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Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

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Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#241

Post by totalZero »

flywheel wrote: post #125
shadowprofile77 wrote: post #42

Nitpicking here maybe but this does not look like a 3 kiloton blast to me. Neither the size of the core explosion or the apparent shock wave damage correspond to that magnitude from a surface blast. Guessing here but I'd say closer to 2 kilotons at most. Amazingly, the massive, hollow grain silo right next to the detonation itself remained standing afterwards.

Amazing how nerds can be so focused on if it was 1 kiloton, 2 kilotons, or 3 kilotons - and they are arguing about it like it really matters.

A few hours before you made this comment, you made a nit-picky objection on a different HN post about Intel i5 versus Intel i7. Someone responded to you saying that i5 and i7 are marketing terms that most consumers interpret as an indicator of performance. You replied, "I guess this isn't really 'hacker news' then, because I would expect just about any 'hacker' would know the difference."

Then, you came to this HN post and described a bunch of people as "nerds" for trying to interpret the magnitude of the blast by observing what was captured on video.

The contrast between these two simultaneously held attitudes is so bizarre that I am chuckling to myself as I try to grasp your underlying thought process.

(You could easily have switched your approach to the two threads, criticizing the Intel i5-vs-i7 nerds while doing some napkin math to come up with your own estimate of the Beirut explosion in TNT terms.)

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#242

Post by natch »

rendall wrote: post #183
speedgoose wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unverified and likely false information (fake news) is downvoted. If you question the accuracy of the information it's better, still not good, but you didn't before your edit.

It is literally true that Trump said it was a military attack, as OP stated. This is verifiable. That Trump's statement is false and dangerously irresponsible is not OP's fault.

Trump’s statements on the matter are of no interest though. If it was possibly going to lead to some imminent executive action, then it might be. It all depends. For most topics, his statements are not worthy of posting here imho.

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#243

Post by natch »

rendall wrote: post #184
colordrops wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, just thought his statement was related and noteworthy.

Agreed. Your downvoters were categorically confused.

Disagree. I downvoted not for its obvious falsity, but because the non-consequential statements of a fraudulent buffoon are of no interest in a forum like this. Such quotes only raise the heat and noise level here.

If it was a consequential statement, that would be different.

On some matters, we must pay close attention to what he says, because it can warn us of big mistakes he is about to make. So he does make some statements that are consequential. But this determination of whether a statement is consequential or not is not dependent on whether the statement is false or not. It’s more dependent on the details of the context, and how those fit in the whole picture.

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#244

Post by DreamScatter »

worldpeacenow wrote: post #215

Ammonium nitrate is 1.35 less potent than TNT. So this was just over 2,000 tons of TNT blast. The first nuclear bomb ever dropped was 15,000 tons of TNT of force. So this was 13.3% of the force of what Hiroshima experienced. About 70,000 people died from Hiroshima. So 13.3% of Hiroshima force is still devastating. It's probably not going to be nearly as bad as 13.3% of 70,000 deaths because Hiroshima was more densely…

An electromagnetic pulse doesn't vaporize people, it mainly affects electronics.

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#245

Post by shadowprofile77 »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #62
shadowprofile77 wrote: post #42

Nitpicking here maybe but this does not look like a 3 kiloton blast to me. Neither the size of the core explosion or the apparent shock wave damage correspond to that magnitude from a surface blast. Guessing here but I'd say closer to 2 kilotons at most. Amazingly, the massive, hollow grain silo right next to the detonation itself remained standing afterwards.

It’s not a 3kt blast. Not even close.

I posit that it's definitely above 1 kiloton though. I base this on the radius of damage it caused (from photos compared to Google satellite images of the area around the explosion site) and by comparing the explosion's apparent magnitude with that of the PEPCON blast, which was fairly carefully estimated to have been roughly 1 kiloton. This blast looks bigger and spread its impact further than the PEPCON blast..

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#246

Post by totalZero »

ashtonkem wrote: post #133

This seems unlikely. Officially, they had 2750 tones of ammonium nitrate on that dock. Even if it were properly mixed with fuel oil to make ANFO, that would give you 2200 tones of tnt equivalent. It is quite unlikely that it was mixed to the perfect proportions, so we’d expect actual yield to be below theoretical max So unless if something else was involved (or the official amount of ammonium nitrate was wrong) I wou…

There are plenty of petroleum distillates in a dockyard. Diesel, bunker fuel, kerosene, gasoline....not to mention other flammable hydrocarbons and powders. You're assuming an 80% ratio ANFO/TNT but you're neglecting the mass of the FO, as well as the possibility of other oxidizers being stored near the blast site. I guess you could make some assumptions about the fuel based on detonation velocity as observed on video.

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#247

Post by totalZero »

I wonder if the shape of the storage receptacle and the geometry of surrounding buildings could have resulted in an elliptical fireball shape. If so, that could be one drawback of this method. Depending on viewing angle, you could overestimate or underestimate the R figure versus a same-energy spherical fireball.

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#248

Post by Chris2048 »

jungletime wrote: post #26

Lebanon has its share of enemies, internal and external. All it would take is a mavic inspire drone to fly over and drop the initial explosive. Trump said "it looks like a terrible attack" at his news conference. Which is probably what his intelligence officers/advisors speculated when they briefed him.

> Which is probably what his intelligence officers/advisors speculated when they briefed him

because Trump would never go off-script and speculate on his own?..

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#249

Post by glaberficken »

schoen wrote: post #233
supernova87a wrote: post #109

The amount of material must have been ridiculous to store in such a place. The blast is staggering in size, almost like the Tianjin explosion a few years ago. Collected videos: Angle #1 https://streamable.com/xmmoa7 Angle #2 https://streamable.com/nscx9m Angle #3 https://streamable.com/zbjj5f Angle #4 https://streamable.com/saoafz Angle #5 https://streamable.com/4ga1vb Angle #6 https://streamable.com/lmivb2 Angle #7…

I found angle #8 the most abjectly terrifying of these. :-(

That's the first video I saw on the breaking news, gut reaction was "that really looks like Hollywood cgi to me".

Re: Order of magnitude estimate of Beirut explosion at 3 kilotons of TNT

#250

Post by baud147258 »

RantyDave wrote: post #240
yxhuvud wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we can still mitigate the risk quite a bit. We don't have to store 2750 tonnes of it, all in one place, for 7 years. That is asking for trouble.

We also don't have to store it next to a city.

or built a city next to a factory producing it
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