Massive explosion in Lebanon

@Buck Turgidson , if you believe in Wikipedia, there's an entry for the largest manmade non-nuclear/artificial explosions and how they rank. These are, of course, estimates in some cases. If Texas City and the Halifax incident are really as large as they state, I can't fathom how powerful those explosions were because they both apparently dwarfed the Beirut explosion :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions

Meanwhile some pics on Twitter :



The crater is apparently over 400 feet wide.

 

That's a hole lotta **** that blew up

 

Rare footage of Texas City.

 

I don't think there are any windows still intact. I wonder how far you have to go from the epicenter to find intact glass facing that direction?

 

My bariatric surgeon friend in Houston still has his families in Lebanon. I’ve tried to contact him many times, but no dice. I hope he and his families are ok. The people of Lebanon are awesome and the women are so beautiful, wars and corruption have devastated that ancient lands. Thoughts and prayers for Lebanon. Can 2020 get any worse?

 

Yeah, buddy, I "believe in wikipedia", as much as I care to.

Fun fact: North Padre Island was one of the final 8 spots for the initial A-Bomb test, that of course ended up in New Mexico.

Haven't looked it up, but I'd love to know what the other 6 spots were.

 

Thank goodness we have a well funded EPA here... oh wait

 

Yup, we have a terrific political culture in which half the voters in the country vote AGAINST clean air, land, water, and safety. Who needs that garbage!

 

Did you want to see our future.

 

It's not specific, but according to http://www.texasescapes.com/MikeCoxTexasTales/251-Bombsite.htm ,

As work proceeded on the development of the bomb, the military considered eight possible locations for the first test. Four sites were in New Mexico, in the same state as the project headquarters at Los Alamos. California had two of the sites and one was in Colorado. Finally, one site lay in Texas: Padre Island.

 

That looks like somebody's watching a post-apocalyptic movie on a big screen (well, ok, after his living room was bombed). Crazy.

 

This is the closest footage I've seen :

 

There is a podcast episode of Stuff you should know on broken arrows that you might be interested in.

 

This reminded me of this photo. Not related to this explosion but destruction and tragedy nonetheless. At least in this Gaza Strip shot, theres some sort of triumph and joy.

 

We talking about Dr. Now?

 

Watch the shockwave move through the clouds.