Tag Archives: Ammonium Nitrate

Yet, Beirut, the place where buildings get free air-conditioning through the application of 7.62mm ammunition, the place where something went boom and it enraged a whole lot of people, yet on August 5th I wrote in ‘Boom goes the dynamite’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/08/05/boom-goes-the-dynamite/), we see “It is speculation, but consider the blast, according to some the blast was noticed well over 100Km away. I do have a point of reference, the Fireworks blast in the Netherlands (Enschede) had a similar effect, but nowhere near the size, the video’s I saw told a different story, one car on the highway with a distance of around 2000 meters away got its windows blown out and the rear view mirrors got blown off the car, and that is one of a few video’s that show me that this was no ordinary blast” and it was merely the toppling of issues. We get to see a better picture when we consider “Ammonium nitrate does not burn on its own” (Source: American Scientific), it is merely the foundation. When we consider “For combustion to occur, oxygen must be present. Ammonium nitrate prills provide a much more concentrated supply of oxygen than the air around us. This is why it is effective in mining explosives, where it’s mixed with oil and other fuels. At high enough temperatures, however, ammonium nitrate can violently decompose on its own. This process creates gases including nitrogen oxides and water vapour. It is this rapid release of gases that causes an explosion” we need to look any the explosion again (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdSHRbSZkwc), it is one of many explosions, and as you see there was a fire in the vicinity, but the explosion is violent and complete. The stage is in two fold, in the first, Ammonium nitrate doesn’t burn well and to explode oil is used. The images we see could not be done if it was merely the ammonium nitrate. It is my view and I am not the expert (I did study chemistry), yet experts tell me ‘Ammonium nitrate does not burn on its own’, all the footage I have seen give implication that this was not merely ammonium nitrate, yet Scientific American also give us “It’s stable under normal conditions, but you can do things to it that will cause it to misbehave. The main trigger is an external heat source. Depending on how you want to count it, there have been probably somewhere between 20 and 30 major catastrophic explosions with ammonium nitrate since it came on the scene as a commercial product in the 1920s. And fire is a frequent trigger. It’s the heat of the fire that warms up the ammonium nitrate that can become a problem”, it seems that everyone is willing to give Hezbollah a pass on this event. I am not willing to do so, even if they merely blew up their own city, there is a stage where we need to consider what else was there and was it meant for pro-Houthi or anti-Israel actions? In an age where we see a whole range of analytics and geometric based analyses, in this the Guardian gives us ‘The explosion that devastated the city was no accident and anger is boiling over’, and then we see “It was so huge it was heard in Cyprus. It was so huge it shattered glass and ripped doors off their hinges kilometres away. It incinerated trees, tore the red roofs off centuries-old buildings and brought the blue sea inland. It left 5,000 injured and 154 dead – so far. There are many still missing under the rubble”, which leaves us with the setting that it all went up in one big explosion, consider the fact that it required (read: used) 2,750,000 Kg of ammonium nitrate, I get that there might be an explosion, but IT ALL exploded at once is the larger issue, the facts do not support it. And the fear of some is merely strengthening my view. With “We don’t really know how this ammonium nitrate, confiscated from a ship and stored in unsafe conditions in the middle of our city for six years, ignited. Because those who are responsible are actively rejecting an international investigation”, and in this I see their fear, international experts will bare out what I expect, there were explosives there and that contributed to the much larger explosion, not a fire, and that gets us to Hezbollah, it will feel the brunt of rage from the Lebanese people. Something it cannot afford at present. My initial speculation that Iran handed out of date materials beneath cost price is still on the table, as dynamite sweats nitroglycerine and in the heat in Lebanon it would fuse the ammonium nitrate as well. Yet some media is giving us ‘it requires a combination of things and that seems to have happened’, or something to that regard. They all avoid Iran and Hezbollah in all this, true there would be some speculation linked to it, but things that go boom to this degree requires much more investigation, I do not disagree with this, but blasé painting over the stage with paint of the colour ‘that seems to have happened’ is not the way to go.