Lebanon: Where Iran’s satanic mullahs and the Hexbollah terrorists have co-existed with Lebanese society for decades; where the politicians are wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling corrupt whores; where tribalism has run amok; where the banking system has debased the currency; where criminals are glorified. Lebanon. Coming soon to a country near you.
Who knew they had such extensive “fireworks” factories in Beirut? It’s probably nothing.
CCAugust 4, 2020, 5:24 PM
One article called it a “bomb shop”, another said Hezbollah ammo warehouse.
Either way, fewer indiscriminate bombings & shootings, so it’s all good!
Gordon ScottAugust 4, 2020, 6:47 PM
weeeel…Some Lebanese politician said it was 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had just been sitting around for six years. Let’s assume the blast wave scrambled his brain enough that he told the truth. That red cloud afterward is certainly suggestive of a nitrate explosive.
2700 tonnes is 5,400,000 pounds. Ammonium nitrate has the explosive equivalency of .42 of TNT, giving us a yield of 2,268,000 pounds of TNT. That’s 2.2 kilotons. Now we’re in very small nuke world. We have some nukes with that sort of yield. The warhead on a Genie air-to-air missile is around that number, and there are (were) some artillery nukes like that. The Russkies had (have) a suitcase nuke in that vicinity.
That instant condensation shroud is not unique to nukes, but one usually doesn’t see it and certainly not that big of one.
But if the question is, “What happens if a really, really big bomb goes off close to a major modern city?” we have an answer.
Gordon ScottAugust 4, 2020, 6:52 PM
Oh, and it’s entirely possible to look at the grain elevator near the explosion, and if one knows the height of that, then calculate the distance from one of the cell phone cameras, and then carefully time the arrival of the blast wave. From that you can work out the explosion’s size fairly well, but I’m not going to do it.
Actually, a tonne is 1,000 kg which is 2,204.62 pounds av. roughly. So 2,700 tonnes is 5,952,473 poonds av. Just sayin’. For the record. But we donʻt expect some to know that.
Fletcher ChristianAugust 5, 2020, 2:12 AM
Ric: Yep. A long ton (20 hundredweight) is very close to the same weight as a tonne.
It has recently come out that the Lebanese authorities saw fit to store 2700 tonnes of rather sensitive high explosives next door to a fireworks warehouse.
Sounds as if this was possibly an accident, caused by sheer stupidity.
BroKenAugust 5, 2020, 7:30 AM
There might have been an ammo dump there but in the first video there is what looks like a jet fighter flying over the explosion, just a little black triangle swooping by. That would be quite a coincidence if it just happened to be flying by when the dump finally blew up.
It is interesting that the high rise close by appears undamaged. I can’t speak to the windows, but it was built under an impressive code. Structures much farther away were entirely demolished.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
NEW Real World Address for Complaints, Brickbats, and Donations
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
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Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
Comments on this entry are closed.
Who knew they had such extensive “fireworks” factories in Beirut? It’s probably nothing.
One article called it a “bomb shop”, another said Hezbollah ammo warehouse.
Either way, fewer indiscriminate bombings & shootings, so it’s all good!
weeeel…Some Lebanese politician said it was 2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had just been sitting around for six years. Let’s assume the blast wave scrambled his brain enough that he told the truth. That red cloud afterward is certainly suggestive of a nitrate explosive.
2700 tonnes is 5,400,000 pounds. Ammonium nitrate has the explosive equivalency of .42 of TNT, giving us a yield of 2,268,000 pounds of TNT. That’s 2.2 kilotons. Now we’re in very small nuke world. We have some nukes with that sort of yield. The warhead on a Genie air-to-air missile is around that number, and there are (were) some artillery nukes like that. The Russkies had (have) a suitcase nuke in that vicinity.
That instant condensation shroud is not unique to nukes, but one usually doesn’t see it and certainly not that big of one.
But if the question is, “What happens if a really, really big bomb goes off close to a major modern city?” we have an answer.
Oh, and it’s entirely possible to look at the grain elevator near the explosion, and if one knows the height of that, then calculate the distance from one of the cell phone cameras, and then carefully time the arrival of the blast wave. From that you can work out the explosion’s size fairly well, but I’m not going to do it.
Turn a blind eye to terrorist/Iranian/Hezbollah munitions dump. What’s the worse that can happen?
Terrific job they’re doing of running things since the evil European powers left.
Actually, a tonne is 1,000 kg which is 2,204.62 pounds av. roughly. So 2,700 tonnes is 5,952,473 poonds av. Just sayin’. For the record. But we donʻt expect some to know that.
Ric: Yep. A long ton (20 hundredweight) is very close to the same weight as a tonne.
It has recently come out that the Lebanese authorities saw fit to store 2700 tonnes of rather sensitive high explosives next door to a fireworks warehouse.
Sounds as if this was possibly an accident, caused by sheer stupidity.
There might have been an ammo dump there but in the first video there is what looks like a jet fighter flying over the explosion, just a little black triangle swooping by. That would be quite a coincidence if it just happened to be flying by when the dump finally blew up.
Relax. Things could be worse. You could be serving in the Iranian Navy:
Iran humiliated as they completely bungle symbolic sinking of fake US warship blocking entry to main naval port
I’m truly sorry for all the innocent people injured or killed. This looks horrific.
It is interesting that the high rise close by appears undamaged. I can’t speak to the windows, but it was built under an impressive code. Structures much farther away were entirely demolished.
When I first started looking at the images and reading, I thought ammonium nitrate.
Ric and Fletcher have the right of it.
(slinks away, head bowed)