The news I’ve seen is calling it a fireworks explosion. But that shockwave looks like high explosives, not a bunch of black powder.
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That sort of thing makes me think of compounds that contain lots of nitro groups. Oxides of nitrogen tend to be reddish-brown.
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I’d been Googling for a red smoke explanation, and that looks right.
Nitric acid > ammonium nitrate > fertilizers, plastics, dyes
also > nitroglycerin and TNT
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According to Slate, the Lebanese Army is reporting that the fire spread to a “nitrate warehouse” and that is what caused the second blast.
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Fireworks my ass.
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Fireworks my ass.
Generally inadvisable, unless you’re aiming for a Darwin award.
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Yeah, apparently they’re now saying it was ammonium nitrate that had been confiscated and stored for years. Not a great plan.
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I mean, if it was a grain, why couldn’t it be red due to the type of grain?
What color is quadrotriticale? Somebody check the local CCTV recordings for Klingons.
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“We confiscated a ton of bombmaking materials / ANFO and decided to leave it in the harbour. Because we didn’t read about Halifax.”
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Beirut has fairly first hand experience of what fertiliser bombs go like IIRC. No need to look for outside expertise.
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This kind of thing gets overlooked after the tragedy is over and the bodies are buried, but there are hundreds of thousands of lives lost and incalculable ecological damage due to unregulated or unenforced industrial activity. Copper slag gets accidentally released into a waterway because years of citations go unenforced, oil gets dumped into the ocean and experimental “dispersants” get dumped in on top of them, dramatically escalating the impact, a minor quake cracks the foundation of a waste containment pond and leaks for decades without anyone doing anything about it. Step into any manufacturing facility anywhere on this planet and you will see countless horrifying disasters just waiting to happen.
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Probably the same way people “saw” a missile rising up to TWA Flight 800, before it exploded over Long Island, NY.
She heard a low flying jet, others saw it
I’m just antsy, because, whether or not there were “sightings”, Israel is going to be blamed for it. There is no possible way Israel is responsible for this one. An unclaimed, mass terror event is not the way they inflict violence. Even Iran is unlikely, because there is no evident benefit. It is ridiculous (and typical) that Trump, with no evidence, called it an intentional act.
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I don’t even know what to say. When I started the first video I thought at first I was watching the aftereffects of the explosion and then then primary explosion was just stunning. So many people dead, injured or homeless. The port district of a major city just wiped out in an instant. The economic fallout that’s going to fall hardest on the least able to deal with it in the middle of a global pandemic. It’s like a low-yield tactical nuke went off in the middle of two million people. I’m shaking with sadness, fury and numbness. 
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To quote the island volcano shock-wave guy: “Holy Smokin’ Toledos!”
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50 dead, 3000+ hurt.
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And put a fireworks warehouse next to it…"
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Sorry I misheard the report.
She heard a low flying jet, others saw it
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I bet the Uranium centrifuge facility is right under the ANFO building…
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And even when it’s not on fire - explosives (AN, too) in large enough quantities have been know to self-heat and go kerplewie.
That’s a really standard lesson in explosives safety training once they understood what was happening.
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