Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Voss wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Though let's be honest. Whoever does have responsibility for this tragedy is either going to be spending money to cut ties or desperately trying to skip town. We're already hearing reports of mobs wanting justice in the area.

Apparently lots of port works and officials have been rounded up and arrested. Whoever ends up being deemed 'responsible' for this is probably going to be surprised, right up until the moment they're hung by the neck.


Though maybe not, since protests have turn to occupying the foreign ministry and erecting a gallows, and burning portraits of the President.
Meanwhile he's still blaming 'maybe some sort of rocket attack' and refusing an international investigation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53704998

This may actually turn into a regime change. Or get more complicated if a neighbor decides there doesn't need to be a Lebanon anymore (probably Syria, though they're busy with their own issues still; and Israel doing it, even in the name of protecting people, would turn into a regional crisis)

Makes you wonder if it was some sort of safety screw up or if someone who knew what they were doing was trying to instigate something. In all likleyhood though the cause of it is likely gone or will be forgotten as people guide their anger and discontentment somewhere else. As it seems the President is that target huh?

Matt Swain wrote:Yeah, you all do get I wasn't seriously suggesting it was an anti matter bomb, right? After beating down the "nuke" idea for numerous reasons I saw a poster had made a good joke about people claiming it was a secret "next gen nuke" that didn't have fallout or EMP. I just decided to play on that with the idea a 'next gen nuke' might be an antimatter device.

But seriously, I thought some con nut might try to bring that up once a normal nuke was disproved.

Don’t worry, I knew you weren’t being serious, it just got me thinking about what would be the output from an antimatter device? Turns out, probably very similar to a nuke (maybe less fall out?)

cody.d. wrote:

Voss wrote:

cody.d. wrote:
Though let's be honest. Whoever does have responsibility for this tragedy is either going to be spending money to cut ties or desperately trying to skip town. We're already hearing reports of mobs wanting justice in the area.

Apparently lots of port works and officials have been rounded up and arrested. Whoever ends up being deemed 'responsible' for this is probably going to be surprised, right up until the moment they're hung by the neck.


Though maybe not, since protests have turn to occupying the foreign ministry and erecting a gallows, and burning portraits of the President.
Meanwhile he's still blaming 'maybe some sort of rocket attack' and refusing an international investigation.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53704998

This may actually turn into a regime change. Or get more complicated if a neighbor decides there doesn't need to be a Lebanon anymore (probably Syria, though they're busy with their own issues still; and Israel doing it, even in the name of protecting people, would turn into a regional crisis)

Makes you wonder if it was some sort of safety screw up or if someone who knew what they were doing was trying to instigate something. In all likleyhood though the cause of it is likely gone or will be forgotten as people guide their anger and discontentment somewhere else. As it seems the President is that target huh?

A) never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence and B) sneaking in to the port to try and initiate a questionable cargo of AN is real Saturday morning cartoon villain stuff. There’s so many ways it can go wrong and what’s the target, beyond general destabilisation? And if you’re going for that, just start a run on the banks or plant incriminating leaks or plain old assassination of key targets; there’s a bunch of more subtle ways to upset a regime. And if you don’t care about subtle or collateral damage, car bombs at key locations (power stations, reservoirs, etc.) in an ongoing campaign would be far more effective. This is a major, tragic, event, but people move on and rebuild with surprising resilience from one-off catastrophe’s.

It was no anti-matter bomb. It was most obviously a stealthed brilliant pebble from the orbiting death space station that was dropped to test their system -- and they chose this target both to reduce faith in existing institutions and to hide the evidence of a flying crowbar from low earth orbit suddenly impacting a warehouse.

Duh, man, stick with the times, its Star Wars up there. Unless, of course, it really is dumb to do welding in a building with kilotons of explosives sitting around.

This is what happens when you mix Taco Bell + Pop Rocks + Pepsi (or Coke).

cody.d. wrote:

Makes you wonder if it was some sort of safety screw up or if someone who knew what they were doing was trying to instigate something. In all likleyhood though the cause of it is likely gone or will be forgotten as people guide their anger and discontentment somewhere else. As it seems the President is that target huh?

Signs just point to a screw-up combined with general background corruption (in the form of people passing the 'not my job' buck)

The president is playing chase the scapegoat with the population. He's trying to find one, and protestors are largely coming to the conclusion that this is the latest of 'too much.' Lebanon hasn't been a happy or even vaguely content country for a long time. So less food, less supplies, less work on top of a fresh pile of deaths and injuries? Blaming the person in charge is a fairly reasonable take.

Its likely also extra galling that the AN could (and should have been) sold off by the government, which then could have brought in more food and supplies. Or just, you know, used as fertilizer by Lebanese farmers. It was impounded and abandoned by the companies involved in moving it to its destination in Africa, so it could have been put to good use for Lebanon, and so a potential windfall just turned into a major disaster.

 Matt Swain wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
The only people calling this a nuke are the ones who reflexively blame "the jooze" for everything bad that happens. They're idiots. The fact so many electronic cameras recorded this without any flicker proves there was no emp hence no nuke.

Obviously this is a next-gen nuke that doesn’t have an EMP. Those would disable the chips they are implanting into people. This was a test, wake up sheeple!

/sarcasm (in case it wasn’t obvious)

I do think mushroom cloud=nuke in most people’s eyes. And with the level of damage it’s not an unreasonable first conclusion to jump to. That’s a lot of devastation for one blast. But once you start looking closer, it’s clearly not a nuke.

At least from the information that They are allowing out.

Yeah I kinda got it was nice sarcasm.

As to a nuke that did not produce emp or conventional radioactive fallout, I wonder if a speck of antimatter could do something like that. I imagine the amount of antimatter needed to produce this blast would be barely if at all visible to a naked eye. I'm not sure if matter/antimatter mutual annihilation produced an emp or any normal radioactive fallout, i mean there's no fission element involved in an antimatter blast. So that could be your cynically suggested "next gen nuke".

I suppose sooner or later a con nut wil claim it was a test of an antimatter weapon. I'm going to pre empt it by saying anyone who could make, store, transport and deploy the amount of antimatter needed to make this blast would probably have better things to do than blow up beirut with it.

Not enough gamma radiation for antimatter, and nowhere near bright enough. Plus the red smoke.

Maybe going off topic here but if you're interested in realistic nukes there's a book called "The science of battlestar galactica" that goes into a lot of very real detail on the science of nuclear weapons.

It details various types of nukes, from tac nukes to multi megaton warheads, along with "clean" neutron bomb style nukes which is why caprica city was largely intact and habitable and at the other end the massive "salted" nuked which is why the original earth was still unihabitably radioactive after 2,000 years.

There is also factual information on what radiation does to humans.

Since this conversation drifted over to nukes I thought I'd offer some educational material on the subject and plug a damn good book too.

At this point only idiots and people secretly pushing an evil agenda are still pushing the "deliberate bombing" claim.

(Yes, I meant who you think I meant. Shhhhh. )

Yeah its important to realise that this explosion isn't the first of the country's problems. It's been a hotbed of issues for a long time and the riots/protests are the reaction of a population on-edge who just suffered a horrific disaster.

 Overread wrote:
Yeah its important to realise that this explosion isn't the first of the country's problems. It's been a hotbed of issues for a long time and the riots/protests are the reaction of a population on-edge who just suffered a horrific disaster.

Considering that the population, that is this divided else, pretty much unilaterally wanted to see the government at the very least ousted or with a rope around their necks, it might just lead to positive result, IF , they get the support and can maintain the momentum.
Funnily enough the swiss ambassador to Lebanon has called for aid, but demanded that no money go to any governmental or governmental related group.
I don't know how much money will be spoken, so far it looks like 4 million $ atleast which , i guess whilest a pretty penny, is probably not even close enough to solve the damage of the explosion, much less actually strengthening civilian self organisation like f.e. what has been dubbed over here as shovel brigades of civilian volunteers that have selforganised to atleast get rid of the debris from the explosion.

The real question is, will this be the straw that broke the camels back and what are the consequences.

The main issue would be that internal divisions respark again, and considering how devastating the first civil war was, i hope not.
How will the paramilitary structures react to a change in power, last but not least the Hizbollah..
How many heads will roll? Revolutions and their tendency to purge personell, can for a long time damage administration and other structures...
How will the global players react, France comes to mind, but also the EU, USA, and for certain the local hegemons duking it out Saudi arabia and iran.
Local minorities and the role they play and their loyalities...

Lebanon has been a gak show for a long time. It will take alot of time regardless what happens to solve the most pressing issues like rampant infaltion, etc.

Ok, to be honest who cares enough about beirut to pull this off as an attack? Who would pull it off then not claim credit for it?

The only possibly viable conspiracy theory i could even look at without wrinkling my nose is some radical group did it then tries to blame israel to drum up more hate and attacks on israel.

That's the only CS I see that pretty much isn't DOA.

Odd are this was just a total SNAFU situation that went FUBAR. Take a city that has along history of destruction and devastation, add in a generally weak and unpopular government holding on by force, create a malaise of despair, apathy, indifference and people just struggling to survive with little energy or time to do things right let alone above and beyond the call, such as checking into the long stored AN, and just wait. No deliberate action required.


Getting away from the "Was it a bombing?" debate I wonder how much aid has reached beirut yet? What nations and pledging/sending aid? Have mobile hospitals arrived? Is food being shipped in? Are shelters being built?

One possibility could be that a portion of the AN had been removed from the warehouse for other nefarious purposes, then what was left could be detonated to hide the theft.

I do agree that what has happened is a massive accident, but if I were writing a book I could see the former as a plot...

Seems rather extreme to detonate what was left to hide such a theft; esp when the material didn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon. Chances are you could steal several times from such a supply and no one would notice for quite a while until it was to be moved and tested.

 Overread wrote:
Seems rather extreme to detonate what was left to hide such a theft; esp when the material didn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon. Chances are you could steal several times from such a supply and no one would notice for quite a while until it was to be moved and tested.

Well, if you are stealing it to use to build bombs then stealing what you can and then blowing it up covers your tracks and also gives you an easy initial attack, after which you can follow up with smaller attacks in the form of car bombs etc.

Though with no group coming out to claim responsibility that seems unlikely as a clandestine op to destabilise the government would not be served by any further bombings unless it was also in areas where it would appear to be the result of government neglect and/or corruption.

Here's my suggestion for another dumb conspiracy theory: France planned this to restore its mandate on Lebanon.

You could have stolen 2000tons of the stuff just leaving the outer bags there to make it look like it was still there.

That's an impractical CS if I ever heard one.

 Tiennos wrote:
Here's my suggestion for another dumb conspiracy theory: France planned this to restore its mandate on Lebanon.

France can't even controll it's own countryside half the bloody time What the hell would they even do if they 'd have to actually babysitt anoter territory that is also hostile to them

Jk jk but the point still kinda stands.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
Here's my suggestion for another dumb conspiracy theory: France planned this to restore its mandate on Lebanon.

France can't even controll it's own countryside half the bloody time What the hell would they even do if they 'd have to actually babysitt anoter territory that is also hostile to them

Jk jk but the point still kinda stands.

I did say it was a dumb theory

Seriously though, some people launched a petition for France to take over again. It's never gonna happen, but it's good fuel for the tinfoil-hat types.

 Tiennos wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Tiennos wrote:
Here's my suggestion for another dumb conspiracy theory: France planned this to restore its mandate on Lebanon.

France can't even controll it's own countryside half the bloody time What the hell would they even do if they 'd have to actually babysitt anoter territory that is also hostile to them

Jk jk but the point still kinda stands.

I did say it was a dumb theory

Seriously though, some people launched a petition for France to take over again. It's never gonna happen, but it's good fuel for the tinfoil-hat types.

Wait. what? in Lebanon?
I guess if they want too?

I'm not kidding, here it is. I don't know who started that exactly; some people who have absolutely zero confidence in Lebanese politics, I suppose... They didn't get a whole lot of signatures in the end, so it's not like it's a mainstream thing.

Fun fact: in 1997, two of the Comoros islands declared independance and asked to be reattached to France... and that went nowhere fast. We can expect the same result with that petition.

Again, not to be hateful but what would anyone want to take over beirut? I mean I get it;' a port city, but who would want the trouble and headaches of owning it assuming there's enough solidity there to grab onto?

 Matt Swain wrote:
Again, not to be hateful but what would anyone want to take over beirut? I mean I get it;' a port city, but who would want the trouble and headaches of owning it assuming there's enough solidity there to grab onto?

Well, Russia, for one. Most of their cooperation with Syria has been with the intent on getting a Mediterranean port [they have a free, 49 year lease on a naval facility (with total sovereignty) at Tartus for their aid, which is about 2 hours up the coast from Beirut], so they can't be completely blocked off in the Black Sea at Istanbul. Beirut would be a functional second choice if things had fallen through there. [Historically, permanent unfettered access to the Mediterranean and Arabian seas has been a Russian goal for centuries- the USSR-Afghan war, for example, was a part of their drive to the sea, and Pakistan would have been next had they not gotten bogged down. Putin seems to have revived that interest by other means]

Iran, for much the same reason. They could do a lot with a permanent presence (naval, air and ground) on that side of the Levant. Same goes for anyone else south of the Suez canal. Suddenly their trade and military prospects are vastly altered.

For the paranoid, Israel, to disrupt the 'northern enemy.'

Still, there's no reason to think that anyone did this.
But coming up with theoretical motives to disrupt or take advantage of a weak political entity is easy-peasy.

An interesting update to this story, which is significant enough I think to not be considered threadcromancy under the "If you have something fantastic to add which is a direct continuation of this original thread then it should be alright to do so" codicil:


A forensics expert report finds what we sort of already knew (there were tons of Ammonium Nitrate stored there), but also... some other stuff.

News reports and photos taken inside the building before the incident also found that, despite it containing thousands of tons of the explosive material, the warehouse was also used to store 23 tons of fireworks, over 1,000 rubber car tires, and five rolls of slow-burning detonating cord.

There is a 12 minute video reconstruction what exactly happened, using open-source footage shot by people. It's a wild watch.

 Ouze wrote:
An interesting update to this story, which is significant enough I think to not be considered threadcromancy under the "If you have something fantastic to add which is a direct continuation of this original thread then it should be alright to do so" codicil:


A forensics expert report finds what we sort of already knew (there were tons of Ammonium Nitrate stored there), but also... some other stuff.

News reports and photos taken inside the building before the incident also found that, despite it containing thousands of tons of the explosive material, the warehouse was also used to store 23 tons of fireworks, over 1,000 rubber car tires, and five rolls of slow-burning detonating cord.

There is a 12 minute video reconstruction what exactly happened, using open-source footage shot by people. It's a wild watch.

As horrible that blast was... I can't help be stare at such destruction.

Definitely wild to watch.

All those annoying OHSA regulations and the like...this is why you store things that goes "boom boom" properly.

 whembly wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
An interesting update to this story, which is significant enough I think to not be considered threadcromancy under the "If you have something fantastic to add which is a direct continuation of this original thread then it should be alright to do so" codicil:


A forensics expert report finds what we sort of already knew (there were tons of Ammonium Nitrate stored there), but also... some other stuff.

News reports and photos taken inside the building before the incident also found that, despite it containing thousands of tons of the explosive material, the warehouse was also used to store 23 tons of fireworks, over 1,000 rubber car tires, and five rolls of slow-burning detonating cord.

There is a 12 minute video reconstruction what exactly happened, using open-source footage shot by people. It's a wild watch.

As horrible that blast was... I can't help be stare at such destruction.

Definitely wild to watch.

All those annoying OHSA regulations and the like...this is why you store things that goes "boom boom" properly.

Amen! Preach it brother!

When you hear some people ranting and raving about "big gubmint regyoolayshuns!" just remember they're why things like this don't happen all that often in countries that have them.

Yup. Next time you see some politician on the payroll of some corporation railing against "health and safety gone mad" remember that the regulations they are seeking to cut back were bought in blood.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Yup. Next time you see some politician on the payroll of some corporation railing against "health and safety gone mad" remember that the regulations they are seeking to cut back were bought in blood.

Yer got that bloody right mate!

The annoying thing so often with OHS stuff is when it gets stupid trying to chase tiny things that aren't actually dangerous, and misses things that genuinely are dangerous.

We've had a couple of instances at my work where, IMO, the workspace has been made less safe because the desire to follow a safety standard on one thing has made everything else less safe.

Or the other one is when the people in charge of the OHS system and the people who sign off on OHS forms have no real qualification or expertise. I've raised safety issues related to a pretty complicated piece of dangerous equipment that have been ignored by a bunch of safety people who have no fething clue how the equipment even works, while another piece of equipment that is not particuarly dangerous in the hands of a trained operator got removed because apparently it "looked" dangerous.

Sometimes I wonder if the people who understand safety are too smart to put their hand up for the job of safety officer and it ends up falling to people who don't know what they're doing. (I will say one of the safety officers at my work is great and has been super helpful, but in general I've been less than impressed)

People rightfully bitch about improperly implemented OHS systems. Stuff like storing thousands of tons of explosives in a warehouse near a city is less OHS and more completely bloody silly. You don't need to write an OHS document to figure out that something with a blast radius of kilometres should not be stored in one big bundle so close to a populated area. It's not even a case of hindsight being 20/20, people know ammonium nitrate is dangerous and this has happened before (581 people killed in Texas City in 1947) from a very similar volume of the stuff.

ITs more that, if there are no regulations, corporations will try to get away with whatever they can to make a quick buck.

My understanding is a lot of early anti-health and safety pushback was more because whilst the concepts were sound, the teaching and implementation were fairly poor. So you had a lot of firms who didn't know what to do, they just knew you had to have a whole new layer of forms for it. So they resented "having" to spend money on specialist firms who were brought in to produce that paperwork.

Today there's a bit more awareness and companies are more apt to do it internally as part of regular staff roles. But there's still a lot of hangover from those early days. Old forms and policies that were "tickbox" correct answers, but poorly implemented or simply wrong for the chosen industry etc...


At its core the concept is sound; it looks to identify problems; rank them and then establish if they are too dangerous to undertake and if so if there are any measures that can lower the danger value. It's basically a formal framework for how to try and ensure safe practice.

Of course there's a lot of flexibility and opinion in things. One tool that's safe for one person is unsafe for another etc... I think there's certainly a lot of scope that those who devise the policies need to either take on board or have direct experience of the workplace to produce efficient sensible guidelines

If some fool says we dont need gubmint regyoolaytin big business, try showing them this little snapshot of the good ol' days.

https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4IC6APEADM3MLBLIPODK3MKOQI.jpg

I didn't link the image since it's big, I bet you're not too lazy to clink on the link to see it.

Of course most of those people will just say "Well at 'east it kept them kids outta trubil!"


You could also show them this article.

https://www.nj.com/perspective/2011/03/the_fire_that_awoke_a_nation_t.html#:~:text=The%20Triangle%20Shirtwaist%20Factory%20fire%20killed%20146%20but,Updated%20Mar%2031%2C%202019%3B%20Posted%20Mar%2020%2C%202011

Naturally most of the 'anti regulationt' types will just bellow "Well they had a choice 'bout workin' dere! Ifn't they dint like it they cooda kwit!"

But hey, most people will understand.

Honestly, i wonder what labor conditions in beirut are like and how they might have factored into this disaster. I'm not expecting anyone to try doing an expose on them tho.