Texas City, Texas plus fifty years

Prior to that date, ammonium nitrate was considered to be relatively safe.

Click to expand...

It should not have been considered safe.

There was an explosion involving something like 4000 tons of AN in Oppau, Germany in 1921 that killed 430 people. They were storing it in large piles that would clump together and have to be broken up. They used blasting powder to break it up, which caused the AN to detonate. (They'd done that thousands of times before, so it was thought to be safe to break it up that way.)

Somebody can't count. The explosion took place in 1947. That is more way than 50 years ago.

Also, look up the Port Chicago explosion, 1943 I think, that erased the town of Port Chicago....ammunition ship and ammo trains going up.
Thanks for the links/pics, spooky. Today, it would have been subject to national investigatio as a terrorist incident, and we may have invaded France....short war....

blasting powder on AN piles...DUMB. Its like the japanese nuke workers who 'did the same thing they always did' and got a critical event that zapped em.

atek3