OT: OMFG!!!!!!!

[Charged up]

WOW!!!!!!!! SPEECHLESS

[richpjr]

Whoa. That was intense.

[Formula 21]

Unbelievable. There has to be a lot of nitrates in there somewhere.

[Steve]

Not necessarily. Reports are toluene and compressed natural gas. Toluene is the 2nd T in TNT.

[Lightningwill_420]

Fifty six people died in that, according to the BBC. Another 720 were injured, according the same news agency.

[Bolt-O]

I read somewhere that the explosion was estimated to be 21 tons of TNT, very roughly 1/1000 of that of Hiroshima A-bomb.

[QSmokey]

As intense as that was - and I hope those people are all OK - there was actually a cute, comical exchange between that guy and his wife/female friend immediately after the 2nd explosion. She asked him "Are we dangerous here?". He sort of chuckled and said "Yeah, we're 'dangerous'"!

Not a laughing matter, of course. My heart goes out to the families who lost loved ones; and I pray for a speedy recovery for those who were injured.

[Mister Hoarse]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions

[Asela]

I read somewhere that the explosion was estimated to be 21 tons of TNT, very roughly 1/1000 of that of Hiroshima A-bomb.

I heard that there are reports that there has been damage from the concussion blast and the toxic chemical leaks is thought to be about 5 mile radius from the explosion at the shipping port.

I'm just wondering, if whatever they were shipping was so unstable, imagine if it had made it to an America or European port and then exploded. :yikes:

[Lightningwill_420]

I heard that there are reports that there has been damage from the concussion blast and the toxic chemical leaks is thought to be about 5 mile radius from the explosion at the shipping port.

I'm just wondering, if whatever they were shipping was so unstable, imagine if it had made it to an America or European port and then exploded. :yikes:

Then what? People would have died? How's that different?

[Bolt-O]

Read about "Port Chicago" ... no videos of that, but it probably was worse. Nothing worse than the Bhopal disaster though.

[Steve]

The reports I have been listening too make it sound like the blast wave has transported some of the toxic's out of the blast, which is not exactly unheard of. Any toxic not released immediately by the blast will almost certainly be leaking out of their containers slowly. Actually, from what I keep reading/seeing about this, it's a damn miracle it isn't a whole lot worse. There is not a lot of separation between residential and commercial areas in China, and it is a city of something like 12 million people. If this hadn't happened at night, literally thousands of people would have been working in and around the facility.

Don't use death toll as a judge for potential seriousness. There were a couple of large industrial explosions in Texas a couple of years ago. Similar blasts in terms of the explosive equivalent. The big difference was that both occurred in rural communities, so that the impacted hundreds of people, rather then occur in the center of a city of millions of people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate_disasters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion