Thread: MASSIVE explosion in Beirut

Not sure if anyone saw yet or not, but there was a very large explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon. Early indicators are at least 60 dead (there are many more buried under rubble near the port, they just have no idea how many) and 3,000 injured. Hospitals, already strained from Covid-19, are past capacity making this an even more dire situation.

Not sure actual cause at this point, there was definitely a fireworks storage place involved but beyond that they're not speculating yet. Hopefully those numbers of deaths don't continue to climb.

So this could be a case of lots of mini-bombs coming together to make 1 huge bomb

Multi angles.

That shockwave

That last view, from above that shows that building come completely off the ground is nuts.

One of my wife's aunts and a bunch of cousins live a mile from the blast in a part of town called Hamra (e.g. if you look on G Maps)...they lost a lot of glass from their hi-rise but were not hurt...one of them heard the state response and said the entire Lebanese cabinet needs to be fired.

It's a pretty nice place, overall, if you take away the Hezbollah influence...as it is now, I'd be afraid to visit (as an American).

As the day went by, I've seen various things reported:


Fireworks Factory.
High Explosive material seized a decade ago and stored
2800 tons of confiscate ammonium nitrate
Trump saying his generals feel like it was a bomb/terrorist attack

First appearances look like a nuclear event

Originally Posted by Shazam!

First appearances look like a nuclear event

Saying it registered 4.5 magnitude and was over 5 kilotons, one of the Japanese nukes dropped was 15 kilotons for comparison.

There is absolutely no way that is fireworks. The speed of detonation was way too high for that. This was high explosive at lease. Ammonium Nitrate could fit that bill as it has a high enough speed of detonation to be considered a high explosive (2700 m/s).

I'll have to find the link again. Saw on Twitter just a bit ago that the Prime Minister said there was Ammonium Nitrate stored there "unsupervised" for "over 6 years". ..

2,750 tons worth.

The OKC bombing was something like 2 tons. . .

Officials are blaming highly explosive materials stored in a warehouse for six years.

President Michel Aoun tweeted it was "unacceptable" that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate was stored unsafely.

An investigation is under way to find the exact trigger for the explosion. Lebanon's Supreme Defence Council said those responsible would face the "maximum punishment" possible.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53656220

The only problem I have with the ammonium nitrate theory is that it doesn't detonate (at least to my knowledge) via fire alone. As with most high explosives, detonation requires strong percussion, which is the point of a blasting cap. And again, to my knowledge, blasting caps (about 500 of them) were used to detonate the OKC bomb.

Originally Posted by wayninja

The only problem I have with the ammonium nitrate theory is that it doesn't detonate (at least to my knowledge) via fire alone. As with most high explosives, detonation requires strong percussion, which is the point of a blasting cap. And again, to my knowledge, blasting caps (about 500 of them) were used to detonate the OKC bomb.

I was wondering this myself. I remember when ammonium nitrate was in the news all the time after OKC, and I thought it had to be combined with diesel or similar compounds to make it an explosive.

That said, it's possible in that quantity, I wonder if their could be an effect like grain dust in a grain silo that can explode, where the grain itself wouldn't be considered an explosive.

That shockwave reminds me of the first time I saw slim's face, my reaction.