Completely shocked and amazed at the footage of the explosion in Beirut yesterday. Here's an image of the aftermath taken from a drone flying over the area, as can be seen it's like an atomic bomb has gone off. I guess this is what over 2,750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate can do if treated improperly. As a comparison on the first day of the Battle of the Somme the British army detonated an underground mine consisting of 27 tons of Ammonal explosive, the crater made that day can still be seen today. The only thing that seems to come close to what happened yesterday is the famous "Halifax Explosion" when in 1917 a ship containing over 2,600 tons of various explosives caught fire and drifted into the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia the subsequent explosion destroyed most of the town and killed nearly 2000 people, people recon that the energy involved in Halifax was over 12 terajoules (TJ) or 12 X 10 raised to the power of 12 joules (the first atomic bomb weighed in at 63 TJ), that's a lot of energy to dissipate in a very short period of time, mind boggling stuff!
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