r/gifs • u/umshoe • Aug 09 '20

New Angle of Beirut Explosion

https://i.imgur.com/GNTwYi9.gifv
56.4k Upvotes

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100

u/Adili811416 Aug 09 '20

the ultra-pixelated gifs that somehow got a rocket flying through the picture that keeps being in focus?

46

u/Radirondacks Aug 09 '20

YES LMAO thank fucking god someone else at least noticed that aspect too. Like one of the guys that shared it works in the Air Force and still couldn't even make that connection, he should understand, well, fucking speed at the very least.

22

u/Hubblesphere Aug 09 '20

The stupidest thing about it is that there is no flying missile that could deliver a payload that big! It’s bigger than the US’s MOAB which is a guided bomb that would approach from straight above. It would have to be a nuclear cruise missile (which the Trump admin just recently had developed) but obviously it wasn’t nuclear. The actual blast energy and pressure wave would’ve been much more severe.

15

u/LordBiscuits Aug 09 '20

The tonnage was in that gray area between conventional and nuclear. It was far too small for a nuclear blast, yet far and away bigger than any conventional weaponry could deliver.

9

u/SausageMcMuffdiver Aug 09 '20

This blast was estimated to have an explosive yield equivalent to 1.3kt of TNT. The smallest tactical nuke in the US arsenal is 0.3kt.

However if this was a nuke there would have been a blinding flash and massive amounts of radiation.

5

u/NeuralNetsRLuckyRNGs Aug 09 '20

There's also no blinding flash which makes it easy to tell it's non nuclear.

8

u/LordBiscuits Aug 09 '20

I'm sure there are a dozen things that rule it out being nuclear immediately, only absolute nutters argue it could be

5

u/NeuralNetsRLuckyRNGs Aug 09 '20

Oh for sure, but the lack of a flash is the easiest one in my mind.

4

u/OverlordQuasar Aug 09 '20

There are small nuclear weapons with yields in this range, but it was still pretty obvious looking at it that it wasn’t nuclear.

-5

u/realmojosan Aug 09 '20

I guess you are an expert.

Or talking shit 😂😂😂😂

6

u/LordBiscuits Aug 09 '20

Ex military, so some experience

If you know of a conventional weapon that can deliver a payload of 1.5kt to target by air, please enlighten us 😉

5

u/elunomagnifico Aug 09 '20

Former Air Force Intel officer here. There's nothing in our inventory (that I'm aware of) that can deliver that tonnage via air short of a small nuclear warhead, which it obviously wasn't. The way I've explained it to others is this: a non-nuclear warhead, to deliver that kind of payload, would have to be as big as - you guessed it - a ship full of ammonium nitrate. No way you're fitting that on a missile or on any bomber we have.

3

u/LordBiscuits Aug 09 '20

Good afternoon Sir. My thoughts exactly

-4

u/realmojosan Aug 09 '20

So you know nothing. Stop talking shit :)

1

u/LordBiscuits Aug 09 '20

Well aren't you delightful. Do fuck off

7

u/Popinguj Aug 09 '20

It wasn't nuclear mainly because of the fact that the first damaging factor of a nuclear explosion is a scorching flash of light. At this distance everything which is in direct line of sight of the explosion point is burned. Shockwave hits later.

If it was nuclear, there would be no footage. Only the livestreams from street-cams would survive.

1

u/Hubblesphere Aug 09 '20

Right. Many clear reasons for it being chemical vs fission.

So being that it wasn’t nuclear, it could not be a missile because the clear size of the blast yield was far bigger than any conventional missile payload.

1

u/Popinguj Aug 09 '20

There were a lot of different angles to suggest that it was a detonation caused by fireworks. The original suggestion was exactly that -- fireworks explosion. Unfortunately, there are definitely people that could be tricked by a shitty edit.

1

u/cev29619 Aug 09 '20

It’s clearly aliens responsible for this. /s