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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Beirut would be ‘erased’ had full chemical load exploded, bulk likely stolen
2020-08-09
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] The amount of ammonium nitrate which led to the deadly Beirut explosion must have been much less than the original stockpile or else the Lebanese capital would have been "erased," Russian military expert Viktor Murakhovsky said.

The Beirut blast, which claimed the lives of at least 158 people and injured 6,000 others, was so intense it smashed masonry, shattered windows, sucked furniture out of apartments onto the streets and left almost 300,000 people in disaster-stricken Beirut without homes fit to live in, according to Lebanese officials.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun
...president of Leb, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hizbullah...
 had said the earth-shattering kaboom was due to a stockpile of 2,750 tonnes of the industrial chemical ammonium nitrate, used in fertilizers and explosives, catching fire after having been stored at the port since 2013 without safety measures.

However,
women are made to be loved, not understood...
 Murakhovsky said that if the full amount announced by Lebanese officials did explode, it would have erased Beirut off the map.

The military expert added in an interview with Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that it is much more likely thon the lam amounts from such a stockpile were stolen over the years.
Posted by:Fred

#8  stage three - even larger white blast, a half second or so after stage two, which evidently had a pressure wave

That's the ground turned to dust. Result is the crater. As the downward portion of the blast is now reflect back up, you get the highest pressure difference and the formation of the shock wave from the ground up.
Posted by: Omick Turkeyneck9291   2020-08-09 19:32  

#7  It's not TNT. It's 2.7 kilotons of something lesser with the limitations described above. The live video points to a 1.5 kt or so blast. BDA should give a decent estimate.
Posted by: M. Murcek   2020-08-09 16:45  

#6  I meant my previous comment to link to this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNDhIGR-83w

but of course there are now a lot of versions of it
Posted by: lord garth   2020-08-09 16:08  

#5  per the various videos, e.g. this one,

there seem to have been 3 stages to the explosion(s)

stage one - white smoke with flashes at the base
stage two - larger red and black blast
stage three - even larger white blast, a half second or so after stage two, which evidently had a pressure wave

Posted by: lord garth   2020-08-09 14:46  

#4  On of the problems limiting the size of very large chemical explosions is how to get it to detonate evenly before the 'bomb' disassembles itself. Most large military bombs have multiple detonators distributed throughout the charge, both as backups and to beat the initial pulse through the charge.
Likely that huge cloud in the videos had a significant amount of 'unburned' ammonite, which then settled as dust downwind. Kind of like the unburned powder that fouls the barrel of your firearm.
Posted by: ed in texas   2020-08-09 13:23  

#3  I was wondering about that myself.

The 2700 tons of Ammonium nitrate should have made, assuming it all went off at once, a 1 to 2 kiloton TNT equivalent explosion but the various detailed measurements only come in at 0.1 to 0.3 kilotons
Posted by: lord garth   2020-08-09 10:51  

#2  No wonder Nasrallah was upset.
Posted by: gorb   2020-08-09 02:56  

#1  that it is much more likely that large amounts were stolen over the years

...or sold and sent to terrorist trouble spots in the region for IED and bomb making.
Posted by: Besoeker   2020-08-09 01:08  

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