Large explosion in Beirut - hundreds reported injured

[Major-Tom]

I suppose so. I don’t doubt it, just, wow. I have family friends in Beirut and they are still, as you can expect, flabbergasted.

To give an idea, the Manchester bombing in 1996 involved less than 2 tonnes of ANFO. It fucked up the whole of the city centre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Manchester_bombing

Damn. I don’t have any idea as to how to better store ammonium nitrate, but hopefully those who do can do better? Don’t know what else to say.

[Heloin]

Any footage you've seen hasn't had as much ammonium nitrate. As for blasts that can be felt hundreds of kilometres away https://www.britannica.com/event/Texas- ... on-of-1947


Yes.

Welp, that’s just insane. Hoping Beirut can recover, it’s a lovely city that has so much more potential than being known as an unstable city in an unstable country.

Ammonium nitrate is a terrifying material we use to keep our world feed and to make bombs to blow it up. And safe ways to store the stuff will often not be used for cheaper options, everywhere. And there's not really many other things else we can use.

Almost visited Beirut once when I visited Turkey. couldn't find the time and couldn't get the permission to match up with time I had. I truly hope the city and it's people can recover.

[Major-Tom]

Welp, that’s just insane. Hoping Beirut can recover, it’s a lovely city that has so much more potential than being known as an unstable city in an unstable country.

Ammonium nitrate is a terrifying material we use to keep our world feed and to make bombs to blow it up. And safe ways to store the stuff will often not be used for cheaper options, everywhere. And there's not really many other things else we can use.

Almost visited Beirut once when I visited Turkey. couldn't find the time and couldn't get the permission to match up with time I had. I truly hope the city and it's people can recover.

It’s a lovely place, and the Lebanese people are equally lovely. The family friends I had mentioned earlier are Lebanese-American and keep a summer home in Beirut, was going to fly out and visit them this summer or the next but COVID/other restrictions obviously got in the way.

It’s just sad.

[Galloism]

The way that the air vaporizes similar to a nuclear blast shows it was at least several hundred tons of high explosive that went up.

The bolded phrase bothers me on a deep and personal level.

[Neanderthaland]

Well fuck.

Condolences for all the poor bastards caught up in this.

[Fartsniffage]

The way that the air vaporizes similar to a nuclear blast shows it was at least several hundred tons of high explosive that went up.

The bolded phrase bothers me on a deep and personal level.

Why?

[Neanderthaland]

The bolded phrase bothers me on a deep and personal level.

Why?

Air is already vapor.

[Fartsniffage]

Why?

Air is already vapor.

There is more than one definition of vaporise. If an event is energetic enough than you start talking about electronically excited particles, plasma.

[Punainen Suomi]

Air is already vapor.

There is more than one definition of vaporise. If an event is energetic enough than you start talking about electronically excited particles, plasma.

Then it would have been ionised, not vaporised.

[Neanderthaland]

Air is already vapor.

There is more than one definition of vaporise. If an event is energetic enough than you start talking about electronically excited particles, plasma.

That's "ionized"

[Fartsniffage]

There is more than one definition of vaporise. If an event is energetic enough than you start talking about electronically excited particles, plasma.

Then it would have been ionised, not vaporised.

A portion of the sample is vaporized during the laser pulse to form plasma of the sample constituents containing electronically excited atomic species.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... h/vaporize

[Punainen Suomi]

Then it would have been ionised, not vaporised.

A portion of the sample is vaporized during the laser pulse to form plasma of the sample constituents containing electronically excited atomic species.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... h/vaporize

The definition given is 'to turn from a solid or liquid into a gas, or to cause this to happen'. In that example, the sample was originally a solid, vaporised by the laser into a gas, which was then ionised by the laser. Anyway, this is pretty much all semantics. The point is, it doesn't make much sense to talk about a gas being vaporised.

[The New California Republic]

The way that the air vaporizes similar to a nuclear blast shows it was at least several hundred tons of high explosive that went up.

The bolded phrase bothers me on a deep and personal level.

What I meant is that the water in the air condenses in terms of creating a visually observable vapour.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensation_cloud

I edited the post to clarify what I meant.

[The New California Republic]

I’m not a conspiratorial person, but after seeing footage of the blast and how insanely powerful it appeared (IE its shockwave evidently traveling for many miles in bursts), is there anyone with a better science prowess than myself that can explain to me how a warehouse fire could have resulted in such an unbelievably powerful explosion that sent shockwaves all the way to Cyprus?

I simply can’t fathom it being anything other than a coordinated attack, but this isn’t my area of expertise so I’m open to hearing what people with a better scientific background can say about this.

I don't think it was. You can see it burning before the explosion, and ammonium nitrate does tend to explode when it has been burning for a certain amount of time. And given that we are talking about thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate going up at once, it's not surprising that this was the effect.

[Trollgaard]

Was that a fucking dirty bomb that went off? I saw some videos...looked like a mini atomic explosion or something. Holy shit.

[Neanderthaland]

Was that a fucking dirty bomb that went off? I saw some videos...looked like a mini atomic explosion or something. Holy shit.

No indication that it was a dirty bomb.

Dirty bombs aren't any more powerful than normal bombs. They have radioactive materials in them, but that just makes them more problematic and dangerous to clean up.

[A Salmon Named Harold]

Just fireworks

[The New California Republic]

Was that a fucking dirty bomb that went off? I saw some videos...looked like a mini atomic explosion or something. Holy shit.

No it was just the sheer amount of ammonium nitrate that pushed the explosion into the kilotons range, hence why it looked similar.

And a dirty bomb isn't a nuclear explosion as such, it's simply a conventional bomb with nuclear material around it to contaminate a wide area, but no fission or fusion takes place.

[Twicetagram and JYPe]

what the hell that looks scary asf. I hope all the Lebanese peeps are okay.
Fsr this reminded me of Tianjin. Maybe it's the fact that there were large explosions in both. I know these two are totally different things and shouldn't be compared, but that was the first thing I thought of.

[Trollgaard]

I heard that they are telling people to leave the city...like was this thing a dirty bomb? Has Beirut been irradiated or something?!

[Andsed]

The death toll is now 78 dead and around 4,000 wounded.

[The New California Republic]

I heard that they are telling people to leave the city...like was this thing a dirty bomb? Has Beirut been irradiated or something?!

Again no.

[Trollgaard]

I heard that they are telling people to leave the city...like was this thing a dirty bomb? Has Beirut been irradiated or something?!

Again no.

Good lord, I hope you are right!

[Fartsniffage]

Again no.

Good lord, I hope you are right!

If it was a radiological attack then Western nations would be in overdrive right now.

[Alcala-Cordel]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... on-capital


Lebanon's PM says it was a caused by 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate and the government does not think this was an attack.