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Old 08-05-2020, 06:15 PM
 
Location: Huntsville Area
1,948 posts, read 1,499,568 times
Reputation: 2998

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Mix pour diesel fuel into a couple of bags of ammonia nitrate fertilizer and you have a massive bomb.

Remember the Oklahoma City Federal Building Bombing setoff by 3000 lbs. of ammonia nitrate and diesel fuel. It blew the front half off the building.

Most blasting going on today in construction is done with ammonia nitrate. I see trucks all the time with a van body in back and a liquid tank in front of it.
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:03 PM
 
26,346 posts, read 14,952,283 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghengis View Post
Trump's initial assessment; "duh-uhhh, which one's Beirut?"
Well, if we must make this political: Leftist riots in 2020 have caused as much or more damage than the Beirut explosion has.
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:14 PM
 
Location: King County, WA
15,738 posts, read 6,447,235 times
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Pretty horrid and spectacular disaster. Beirut has been through a lot already, they didn't need this. My sympathies for all the families.

Remember this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzDC3iKbTzY
Right at the 1:25 mark. Holy sh...
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:20 PM
 
Location: Chicago Area
12,687 posts, read 6,711,133 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by davidt1 View Post
Earlier in this thread, I guessed Israel did it, but apparently they did not. I was wrong about that. Trump said the military people told him it was an attack. No country or group was named. No harm was done. It's sad that there are people whose life is so empty that they need to attack Trump on every little thing he says or does so they can feel like they are somebody.
It still might have been Israel. If you watch the videos, you hear a lot of "Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!" rapid fire like a bunch of ammunition going off. It's possible that a Hezbollah weapons dump was targeted and destroyed by Mossad agents on the ground by blowing it up, and they had no clue that pre-weaponized ammonium nitrate was just sitting there nearby. But I seriously doubt that Mossad would intentionally detonate the massive explosion we just saw. Beirut is about 42% Christian -- a Christian population that Israel has been supporting for decades in their struggle to keep Muslims from exterminating them.

The part that's not completely making sense to me: You'd think you'd have to contain the explosion to get the big boom we saw. Pictures from earlier show a silo with open doors and what looks like giant garbage sacks of ammonium nitrate. Would that be capable of creating a massive concussive explosion?
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Old 08-05-2020, 07:54 PM
 
26,167 posts, read 48,881,878 times
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Good pictures in this article in today's WaPo, especially satellite imagery before-after photos. The blast wiped the immediate area flat.
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Old 08-05-2020, 10:23 PM
 
45,400 posts, read 26,983,057 times
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Not sure if this was linked anywhere... this front row seat to the facility got blown out. It's near the end of the video. Small explosion... then you can see the fire igniting at the bottom. Hopefully they are OK.

Closest footage yet of Beirut blasts from apartment balcony opposite port
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Old 08-06-2020, 11:46 AM
 
46,892 posts, read 25,860,181 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by godofthunder9010 View Post
The part that's not completely making sense to me: You'd think you'd have to contain the explosion to get the big boom we saw. Pictures from earlier show a silo with open doors and what looks like giant garbage sacks of ammonium nitrate. Would that be capable of creating a massive concussive explosion?
Containing the explosion is more of a gunpowder thing, with its relatively slow burn rate. With a detonating explosive compound like this, you get blast and heat without containment.

What a colossal bureaucratic mess-up. Normalization of deviance - you can just hear the hallway conversations, can't you? "I know it's not ideal. But listen - the problem predates both you and me being transferred to this department, it's not in any way our fault. The stuff has been around for years now with no problem at all, fixing it will be expensive and besides, it'll make our team look bad if we suddenly make a big deal out of it.

This is not a hill worth dying on, is what I'm saying. If you feel so strongly about it, I can send your concerns up to the department head, but he'll say the same, and will that be a smart career move? Nothing has happened, the chances of anything happening are minuscule, and we'll both move out of this department eventually. Let the next team deal with it, mmkay? Good man."
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Old 08-06-2020, 12:46 PM
 
8,168 posts, read 3,110,043 times
Reputation: 4500
They've only confirmed 135 fatalities, with 5000 injured. I seriously doubt only 135 have died from this explosion. Add a zero to that number would seem more like it. Wide-spread devastation. That was some explosion with massive vapor cloud. I'm pretty sure that vapor cloud was from particles and atmospheric molecules being launched at supersonic speed from the shockwave of the blast.
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Old 08-06-2020, 12:57 PM
 
Location: So Cal
52,010 posts, read 52,457,444 times
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From what I gather it sounds like a whole chain of events occurred and it's basically a clown show comedy of errors. The dock people had repeatedly asked the city and government officials and warned them about potential problems and how the ammonia nitrate needed to be stored and managed properly and they were basically ignored.

Typical red tape bureaucracy.
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Old 08-06-2020, 01:19 PM
 
Location: Chicago Area
12,687 posts, read 6,711,133 times
Reputation: 6593
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dane_in_LA View Post
Containing the explosion is more of a gunpowder thing, with its relatively slow burn rate. With a detonating explosive compound like this, you get blast and heat without containment.

What a colossal bureaucratic mess-up. Normalization of deviance - you can just hear the hallway conversations, can't you? "I know it's not ideal. But listen - the problem predates both you and me being transferred to this department, it's not in any way our fault. The stuff has been around for years now with no problem at all, fixing it will be expensive and besides, it'll make our team look bad if we suddenly make a big deal out of it.

This is not a hill worth dying on, is what I'm saying. If you feel so strongly about it, I can send your concerns up to the department head, but he'll say the same, and will that be a smart career move? Nothing has happened, the chances of anything happening are minuscule, and we'll both move out of this department eventually. Let the next team deal with it, mmkay? Good man."
Yeah I completely agree. I can't say that I know Lebanese culture, but this is one of those "lazy culture" things. My children bicker about "But I didn't make the mess!! Why do I have to clean it up??" It seems to be where this sort of stupidity comes from. Very childish and very dangerous.

I've heard it said that you can visibly see how good a culture is by looking at a grocery store parking lot. If there are shopping carts scattered everywhere, that's not a good culture. If you're not doing the right thing when it seems trivial and nobody watching, you don't really have to and nobody is making you do it. That's the true test. A good worker should actively look for and clean up messes he or she did not create.
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