In recent years, public security is facing serious challenges due to the frequent explosive attacks by terrorist and criminals. The analysis and detection of explosives is one of the hottest spots in the field of public security research, since explosives play a vital role in various bombs. Surface enhanced Raman scattering has been employed extensively to demonstrate fingerprint, ultra-trace and real-time detection and identification on the explosive molecules, and presents an extremely promising prospect in the field of public security including safety check and forensic science. During the last few years, the detection of explosives by SERS has become an enormously active area, resulting in significant progress. In this review, it summarizes the developments in SERS substrates including their modification and nanocomposite counterparts, the detection of organic and inorganic explosives, and the spectrum recognition of explosives. We discuss the future challenges and prospects in this field. It is believed that surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy will be able to make greater advances in the detection and identification of explosives with the rapid development of the related disciplines such as nanoscience and technology, surface science, instrument science and machine depth learning etc.