Short clips of the actual Beirut explosion from different positions and distances. Its crazy!

From what ive heard, there was supposedly 2,700 TONS of high explosive ammonium nitrate(which is also most commonly used as a slow release nitrogen fertilizer source). Thats literally the equivalent of a "small" 2.7 kiloton tactical atomic bomb! Theres even a huge mushroom cloud that forms just after the 2nd, largesr explosion. The damage from the blast wave was seemingly dangerous well over a mile from ground zero! This guy has a great youtube channel that i subscribed to about a month ago. He used to be a police officer, and here he pasted together several videos of the explosion, then offered commentary.

The explosion clips start just after 1:33...

ModerationNow! said:

From what ive heard, there was supposedly 2,700 TONS of high explosive ammonium nitrate(which is also most commonly used as a slow release nitrogen fertilizer source). Thats literally the equivalent of a "small" 2.7 kiloton tactical atomic bomb!

Click to expand...

<nitpicking>
Those are measured in TNT equivalents, not ammonium nitrate, so 1.8 kilotons.
TNT equivalent - Wikipedia
</nitpicking>

HK.227 said:

<nitpicking>
Those are measured in TNT equivalents, not ammonium nitrate, so 1.8 kilotons.
TNT equivalent - Wikipedia
</nitpicking>

Click to expand...

Actually thats not nitpicking, its a good point. I'd forgotten that TNT was/is the specific high explosive thats used as the standard to compare the power of atomic/nuclear bombs. I mistakenly assumed that the explosive potential of ammonium nitrate would roughly equate to the that standard. But not all high explosives are equal pound to pound, or ton to ton(or tonne to tonne). Lol

But either way, even 1.8kt is crazy powerful, especially in a built up, populated area!

ModerationNow! said:

But either way, even 1.8kt is crazy powerful, especially in a built up, populated area!

Click to expand...

Yeah. Good thing it was out on a pier surrounded by warehouses and water, rather than a residential area.

Explosives are gauged on the "RE" ( relative effectiveness ) scale; the lower the RE, the slower the burn rate and the greater the "shoving" or "pushing effect"...which is why ANFO is used quite a bit in mining.

The higher the RE, the faster the burn rate and the greater the Brisance or "cutting" effect...which we see in steel cutting counter force charges ( C4) and Detcord.

The baseline for all RE factors is TNT, witch has an RE factor of 1.0....Ammonium nitrate sits at the low end of the scale with an RE of about 0.42, PETN ( detcord) at 1.66, and sitting at the high end of the scale are more exotic explosives like Octanitrocubane (ONC) at an RE of 2.38.


As an example, you can use a higher RE factor explosive to cut a steel beam in half, while a lower RE explosive will simply blow the steel beam a good distance away.