What's Happening to the World

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Here is a pretty good look at the blast, and a collection of views from different perspectives :

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While yes, it's a tragedy what happened, I find it fascinating that you can see things launched into the air from the shock wave. Again, so there's no confusion, it is a tragedy what happened.

 

Yes, I see that. And in the same spirit, looking at the image at the lower left - it stops when the shock wave hits the car, but the person inside is okay, because we see the picture. ?

 

I imagine that it at least partly going over water dampened the effect, same as with shuttle launches where you can feel it across the bay, but it's not destructive. Distance also plays a factor in addition to obstacles. I am glad that at least that person is okay.

 

So here's my question - all of those images start just before the big orange smoke cloud appears. So why were the cameras on beforehand, and what were they pointing at ?

There seem to be three separate events - something was on fire, then the big bang happened, then the shock wave. And it looks like each one event caused the next one in that order.

 

I can't say for certain, but I would hope that the pillar of smoke is unusual for a building that didn't have smoke stacks, hence why people would be recording. I doubt they all started at the exact same time, but were edited to the moment before the explosion.

 

I find it interesting that there were so many cameras pointing in that direction at the same time. I just find it curious is all. The different angles do show that some kind of fire was burning before the BIG explosion.

 

I think that the cameras were all aimed at the large fire which produced the grey smoke cloud at the beginning, before the big blast.
And the number of pictures out there tells me that that initial fire had been burning for some time.
The photographers could not have imagined what was going to happen next.

 

Impressive that the door glass did not break.

 

Did not know about this. If you don't learn from history, it WILL be repeated.

 

The article states : " On April 16, 1947, in Galveston Bay, a French vessel called the SS Grandcamp was carrying nearly 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate. The boat was docked in Texas City. The cargo was to be transported back to farmers in Europe.

On the morning of April 16th, smoke began to billow from the Grandcamp and hours were spent trying to control a fire on the ship. Heat and pressure finally caused the ammonium nitrate to reach its detonation threshold at around 9 a.m. The resulting explosion was immense, nearby buildings on land were leveled, while the two-ton anchor from the Grandcamp was hurled 1.6 miles. "

The estimates I saw of the Beirut explosion was that it had ten times the impact of this one.

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Apparently the most powerful human-made explosive ever detonated was the Soviet RDS-220 hydrogen bomb, known as 'Tsar Bomba'.

It was tested on 30 October 1961, as an experimental verification of thermonuclear weapons design :

- amazing video​

But apart from that monstrosity - British scientist and European Science Secretary Christopher Busby rank the explosion in Beirut third behind only the Hiroshima and Nagasaki explosions.

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I haven't seen that angle of the explosion. It's pretty frightening.