The "carbide bomb" has a particularly nasty feature that if you mix the water with the carbide in a closed vessel there's some delay as the gas (ethylene) pressure builds up but at something a little over 5 or 6 hundred psi it will detonate spontaneously and very powerfully.

The name acetylene comes from the use of acetone to absorb the gas and prevent detonation at higher storage pressures.

(acetone-ethylene)

The acetone is usually held in a carbon "sponge" inside the storage tanks.

Welding shops as late as the 1930s or '40s often used "carbide generators" that dribbled the carbide into a pool of water until a "safe working pressure" was achieved. When the safety cutoff hung up, a lot of those shops just "disappeared."

John