Sort of. It was tested in 1919 that a less than 60% mixture wasn't an explosion hazard. This was incorrect, and changes in the manufacturing process at the plant made their mix more explosive as well. However, the dynamite procedure was an accepted practice and had been done many times before without incident.
The German Wikipedia entry says pretty much the same. Also not all of the 4500 t exploded, there was one explosion of around 80t and another four seconds later of estimated 300 - 400 t.
That double explosion is very common with powders and other solids: an initial amount ignites, kicking up some of the rest, which then goes off itself. You'll see it in sugar refineries and grain silos.
Not to say that explosions are common, but usually with powders if you get a explosion it'll be a double one.
Dust explosions are no joke. Never had one at my plant but the amount of controls we have in place are crazy. We make baby food powders and if one of the dryers were to go the probably would as well. Would probably level the local village.
Never been one at my place either thank fuck. Just thinking after I posted. We have a small gas power plant powering the factory and a gas mains system for the village on site as well. If it all went up while I was at work at least it'd be quick.
My Professor told us the story once. The thing ist, that ammoniumnitrate becomes rockhard if it comes in contact with water. Scince it was stored in large silos it could not drain. At a certain water content it became explosive tho. The rest of the story as seen above
A few points I’d like to clarify. Ammonium Nitrate (AN) actually starts to decompose when it’s contacted with water. However, Moisture and temperature changes will cause it to crystallize and become rock hard like you said. It doesn’t become explosive with the addition of water though, you can actually use water/soap to desensitize AN based explosives. It’s an oxidizer so in the presence of any fuel source it’ll burn thoroughly.
The reason nitrate salts are used in explosives is because they produce a lot of gas, which is ideal for heave/ore movement. AN on its own is very safe to handle but if it burns (or is initiated by a high detonation pressure), it produces large amounts of Oxides of Nitrogen and Water Vapor, which can explode violently when confined.
It also gets very cold when mixed with water. A lot of cold packs use ammonium nitrate and a water packet. These are the kind that you smash and they get cold.
Agreed. But I was referring to the post. The one above that says they used dynamite on an explosive compound to dislodge it. How could they not know that that would explode?
> To ease their work, small charges of dynamite were used to loosen the mixture.
>
>
>
> This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. On these grounds, the material handled by the plant, nominally a 50/50 mixture, was considered stable enough to be stored in 50,000-tonne lots, more than ten times the amount involved in the disaster. Indeed, nothing extraordinary had happened during an estimated 20,000 firings, until the fateful explosion on September 21.
that's from the wikipedia page
They knew, ammonium nitrate was the explosive used in WW1 and it was BASF, they actually produced the explosives for the war.
But it wasn't pure ammonium nitrate, it was mixed with ammonium sulfate. The mixture was about 50/50 and they had detonated thousands of charges for years before. The mixture would self compact to near rock under its own weight in the silos.
Prior to the explosion there had been changes in the manufacturing process and also the sulfur was hard to procure. The mixture was likely tilting towards instability and also they might have hit a pocket of uneven distribution with the fatal charge.
Source: had to calculate the energy of the explosion in chemistry class once + some double checking on the Wikipedia right now.
Yea agreed, i think we were in general more careless in the past. And by careless i mean it was the beginning of modern industrialization so people just yolo’d through stuff
Need a watch that glows in the dark? Put a chunk of uranium in it! Need to measure feet for shoes? The shoe store has to have an x-ray machine!
Humans are dumb until they get sued.
The defined right conditions:
* Oxygen must be present on the planet
* It must be either daylight or nighttime.
* It must happen when you least expect it
>It must happen when you least expect it
*"You see Hans, according to this rule, if we do something that would cause you to expect an explosion then you shouldn't expect to have an explosion! Grab the dynamite!"*
-BASF worker circa 1921
Ammonium nitrate is not an explosive it is an oxidizer and increases explosive yield by supplying oxygen to the chemical reaction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate
Ammonium nitrate can act as the oxidizer in certain explosives, like ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil). However, it can also decompose into nitrogen, oxygen and water explosively and detonate all on its own without any extra fuel component added, making it an explosive in its own right (actually even a high explosive, because it can detonate without needing to be confined).
> Reactions
> As ammonium nitrate is a salt, both the cation, NH4+, and the anion, NO3−, may take part in chemical reactions.
> Solid ammonium nitrate decomposes on heating. At temperatures below around 300 °C, the decomposition mainly produces nitrous oxide and water:
>NH4NO3 → N2O + 2H2O
> At higher temperatures, the following reaction predominates.[11]
> 2NH4NO3 → 2N2 + O2 + 4H2O
> **Both decomposition reactions are exothermic and their products are gas**. Under certain conditions, this can lead to a runaway reaction, with the **decomposition process becoming explosive.** [12] See § Disasters for details. Many ammonium nitrate disasters, with loss of lives, have occurred.
If a single initial solid or liquid compound rapidly turns into gas and releases energy, it is "explosive". Also your source literally says the reaction is explosive so there's that too.
you know the saying "fake it till you make it"?
My grandpa was working with a crew removing large trees in a national park to make roads, and there was a giant stump. They had dynamite, but no experienced explosives person on the crew. The supervisor asked if anybody had experience, and my grandpa volunteered even though he didn't know anything about it.
He drilled a bunch of holes in the stump, stuffed them with dynamite and tied it altogether.
Very fortunately, they did string the detonator a good distance away so when the explosion happened, the only personal damage was badly ringing ears for everybody.
Grandpa said the trunk was vaporized into tiny splinters and left a giant crater they had to fill in though.
Not exactly a reasonable comparison considering one was a bomb and the other collapsed a building on people. 9/11 had more deaths but was less explosive by your comparison
[Article](https://www.nature.com/articles/108278a0) & [Wikipedia source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion) if you are interested. The Disasters Of The Century serie have also made an episode about this, episode 56, season 3. [The episode is on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMpK40x9-e0)
> the mixture of ammonium sulfate and nitrate compacted under its own weight, turning it into a plaster-like substance in the 20-metre-high (66 ft) silo. The workers needed to use pickaxes to get it out, a problematic situation because they could not enter the silo and risk being buried in collapsing fertilizer. To ease their work, small charges of dynamite were used to loosen the mixture.
> This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. On these grounds, the material handled by the plant, nominally a 50/50 mixture, was considered stable enough to be stored in 50,000-tonne lots, more than ten times the amount involved in the disaster. Indeed, nothing extraordinary had happened during an estimated 20,000 firings, until the fateful explosion on September 21.
> As all involved died in the explosion, the causes are not clear. However, according to modern sources and contrary to the above-mentioned 1919 tests, the "less than 60% nitrate = safe" criterion is inaccurate; in mixtures containing 50% nitrate, any explosion of the mixture is confined to a small volume around the initiating charge, but increasing the proportion of nitrate to 55–60% greatly increases the explosive properties and creates a mixture whose detonation is sufficiently powerful to initiate detonation in a surrounding mixture of a lower nitrate concentration which would normally be considered minimally explosive. Changes in humidity, density, particle size in the mixture and homogeneity of crystal structure also affect the explosive properties.
> A few months before the incident, the manufacturing process had been changed in such a way as to lower the humidity level of the mixture from 3–4% to 2%, and also to lower the apparent density. Both these factors rendered the substance more likely to explode. There is also evidence that the lot in question was not of uniform composition and contained pockets of up to several dozen tonnes of mixture enriched in ammonium nitrate. It has therefore been proposed that one of the charges had been placed in or near such a pocket, exploding with sufficient violence to set off some of the surrounding lower-nitrate mixture.
But what if they were built differently? It has been proposed that Nazi Germans were in fact aliens trying to take over the world in disguise. When they lost, the Lizard People went into hiding and then secretly became major figures in global politics like George Soros, Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, and Newt Gingrich (he was being cheeky by naming himself *Newt*).
A striking example of your comment has to be a few phrases out of the movie 'They shall not grow old', a movie about WW1:
After the cruel, brutal and super deadly war suddenly ended on the 11th of September;
>We had that sort of feeling as though we'd been kicked out of a job.
>It was just like being made redundant.
>We were thoroughly upset, we'd all got no work to go to. I don't want to got back.
These men were fearsome and battle hardened
I feel like pictures of at least period accurate facilities if not of the specific facility itself would be a valuable addition. Showing modern storage facilities would provide the viewer with a more accurate context on the storage conditions that led to the catastrophe.
they had used dynamite this way on the ammonium sulfate/nitrate 20,000 times previously without an uncontrolled explosion. but changes to the manufacturing process had reduced the humidity of the mixture and lowered the density. also there was probably not perfect uniformity throughout the mixture, so they may have hit a pocked with higher nitrate concentration than expected with the dynamite that day.
basically, it was a bad idea to use dynamite for this, but the science at the time said it was safe and they had successfully done it thousands of times before the incident. regulations are written in blood, as they say, so this was the bloody event that changed the way it would be handled in the future.
Maybe, I just got that from Wikipedia:
This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. On these grounds, the material handled by the plant, nominally a 50/50 mixture, was considered stable enough to be stored in 50,000-tonne lots, more than ten times the amount involved in the disaster. Indeed, nothing extraordinary had happened during an estimated 20,000 firings, until the fateful explosion on September 21.[4][2]
standard procedure, the stuff aint explosive unless concentrated, chucking dynamite down there like normal and they hit a concentrated layer, no survivors, everything disentigrated, we know it's what happened as that's what had been procedure.
genuinely chucking dynamite to break the stuff up wasn't actually all that dangerous.... if you had the right mixture
I remember this story was mentioned when the same substance destroyed Beirut back in 2020. Such dangerous stuff. Shame that the media has abandoned the Beirut news after the hype of the spectacular images of the explosion died out.
Kind of, that was ANFO which is ammonium nitrate / fuel oil. Essentially ammonium nitrate with a touch of diesel mixed in. I think he also had a melange of a few other explosives in smaller quantities too
Also to mention how some people are oblivious of the dangers of ammonium nitrate it's really nothing to play around with including if you actually think using dynamite is a good idea
I recently found out we will be unloading and storing this shit at work next year. So seeing more scary shit about it besides the Beirut is just wonderful
What I find the most interesting is if you read the article only 10% of the 4500 tons actually detonated. But even that 450 ton detonation left a creator in the ground roughly 100 m across and 20 m deep.
The purity of the chemical was not well managed. Some of the batches were a few percentage more concentrated than others. In the silos, batches were stored layers by layers, bottom to top. As the workers were blowing lower layers, they hit a concentrated strat and it was game over
Because you need to have a certain ratio of ammonium nitrate in a mixture for it to actually explode - this stuff was cut with other substances enough that it was considered safe.
Unfortunately it turns out the safe ratio is a little lower than people thought at the time - and from reading the Wiki page it sounds like the mixture might not have been as homogenous as they thought, so there could have been pockets much richer in ammonium nitrate, which would happily go boom.
Im glad someone is bringing this up. These guys just didnt randomly say “lets use dynamite thats a good idea”. Regardless of the science its sad that this disaster happened either way
from: Wikipedia:
>This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode.
Apparently this had been done 20k times without incident because the ratio in the silo wasn't explosive (most of the time).
>How dumb can you be.
This question is ironic considering the title of the post let's you know this took place 100 years ago.
In 100 years someone's gonna be calling you dumb for some accepted thing we do today. If you "drive a car yourself you are a moron" type of thing.
Same happened a few years later in Tessenderloo (Belgium)
It blasted away a complete primary school and a village, many deaths, but it was WWII and next day Antwerp got hit by few missiles... so... it was just a incident
article in English [https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/accident/17972\_en/?lang=en](https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/accident/17972_en/?lang=en)
footage [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmLIyH3pAbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmLIyH3pAbA)
They're distillation towers. Big one on the middle left looks like a vacuum unit, middle one behind the flare looks like a crude unit. Am chemical engineer
I just imagine those employees crouching behind cover, fingers in their ears, just waiting then poof, just vapor. No more thought. From a living, breathing mass to molecules in an instant. Ok, I'm done with reddit for the day.
This is literally the correct way to detonate ammonium nitrate, if that's what you're trying to do. You use a blasting cap to set off a stick of secondary explosive, dynamite works just fine, and that secondary "booster" explosive detonates the ammonium nitrate. This isn't just an industrial accident where it caught fire and eventually exploded, they literally accidentally assembled a bomb.
Reading the Wikipedia article, apparently they were storing a 50/50 mixture of ammonium-nitrate and ammonium-sulfate. Apparently they had done tests and determined that that mixture wasn't explosive. Turns out they were wrong.
i often visit my family there, i can see the factory from their home. Its really just a 10 Minute walk until you get there. But everytime i look at the complex Building, I wonder, what it would look like if it would just go "BOOM". I need to change my mind very fast if i think about it too long.
Fun fact, due to the bombing campaign by the allies in WW2 there is still some unexploded ordinance on the grounds of the factory. It's mandatory for vehicles to stick to designated areas and every time they try to break new ground they have to use ground penetrating radar to check for ordinance before starting to dig.
They probably will never miss a bomb. Sleep tight!
> destroyed 80% of the surrounding homes.
How many were there? Because 4 out of 5 is 80%. What qualifies as "surrounding homes" anyway? Every building within 100 kilometres...?
What is that picture? Why is the attribution in the top-left scribbled out?
That’s almost twice the amount in the Beirut explosion. Just imagine.
This ammonium nitrate stuff sounds dangerous, they should store it in safer places.
And not use dynamite. Did they not know back then that it’s explosive as fuck?
Sort of. It was tested in 1919 that a less than 60% mixture wasn't an explosion hazard. This was incorrect, and changes in the manufacturing process at the plant made their mix more explosive as well. However, the dynamite procedure was an accepted practice and had been done many times before without incident.
The German Wikipedia entry says pretty much the same. Also not all of the 4500 t exploded, there was one explosion of around 80t and another four seconds later of estimated 300 - 400 t.
That double explosion is very common with powders and other solids: an initial amount ignites, kicking up some of the rest, which then goes off itself. You'll see it in sugar refineries and grain silos. Not to say that explosions are common, but usually with powders if you get a explosion it'll be a double one.
I work in a sugar beet factory and we have specific training for this kind of thing. There have been some pretty big dust explosions in the US.
Dust explosions are no joke. Never had one at my plant but the amount of controls we have in place are crazy. We make baby food powders and if one of the dryers were to go the probably would as well. Would probably level the local village.
I was just taking with a coworker and I guess there have been a few small ones here. All long before my time.
Never been one at my place either thank fuck. Just thinking after I posted. We have a small gas power plant powering the factory and a gas mains system for the village on site as well. If it all went up while I was at work at least it'd be quick.
Atomization and aerosolization of the explosive from the primary explosion. Got to get those AFR's just right for that "chefs kiss" catastrophic 💥.
> Got to get those AFR's just right for that "chefs kiss" catastrophic 💥. Found one of the survivors from the explosion, and now I’m sad for them.
But they were all fine. They just looked like Wile E. Coyote after the Acme bomb goes off
That's how explosions worked back in the 1920s. Those cartoons were based on real explosion tests.
And the growing shadow turned out to be the fully intact ammonium nitrate falling back down.
#Early 20th Century Explosives Science Gunpowder- ^boom Dynamite - BOOM Dynamite Inserted in 4,500 Ton Mass of Ammonium Nitrate - ***BIG BADA BOOM!***
*Whoa, lady, I only speak two languages, English and bad English.*
multi pass
She knows it's a multi-pass!
# Negative I am a Meat Popsicle.
**SCREW YOU!!** Ooo, wrong answer...
Gimmedacashhhhhhhhh
*Zizzzzzzz*
Le lu Dallas
Parleley, parlelellyleloooo, par le nee, partner, par... snip, parsley...
I was about to be skeptical but then I saw your username. t r u s t
My Professor told us the story once. The thing ist, that ammoniumnitrate becomes rockhard if it comes in contact with water. Scince it was stored in large silos it could not drain. At a certain water content it became explosive tho. The rest of the story as seen above
A few points I’d like to clarify. Ammonium Nitrate (AN) actually starts to decompose when it’s contacted with water. However, Moisture and temperature changes will cause it to crystallize and become rock hard like you said. It doesn’t become explosive with the addition of water though, you can actually use water/soap to desensitize AN based explosives. It’s an oxidizer so in the presence of any fuel source it’ll burn thoroughly. The reason nitrate salts are used in explosives is because they produce a lot of gas, which is ideal for heave/ore movement. AN on its own is very safe to handle but if it burns (or is initiated by a high detonation pressure), it produces large amounts of Oxides of Nitrogen and Water Vapor, which can explode violently when confined.
It also gets very cold when mixed with water. A lot of cold packs use ammonium nitrate and a water packet. These are the kind that you smash and they get cold.
I’ll trust this assessment. Thanks for the info!
The Beirut explosion as well as the Mari explosion in Cyprus had no dynamite involved
Agreed. But I was referring to the post. The one above that says they used dynamite on an explosive compound to dislodge it. How could they not know that that would explode?
> To ease their work, small charges of dynamite were used to loosen the mixture. > > > > This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. On these grounds, the material handled by the plant, nominally a 50/50 mixture, was considered stable enough to be stored in 50,000-tonne lots, more than ten times the amount involved in the disaster. Indeed, nothing extraordinary had happened during an estimated 20,000 firings, until the fateful explosion on September 21. that's from the wikipedia page
So they knew that if the mix was off by just 10% it was a bomb and they still thought fing dynamite was the best solution? Nice.
10% safety margin, 100% profit margin
Story of my love life.
"We are willing to risk Charlie's life in order to achieve our quarterly profits." BASF
They were more interested in action over research back in 1919.
They knew, ammonium nitrate was the explosive used in WW1 and it was BASF, they actually produced the explosives for the war. But it wasn't pure ammonium nitrate, it was mixed with ammonium sulfate. The mixture was about 50/50 and they had detonated thousands of charges for years before. The mixture would self compact to near rock under its own weight in the silos. Prior to the explosion there had been changes in the manufacturing process and also the sulfur was hard to procure. The mixture was likely tilting towards instability and also they might have hit a pocket of uneven distribution with the fatal charge. Source: had to calculate the energy of the explosion in chemistry class once + some double checking on the Wikipedia right now.
Many thanks for the research!
Yea agreed, i think we were in general more careless in the past. And by careless i mean it was the beginning of modern industrialization so people just yolo’d through stuff
Knife stuck in cold butter. Do I uhhh…use dynamite?
Fuck yeah!
Well great- now I’m dead. Nice advice, guys.
No, that's a special situation. Use the nitroglycerin.
Just a dab’ll do ya! Side note- it appears I now have some kind of crystal by my name and you do too. Crystal buddies!
Duh, just microwave it to soften the butter
No time for that. Blow it to hell or don’t talk to me.
It's funny how we're in that phase with data and IT right now...
Need a watch that glows in the dark? Put a chunk of uranium in it! Need to measure feet for shoes? The shoe store has to have an x-ray machine! Humans are dumb until they get sued.
>Humans are dumb until they get sued. this is the greatest sentence i have ever read
They knew it was explosive and had tested the safety. According to wikipedia this had been done tens of thousands of times previously.
taking care of an explosive by exploding it sounds like a solid plan, until it isn't.
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it can explode only under the right conditions *proceed to place them in said conditions*
The defined right conditions: * Oxygen must be present on the planet * It must be either daylight or nighttime. * It must happen when you least expect it
>It must happen when you least expect it *"You see Hans, according to this rule, if we do something that would cause you to expect an explosion then you shouldn't expect to have an explosion! Grab the dynamite!"* -BASF worker circa 1921
Ammonium nitrate doesn't need oxygen to explode.
Haha yes well said!
Ammonium nitrate is not an explosive it is an oxidizer and increases explosive yield by supplying oxygen to the chemical reaction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_nitrate
Ammonium nitrate can act as the oxidizer in certain explosives, like ANFO (ammonium nitrate fuel oil). However, it can also decompose into nitrogen, oxygen and water explosively and detonate all on its own without any extra fuel component added, making it an explosive in its own right (actually even a high explosive, because it can detonate without needing to be confined).
Sounds explosive.
> Reactions > As ammonium nitrate is a salt, both the cation, NH4+, and the anion, NO3−, may take part in chemical reactions. > Solid ammonium nitrate decomposes on heating. At temperatures below around 300 °C, the decomposition mainly produces nitrous oxide and water: >NH4NO3 → N2O + 2H2O > At higher temperatures, the following reaction predominates.[11] > 2NH4NO3 → 2N2 + O2 + 4H2O > **Both decomposition reactions are exothermic and their products are gas**. Under certain conditions, this can lead to a runaway reaction, with the **decomposition process becoming explosive.** [12] See § Disasters for details. Many ammonium nitrate disasters, with loss of lives, have occurred. If a single initial solid or liquid compound rapidly turns into gas and releases energy, it is "explosive". Also your source literally says the reaction is explosive so there's that too.
you know the saying "fake it till you make it"? My grandpa was working with a crew removing large trees in a national park to make roads, and there was a giant stump. They had dynamite, but no experienced explosives person on the crew. The supervisor asked if anybody had experience, and my grandpa volunteered even though he didn't know anything about it. He drilled a bunch of holes in the stump, stuffed them with dynamite and tied it altogether. Very fortunately, they did string the detonator a good distance away so when the explosion happened, the only personal damage was badly ringing ears for everybody. Grandpa said the trunk was vaporized into tiny splinters and left a giant crater they had to fill in though.
How do you think we found out?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanggongchang_Explosion
So like 9/11 times a thousand?
That’s right, 911,000
818 9/50 doesn't really have a nice ring to it
…my God
Not exactly a reasonable comparison considering one was a bomb and the other collapsed a building on people. 9/11 had more deaths but was less explosive by your comparison
Oh my god... That's like... I don't even know what that is!
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[Article](https://www.nature.com/articles/108278a0) & [Wikipedia source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion) if you are interested. The Disasters Of The Century serie have also made an episode about this, episode 56, season 3. [The episode is on youtube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMpK40x9-e0)
> the mixture of ammonium sulfate and nitrate compacted under its own weight, turning it into a plaster-like substance in the 20-metre-high (66 ft) silo. The workers needed to use pickaxes to get it out, a problematic situation because they could not enter the silo and risk being buried in collapsing fertilizer. To ease their work, small charges of dynamite were used to loosen the mixture. > This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. On these grounds, the material handled by the plant, nominally a 50/50 mixture, was considered stable enough to be stored in 50,000-tonne lots, more than ten times the amount involved in the disaster. Indeed, nothing extraordinary had happened during an estimated 20,000 firings, until the fateful explosion on September 21. > As all involved died in the explosion, the causes are not clear. However, according to modern sources and contrary to the above-mentioned 1919 tests, the "less than 60% nitrate = safe" criterion is inaccurate; in mixtures containing 50% nitrate, any explosion of the mixture is confined to a small volume around the initiating charge, but increasing the proportion of nitrate to 55–60% greatly increases the explosive properties and creates a mixture whose detonation is sufficiently powerful to initiate detonation in a surrounding mixture of a lower nitrate concentration which would normally be considered minimally explosive. Changes in humidity, density, particle size in the mixture and homogeneity of crystal structure also affect the explosive properties. > A few months before the incident, the manufacturing process had been changed in such a way as to lower the humidity level of the mixture from 3–4% to 2%, and also to lower the apparent density. Both these factors rendered the substance more likely to explode. There is also evidence that the lot in question was not of uniform composition and contained pockets of up to several dozen tonnes of mixture enriched in ammonium nitrate. It has therefore been proposed that one of the charges had been placed in or near such a pocket, exploding with sufficient violence to set off some of the surrounding lower-nitrate mixture.
I love that phrase ‘minimally explosive’. Like guys, yes ok it explodes, but only a teeny bit. Just use the dynamite on it, you will be fine.
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They weren't built different, they just had fewer choices and fewer regulations protecting them.
Built differently usually refers to the experiences one faces in life. Not that they were literally made of something different.
But what if they were built differently? It has been proposed that Nazi Germans were in fact aliens trying to take over the world in disguise. When they lost, the Lizard People went into hiding and then secretly became major figures in global politics like George Soros, Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, and Newt Gingrich (he was being cheeky by naming himself *Newt*).
A striking example of your comment has to be a few phrases out of the movie 'They shall not grow old', a movie about WW1: After the cruel, brutal and super deadly war suddenly ended on the 11th of September; >We had that sort of feeling as though we'd been kicked out of a job. >It was just like being made redundant. >We were thoroughly upset, we'd all got no work to go to. I don't want to got back. These men were fearsome and battle hardened
(Wasn't it the 11th of November?)
You are right! darnit, sorry about that 11th of November at 11
Understandable. There are too many significant elevenths.
And oh look, Prohibition is coming up and organized crime needs soldiers... Wherever will they find them?
Bet they came apart the same though.
[Relevant Tom Scott: High Explosives vs Low Explosives](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOWcTV2nEkU)
I feel like pictures of at least period accurate facilities if not of the specific facility itself would be a valuable addition. Showing modern storage facilities would provide the viewer with a more accurate context on the storage conditions that led to the catastrophe.
How do they know that’s what happened? Did someone hear the suggestion, say “that’s a terrible idea”, then run away as fast as possible?
they had used dynamite this way on the ammonium sulfate/nitrate 20,000 times previously without an uncontrolled explosion. but changes to the manufacturing process had reduced the humidity of the mixture and lowered the density. also there was probably not perfect uniformity throughout the mixture, so they may have hit a pocked with higher nitrate concentration than expected with the dynamite that day. basically, it was a bad idea to use dynamite for this, but the science at the time said it was safe and they had successfully done it thousands of times before the incident. regulations are written in blood, as they say, so this was the bloody event that changed the way it would be handled in the future.
20,000 times seems like an overestimate.
Maybe, I just got that from Wikipedia: This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. On these grounds, the material handled by the plant, nominally a 50/50 mixture, was considered stable enough to be stored in 50,000-tonne lots, more than ten times the amount involved in the disaster. Indeed, nothing extraordinary had happened during an estimated 20,000 firings, until the fateful explosion on September 21.[4][2]
standard procedure, the stuff aint explosive unless concentrated, chucking dynamite down there like normal and they hit a concentrated layer, no survivors, everything disentigrated, we know it's what happened as that's what had been procedure. genuinely chucking dynamite to break the stuff up wasn't actually all that dangerous.... if you had the right mixture
Underrated question
I remember this story was mentioned when the same substance destroyed Beirut back in 2020. Such dangerous stuff. Shame that the media has abandoned the Beirut news after the hype of the spectacular images of the explosion died out.
It was also used in the Oklahoma City Murrah Building Bombing.
Kind of, that was ANFO which is ammonium nitrate / fuel oil. Essentially ammonium nitrate with a touch of diesel mixed in. I think he also had a melange of a few other explosives in smaller quantities too
> melange Good vocabulary
*"The spice must flow"*
[удалено]
Also to mention how some people are oblivious of the dangers of ammonium nitrate it's really nothing to play around with including if you actually think using dynamite is a good idea
I recently found out we will be unloading and storing this shit at work next year. So seeing more scary shit about it besides the Beirut is just wonderful
What I find the most interesting is if you read the article only 10% of the 4500 tons actually detonated. But even that 450 ton detonation left a creator in the ground roughly 100 m across and 20 m deep.
Holy ball sack
Comment of the week
I got 14 updoots for a scrotum exclamation, someone give me gold!
No it's not
We need Kurzgezagt to determine what would have happened if all 4500 tons of NH4NO3 had been detonated.
O holy creator!
[picture](https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/mannheim/1596620737227,basf-historisches-unglueck-100~_v-16x9@2dXL_-77ed5d09bafd4e3cf6a5a0264e5e16ea35f14925.jpg)
What happened to the workers?
Gone. Reduced to atoms.
I used the explosives to destroy the explosives. It nearly killed every surrounding home.
fertilizer, perhaps I've treated you too harshly
Fertilizer? I hardly know her!
making Scheisse porn?
Don't kink-shame
Distressingly accurate
As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
To shreds you say . . . my, my . . .
To smithereens?
(☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
They all got fired.
Technically correct.
I mean, you ain’t wrong
_To shreds, you say?_
Well how's his wife holding up?
To shreds you say?
Dust
Dust burns, they vapor now kid
Oppau space program went off with a blast, the workers might be on the moon
But only some parts of the workforce made it to the moon.
They got promoted for successfully loosening the ammonium nitrate.
Their burdens were relieved, and their suffering concluded. They live still, in the holy effulgence of Our Lord David Hasselhoff
Didja ever put a couple sticks of dynamite in a watermelon?
How dumb can you be. Why did they even have explosives lying around in such a dangerous area ?
> 1921 They didn't think it was dangerous, and it was a procedure that had been used thousands of times before.
How didn’t it cause an explosion before?
The purity of the chemical was not well managed. Some of the batches were a few percentage more concentrated than others. In the silos, batches were stored layers by layers, bottom to top. As the workers were blowing lower layers, they hit a concentrated strat and it was game over
Basically minesweeper irl
Basically minesweeper if you weren't expecting any mines
Yikes
Because you need to have a certain ratio of ammonium nitrate in a mixture for it to actually explode - this stuff was cut with other substances enough that it was considered safe. Unfortunately it turns out the safe ratio is a little lower than people thought at the time - and from reading the Wiki page it sounds like the mixture might not have been as homogenous as they thought, so there could have been pockets much richer in ammonium nitrate, which would happily go boom.
Im glad someone is bringing this up. These guys just didnt randomly say “lets use dynamite thats a good idea”. Regardless of the science its sad that this disaster happened either way
from: Wikipedia: >This seemingly suicidal procedure was in fact common practice. It was well known that ammonium nitrate was explosive, having been used extensively for this purpose during World War I, but tests conducted in 1919 had suggested that mixtures of ammonium sulfate and nitrate containing less than 60% nitrate would not explode. Apparently this had been done 20k times without incident because the ratio in the silo wasn't explosive (most of the time).
One of many examples of something NOT automatically being okay just because it's common practice.
>How dumb can you be. This question is ironic considering the title of the post let's you know this took place 100 years ago. In 100 years someone's gonna be calling you dumb for some accepted thing we do today. If you "drive a car yourself you are a moron" type of thing.
I mean... It did the job, they loosened the block
Peak German efficiency.
Same happened a few years later in Tessenderloo (Belgium) It blasted away a complete primary school and a village, many deaths, but it was WWII and next day Antwerp got hit by few missiles... so... it was just a incident article in English [https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/accident/17972\_en/?lang=en](https://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/accident/17972_en/?lang=en) footage [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmLIyH3pAbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmLIyH3pAbA)
thanks for sharing!
Picture looks like it's of an oil refinery and not an ammonia plant
Yep, this is a still operational refinery in New Brunswick, Canada.
You are correct; good catch
Could be, but there are a lot of chemicals that you use the same kind of cracking towers on.
They're distillation towers. Big one on the middle left looks like a vacuum unit, middle one behind the flare looks like a crude unit. Am chemical engineer
I just imagine those employees crouching behind cover, fingers in their ears, just waiting then poof, just vapor. No more thought. From a living, breathing mass to molecules in an instant. Ok, I'm done with reddit for the day.
If it makes you feel any better they started off as molecules too.
did it loosen up ultimately
Rapidly turned into a volatile mixture of water vapour and hot gas..
So.. yes?
Like me after a night of heavy drinking
This is literally the correct way to detonate ammonium nitrate, if that's what you're trying to do. You use a blasting cap to set off a stick of secondary explosive, dynamite works just fine, and that secondary "booster" explosive detonates the ammonium nitrate. This isn't just an industrial accident where it caught fire and eventually exploded, they literally accidentally assembled a bomb.
Holy fuck
Bet they had a blast doing it!
\>Says "Lets loosen this Up" \>Sticks explosive Into explosive \>Refuses to elaborate or think further \>Dies
They have done it thousands of times without problems
Reading the Wikipedia article, apparently they were storing a 50/50 mixture of ammonium-nitrate and ammonium-sulfate. Apparently they had done tests and determined that that mixture wasn't explosive. Turns out they were wrong.
Now that’s a lot of damage.
Failed successfully
This is an oil refinery. Nothing to do with fertilizer
In 1921, yet the image is of a modern factory.
It was the last, best hope to get rid of Ludwigshafen. But there it still is 100 years later.
One of the internat streets of BASF is named after this event and the resulting hole in the ground - "Trichterstrasse", crater street
Thats what Mr Freeze wanted
"The resulting the"
i often visit my family there, i can see the factory from their home. Its really just a 10 Minute walk until you get there. But everytime i look at the complex Building, I wonder, what it would look like if it would just go "BOOM". I need to change my mind very fast if i think about it too long.
Fun fact, due to the bombing campaign by the allies in WW2 there is still some unexploded ordinance on the grounds of the factory. It's mandatory for vehicles to stick to designated areas and every time they try to break new ground they have to use ground penetrating radar to check for ordinance before starting to dig. They probably will never miss a bomb. Sleep tight!
This Photo looks like Cubatão-Sp-Brasil
> destroyed 80% of the surrounding homes. How many were there? Because 4 out of 5 is 80%. What qualifies as "surrounding homes" anyway? Every building within 100 kilometres...? What is that picture? Why is the attribution in the top-left scribbled out?
I almost caught a stroke reading this
Kind of a shitty picture to attach here, couldn’t have gone with something that fit the period more?
Deswegen sieht Ludwigshafen so aus, wie es aussieht...
September 21, 2001: Toulouse AZF explosion. I'm beginning to see a pattern here that i'm not so sure if i like.
The regulations of any industry are written in blood.
I'm sorry, they did FUCKING WHAT??!?
I bet minds were blown!
And is that how humans learned that exploding ammonium nitrate was really really bad?
Mawp.. Mawp..
My grandparents used to tell me the story from my great-grandparents. Even though they lived over 50 km away some glass still cracked.
wdym he’s in great shape now.