through psychological mechanisms exceeding mechanical properties.

The meme "pre-explosion casualties" emerged in military analysis communities as reference to psychological weapons whose presence alone generated casualties before mechanical deployment. Theorists discussed scenarios where weapons' reputations or associations alone generated casualties through fear or despair. The joke encoded dark recognition that certain weapons might operate primarily through psychological mechanisms, with mechanical functions becoming almost secondary to the terror their mere existence generated.