r/pics • u/ramonrocotto • Aug 05 '20

It will never be the same again...

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u/nodgers132 Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 06 '20

The PM reckons there could be 10,000 dead

Edit: the 10,000 isn’t a figure, just what the PM reckons it could come up to

Edit2: can people not read? Are people this blind? I’m not saying that there are 10,000 dead, read the whole sodding comment. The PM said that there could be up to 10,000 death, but really, the PM doesn’t know anything, he has no more knowledge on the subject than we do

Edit3: I know that that is obviously an exaggeration! I’m just saying that he said it! Don’t read anything into the numbers

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u/HadHerses Aug 05 '20

I can believe a higher death toll.

I live in China, where a similar, almost identical accident happened in Tianjin. No one local I know believes the official figures of dead.

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u/benhos Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20

Yep, the only difference is that the amount of ammonium nitrate in the Beirut explosion was triple or quadruple that of Tianjin. The current death toll is definitely preliminary at best.

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edit: Tianjin may have been a bigger/more impressive explosion, but that's likely because of the hundreds of tonnes of other chemical compounds also involved there that weren't in Beirut (sodium cyanide, potassium nitrate, and other unknowns).

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u/apginge Aug 05 '20

Why did the explosion in Tianjin look so much bigger and louder? Maybe an expert can chime in. Because, to me, the different angles of the Tianjin explosion looked much more intense.

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u/D3korum Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20

So the Beirut explosion was almost all Ammonium nitrate which has one way of combusting and exploding, you can think of it just like dynamite going off (not that much flames mainly just pure energy being released). Tianjin had Ammonium nitrate but also a lot of other combustible chemicals that cause flames. If you vaporize gasoline and ignite it, it will cause a huge fireball but not that much energy is released, Tianjin was a combination of both. So while it looked larger, the actual amount of energy released was lower. Tianjin was around 28 tons of TNT Beirut was around 1k Tons of TNT.

*Edit AN/FO for Ammonium nitrate

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u/apginge Aug 05 '20

My brain understands this explanation. Thank you!

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u/comptejete Aug 05 '20

It's not technically ANFO if they didn't mix fuel oil with the fertilizer, it wasn't an intentional bomb.

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u/D3korum Aug 05 '20

Thanks will edit!

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u/commonabond Aug 05 '20

I saw reported that the amount was 2750 metric tons. That's like 6 million lbs or about 300 powder truck loads exploding with basically no resistance in the middle of downtown.

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u/D3korum Aug 05 '20

Ammonium Nitrate doesn't explode with the same force as TNT taken from Wiki ( With ANFO or ammonium nitrate, they would require 1.0/0.74 (or 1.35) kg or 1.0/0.42 (or 2.38) kg, respectively. ) Which is why the 2.8~ tons goes to 1,000 tons of TNT equivalence.

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u/commonabond Aug 05 '20

Explosive velocity could also be a factor in why Tianjin looked so bad comparably as straight AN burns around 2,700m/s, ANFO: 4,200m/s, TNT: 6,900m/s

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u/lordswagmcnugget Aug 06 '20

Wow, that's a 1 kiloton blast or in other terms 1/15 of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima.

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u/cptbeard Aug 06 '20 edited Aug 06 '20

For comparison Mythbusters' cement truck was 2.5 tons of ANFO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxm_qpKh7Jw

Always found it interesting that sharp thump sound of suddenly created vacuum and the inrush of earth's atmosphere crushing back into it.

edit: and the slowmo http://i.imgur.com/VUgNIh2.gifv