Quote:
Originally Posted by Baron von Kriterium
Where do you see 7 kt? That puts it in the tac nuke ball park.
Lebanese authorities state 2750 tons of ammonia nitrate. Let's assume that's true and let's assume this photo is legit:
It seems legit compared to the warehouse pic here:
The ammonia nitrate manufacturer is NITROPRILL HD, which is very likely a knock-off of Nitropril made by Orica.
Orica sets the TNT equivalence for fire at 20 percent.
0.20 x 2750 = 550 tons
20 percent is conservative for safety purposes so 550 tons is an upper limit not a guess. |
So a 1/2 KT yield, that seems awfully small compared to the explosion, now I'm not saying that it was 7 kt's, I'm not sure.
I decided to use Nuke Map to take a look. The first one is a ground burst 500 T nuclear explosion
I noted the heavy and moderate damage circles were less then 1/10th of a KM's in total
The second one below is a 7 KT ground detonation. which has a total combined heavy to moderate damage zone of about 1.5 KM's
If that was accurate in terms of the explosive stored, then something else a lot bigger had to be in there.