Massive Explosion in China

bobbymike

bobbymike

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http://www.popsci.com/what-caused-massive-explosion-tianjin-china?src=SOC&dom=fb
 
Somewhere some Air Force personnel at an SBIRS console said "holy shit, look at this!" and called everybody over. Someday long after we're dead they'll finally post these events on Youtube, or VRtube, or whatever it will be called....
 
I guess "explosives" count as hazardous materials ;)


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3195477/Fifty-people-injured-enormous-blast-explosives-shipment-hits-Chinese-city.html


2B53E1D300000578-3195477-image-m-53_1439473761855.jpg
 
More images: http://avaxnews.net/fact/Deadly_Blasts_in_Tianjin.html
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11802610/Extraordinary-Tianjin-explosion-footage-emerges.html

One report said 3 tons of TNT equivalent. So what would a MOAB explosion look like?
 
bobbymike said:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11802610/Extraordinary-Tianjin-explosion-footage-emerges.html

One report said 3 tons of TNT equivalent. So what would a MOAB explosion look like?
Click to expand...


I was around 1000 yards away from this (which initially was F/A), so I can tell you what it feels like to be woken up by something like one, if not what it looks like. I imagine a sudden decompression would be similar, like someone somehow punched you in the lungs. Nothing like Tianjin though, obv.


0XoSQdk.jpg
 
The chemicals in this appear to be really nasty. There's something like 700 tons of sodium cyanide, supposedly, plus unspecified amounts of calcium carbide, toluene diisocyanate, and ammonium nitrate. The last is familiar to many people -- ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer or an explosive, depending on how you look at it (and how you handle it). Calcium carbide is nasty because if you get it wet it creates acetelyne gas, which is very flammable and might explain some of the initial very cinematic-looking fireball. Sodium cyanide plus water makes hydrogen cyanide, which is also very flammable (and toxic). Toluene diisocyanate is similar, and produces toxix gasses when heated, even if it doesn't burn.

None of this stuff has any business being stored near residential areas in these quantities. (Or apartment buildings should be nowhere near their storage places, depending on which came first).
 
TomS said:
The chemicals in this appear to be really nasty. There's something like 700 tons of sodium cyanide, supposedly, plus unspecified amounts of calcium carbide, toluene diisocyanate, and ammonium nitrate. The last is familiar to many people -- ammonium nitrate is a fertilizer or an explosive, depending on how you look at it (and how you handle it). Calcium carbide is nasty because if you get it wet it creates acetelyne gas, which is very flammable and might explain some of the initial very cinematic-looking fireball. Sodium cyanide plus water makes hydrogen cyanide, which is also very flammable (and toxic). Toluene diisocyanate is similar, and produces toxix gasses when heated, even if it doesn't burn.

None of this stuff has any business being stored near residential areas in these quantities. (Or apartment buildings should be nowhere near their storage places, depending on which came first).
Click to expand...

China, Inc's government doesn't really care about that. Workers are, after all, an expendable commodity -- not at attitude that is unique to China. See, for example http://articles.philly.com/1991-09-04/news/25800872_1_chicken-plant-imperial-food-products-plant-chicken-processing-plant

Leaving the politics aside, China's health, safety, and environmental regulations are both lax and poorly enforced, due to corruption and government repression. China is, after all, a country that punished people for complaining about shoddy school construction practices that killed scores of school children in an earthquake.
 
Video from an American allegedly living 1km away from the site of the explosion. The first video is the explosion itself, the second is the view from the flat the next morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO1q3HwB0y0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naqgHE9P4tc
 

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