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See above for my re-evaluation.

The destruction of the grain silo also brings into question the supply of food in the nation. It looks like it was quite full so that means a lot of potential food has just been lost.

Ontop of that don't forget its not just 4K injured and 300,000 homeless; its ontop of Corona. So that's a huge body of people you don't want to put into dense housing and a medical system that likely was already under strain before this disaster.

Vaktathi wrote:

Strange how none of the buildings have scorch marks.

2700 tons of Ammonium Nitrate going up would have released enough heat to melt pavement and common building surfaces. It would have increased the temperature to a level where dust would have burned on contact.

If this was a ground level explosion, would have expected to see see black, vertical bands across the top of every remaining structure for about a 3 mile radius.

But what do I know.

Overread wrote:The destruction of the grain silo also brings into question the supply of food in the nation. It looks like it was quite full so that means a lot of potential food has just been lost.

Ontop of that don't forget its not just 4K injured and 300,000 homeless; its ontop of Corona. So that's a huge body of people you don't want to put into dense housing and a medical system that likely was already under strain before this disaster.

Humanitarian situation must be awful.

It's common to give people anti-depressants in that neck of the woods. I suspect a lot of people upped their dose.

I'm inclined to think it was likely an accident. Beirut is not know for a strong infrastructure and probably is very lax on safety regulations.

The fact this much ammonium nitrate was piled up close enough to chain react like this makes it likely there was little in the way of regulations or enforcement.

I just don;t see this as a deliberate act, it seems more like an accident but we're all too eager to look for a bad guy because we hate admitting accidents happen.

This is still a horrible situation in any event.

I

Apparently a ship called the MV Rhosus, operating under a Moldovan flag and owned by a Russian born Cypriot, called on Beirut in 2013 while transporting the Ammonium Nitrate to Mozambique, but was seized after being declared unseaworthy, creditors filed claims against the vessel, the owner went bankrupt and abandoned the ship (stopped taking calls, stopped paying wages, stopped attempting to get the ship back, etc), and the cargo was removed from the ship for safekeeping and the crew allowed to return home in 2014. From there the cargo sat in the warehouse stuck in legal limbo despite the pleas of the port authorities...until it went boom.

It's pretty horrifying how common stories like this actually are.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Apparently a ship called the MV Rhosus, operating under a Moldovan flag and owned by a Russian born Cypriot, called on Beirut in 2013 while transporting the Ammonium Nitrate to Mozambique, but was seized after being declared unseaworthy, creditors filed claims against the vessel, the owner went bankrupt and abandoned the ship (stopped taking calls, stopped paying wages, stopped attempting to get the ship back, etc), and the cargo was removed from the ship for safekeeping and the crew allowed to return home in 2014. From there the cargo sat in the warehouse stuck in legal limbo despite the pleas of the port authorities...until it went boom.

It's pretty horrifying how common stories like this actually are.

Thanks for that story, I hadn't heard it yet.

It did remind me of something that could be worse, and the sad thing is it won't be an accident but deliberate malice or stupidity. Peep this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-19/how-a-ghost-ship-off-yemen-is-being-used-like-a-floating-bomb/12465810

At least the explosion will likely not do much damage or kill people, but the oil spill will be an ecological storm across a million square miles of ocean.

In this incident (the explosion in leb, I mean) its only apparent that there an accident rather than a deliberate plan. The presence of a ready source of explosives about half as powerful as TNT next to a fuel station and a fireworks facility in a country with active IED production by multiple (read hezbollah et. al.) terrorist groups also introduces multiple layers of possible malice.

Its never as bad nor as good as it appears, but its also too early to believe the politically very consumable claims of accident. There are multiple bad actors in middle eastern politics, and the casual use of infastructure or existing materiel is a hallmark of some of them. S

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's pretty horrifying how common stories like this actually are.

Now there's calls in Australia for a plant that has significantly more nitrate than what caused the Beirut explosion to "do something" about removing it to avoid a similar accident.

Seems people don't understand the difference between carefully stored and highly regulated explosive material and a bunch of ammonium nitrate sitting in bags in some open-air warehouse down by the docks.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's pretty horrifying how common stories like this actually are.

Now there's calls in Australia for a plant that has significantly more nitrate than what caused the Beirut explosion to "do something" about removing it to avoid a similar accident.

Seems people don't understand the difference between carefully stored and highly regulated explosive material and a bunch of ammonium nitrate sitting in bags in some open-air warehouse down by the docks.

Some people treasure their ignorance.

When you had some opposition to nuclear power plants the founder of one of the main anti nuclear power groups, when told that if he understood physics he'd see who his concerns were invalid, proudly bellowed "THE ONLY PHYSICS I EVER TOOK WAS EX LAX!" and kept right on opposing nuclear energy. Even when the physics were simplified and explained, he kept right on opposing it.

You could explain the difference between what was likely a poorly built, maintained and operate storage facility in beirut and a well constructed, regularly inspected and professionally maintained facility in Australia, it would not matter to them.

Many people take a stand based on their gut instincts, and no amount of truth will change it.

The craziest video angle is from a ship in the harbor, where the blast looks like a damn H-Bomb test.

Its pretty crazy. It really is shocking how few people are dead. With that explosion I would have expected a few thousand.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Its pretty crazy. It really is shocking how few people are dead. With that explosion I would have expected a few thousand.

Fortunately most of the immediate dock area is mostly big warehouses with relatively few people, and the large structure (grain silos?) next to the immediate ground zero looks like it tanked a lot of the blast for the area behind it, but yeah, surprised there's not more as well. That said 85% of Lebanon's cereal/wheat imports went up in that explosion apparently.


On another note, This gives excellent satellite before/after pics of the area, and the crater left behind is particularly...stunning.

It's also got a pic of the...lackluster handling and storage of the ammonium nitrate being packed away.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
It's pretty horrifying how common stories like this actually are.

Now there's calls in Australia for a plant that has significantly more nitrate than what caused the Beirut explosion to "do something" about removing it to avoid a similar accident.

Seems people don't understand the difference between carefully stored and highly regulated explosive material and a bunch of ammonium nitrate sitting in bags in some open-air warehouse down by the docks.

Yeah, that's my neck of the woods (the local store of ammonium nitrate). One of the brothers-in-law works next door to it.
There are vacuum systems to keep dust down (on top of a fethload of other anti-explosion/fire precautions in place). It also doesn't stick around for long. It gets made, it gets shipped on a pretty regular basis.
The Beirut one was next door to a grain store, and it was considered "dusty" at the best of times, in a city with a known disregard for the rules and regs, and where corruption is openly rife. Anyone who has worked with large volumes of powdered material can probably tell you about their "dust explosion" safety inductions.

One of the arguments against it being intentional by one of the power groups within the country is that it hit the grain silo whilst it was full, which basically means food is going to become a major problem. If your military group wants to take over its hard when what you take over is a region that has little food and you've just spent all your money on weapons.

Targeting food is more of an outside attacking/defending force move because you deny your opponent food, whilst keeping your own. When its a civil war and all sides rely on some of the same key infrastructure then you are denying your opponent and yourself.


What's more surprising is that the material managed to actually stay in that location for 6 years and not get parcelled out or stolen or otherwise slipped through the net to the military groups.

 Overread wrote:
One of the arguments against it being intentional by one of the power groups within the country is that it hit the grain silo whilst it was full, which basically means food is going to become a major problem. If your military group wants to take over its hard when what you take over is a region that has little food and you've just spent all your money on weapons.

Targeting food is more of an outside attacking/defending force move because you deny your opponent food, whilst keeping your own. When its a civil war and all sides rely on some of the same key infrastructure then you are denying your opponent and yourself.


What's more surprising is that the material managed to actually stay in that location for 6 years and not get parcelled out or stolen or otherwise slipped through the net to the military groups.

Was it still the full amount left though?
Chances are some was sold off bit by bit for bombmaking etc...

Insane amount of damage caused. Interestingly enough, that is a ship that has capsized due to the force of the blast.

I mentioned this in the conspiracy thread but I'll re-iterate it here. It is very highly likely that it was an ammonium nitrate explosion, namely due to the colour of the smoke/vapour after the explosion, it is a fairly unique side effect, well, not fully unique but not many chemicals have red smoke when they burn/evaporate and combined with the size of the smoke clouds and explosion, it's almost conclusive it was ammonium nitrate.



As I mentioned in that thread also, if it was a planned attack, it was most likely sabotage of the chemical storage, not a bomb per say (unless a small bomb was used to trigger). There's also suspected reports that fireworks were stored in the locality of the ammonium nitrate storage... Which is an amazing level of incompetence/not giving an F if it is true....

The Israeli nuke claim is so stupid it's stunning. I guess i shouldn't be surprised but i was.

Where do i begin? No EMP, no radiation, no flashburn...in short no charismatic signature of a nuclear explosion no matter how small.

Plus I'm sure there's plenty of explosive reside from AN left all over the area.

Lastly, a nuke of any size is expensive, a fuel air bomb would have done this cheaper.

But of course reason, science, facts, etc won;t matter and we'll see a wave of ilsmaic attacks on israel over this...

I've read some stuff about some welding works on the warehouses setting fire to the fireworks, which in turn spread to the ammonium nitrate but as with all such things I'll take it with a grain of salt. Wouldn't be the first welding fire ever though, so plausible at least.

This hits close-ish to home a bit considering my local port handles way more than 3ktons of ammonium nitrate regularly. Storage is spread out in multiple smaller stacks though, and I'm confident there's more security measures in place as well.

Theres word on the IExpE site of a study showing the possibility of AN spontaneously detonating/deflagrating if stored in sufficient quantity, due to the heat it creates, presumably when under pressure. I can't find this study however. I'm more inclined to believe an accidental fire or spark causing a self sustaining reaction (AN is an oxidising agent) leading to deflagration then detonation.

 Matt Swain wrote:
The Israeli nuke claim is so stupid it's stunning. I guess i shouldn't be surprised but i was.

Where do i begin? No EMP, no radiation, no flashburn...in short no charismatic signature of a nuclear explosion no matter how small.

Plus I'm sure there's plenty of explosive reside from AN left all over the area.

Lastly, a nuke of any size is expensive, a fuel air bomb would have done this cheaper.

But of course reason, science, facts, etc won;t matter and we'll see a wave of ilsmaic attacks on israel over this...

I’m really hoping that Israel are smart enough to try and be first on the ground with aid and assistance. Lord knows that area of the world could do with improved international relations and they have a real opportunity to be the good guy in a very visible way.

To be able to help, you need the person to accept it.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I've read some stuff about some welding works on the warehouses setting fire to the fireworks, which in turn spread to the ammonium nitrate but as with all such things I'll take it with a grain of salt. Wouldn't be the first welding fire ever though, so plausible at least.

This hits close-ish to home a bit considering my local port handles way more than 3ktons of ammonium nitrate regularly. Storage is spread out in multiple smaller stacks though, and I'm confident there's more security measures in place as well.

I believe it ferments, and whilst is dangerous and flammable anyway, it was this fermentation of the substance and build up of pressure that caused the blast, I think a lot of countries stores AN in various amounts of quantities, so I wouldn't worry too much. Also, a lot of countries store all sorts of dangerous stuff all over, as long as it is looked after properly it is fine.

There was an AN explosion in china some years back, unfortunately, it seems to go hand in hand with countries that have lapsed standards (don't care about it's citizens) compared to us in EU that this is a danger.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

There was an AN explosion in china some years back, unfortunately, it seems to go hand in hand with countries that have lapsed standards (don't care about it's citizens) compared to us in EU that this is a danger.

Yeah, countries with "lapsed standards".

This article claims that the 2750 tonnes of AN would equal 1,800 tonnes of TNT. Not sure how valid the site is but it seems like the explosive equivalent thing is easily checked.


https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-beirut-blast-how-does-yield-of-2750-tonnes-of-ammonium-nitrate-compare-against-halifax-explosion-hiroshima-bombing-2836137?fbclid=IwAR0ruNTvsN3-ofE-LVCQo8UKtY4REZxv3RniLw7OWDfa_8WIaY9cv2xla1E

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

There was an AN explosion in china some years back, unfortunately, it seems to go hand in hand with countries that have lapsed standards (don't care about it's citizens) compared to us in EU that this is a danger.

Yeah, countries with "lapsed standards".

I was talking about this yesterday at the gym, I remembered the explosion, and it being a big one, had no other memory, including country or what the fuel was.

Anyway, I did mention the EU and not the US....

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

There was an AN explosion in china some years back, unfortunately, it seems to go hand in hand with countries that have lapsed standards (don't care about it's citizens) compared to us in EU that this is a danger.

Yeah, countries with "lapsed standards".

If the shoe fits...

So something i was thinking. I saw a real time video of the explsosion.
It looks exactly like a mushroom cloud, and almsot everyone knows that mushrooms clouds explosions might mean a nuke.
I would bet that, for atleast a few moments, quite a few people thought they where getting nuked, imagine how scary that was.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
So something i was thinking. I saw a real time video of the explsosion.
It looks exactly like a mushroom cloud, and almsot everyone knows that mushrooms clouds explosions might mean a nuke.
I would bet that, for atleast a few moments, quite a few people thought they where getting nuked, imagine how scary that was.

I mean, even if the AN explosive power was only half or a third that of an equivalent amount of TNT, that's actually solidly within tactical mini-nuke yield range of ~1Kt, aside from not having the deal with fallout, they might as well have been nuked.

Even more scary, imagine if it happened in a country with nuclear weapons, even if it was not for very long, there would have been some very tense questions/debates going on for a short amount of time including readying their arsenal.... grim

endlesswaltz123 wrote:

I believe it ferments, and whilst is dangerous and flammable anyway, it was this fermentation of the substance and build up of pressure that caused the blast, I think a lot of countries stores AN in various amounts of quantities, so I wouldn't worry too much. Also, a lot of countries store all sorts of dangerous stuff all over, as long as it is looked after properly it is fine.

According to people who claim to know this stuff, AN does not degrade into more dangerous or unstable form over time, unlike some other explosives. However, it does turn into sort of tough hardened paste, which makes it more difficult to handle. In the old days if AN had became too hard, they actually used dynamite to loosen up the mixture, which turned out to be not the best idea ever.

Apparently, there was no 'fireworks warehouse'. Stuff which you see going pop in the video before the major explosions is just small bits of AN blowing up the heat. The fire reportedly began from a welding job meant to close some entrances to the warehouse to stop potential thievery.

As noted, port authorities had worried about the warehouse for years, but higher-ups ignored it all, because moving the stuff costs money. I guess they were not considering how much a new Beirut would cost.