Wirt

I saw a program on either History Channel or Discovery Channel on the
explosion at Texas City. Most enlighting that the town itself was not
totally leveled and all of the people killed.

Thanks for your insigh on the comparative difference.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Wirt Atmar" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <>
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2003 6:27 PM
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] OT: French Fries are now Freedom Fries? Bomb Link


> I just wrote:
>
> > These kind of ammonium nitrate/aluminum powder bombs are often said to
be
> > "poor man's nuclear weapon," but that designation is substantially
> > misleading. Although their "yield" approximates a very small tactical
> > nuclear
> > weapon as far as blast effects [approximately one thousandth of a
> > Hiroshima-sized weapon, and just to give you a sense of scale, we now
use
> > Hiroshima-sized weapons as the igniters ("zippers") for our
thermonuclear
> > weapons], their explosion is only chemically thermodynamic and thus very
> > much colder than a small nuclear weapon.
>
> As long as I'm going on about ammonium nitrate weapons, let me refer you
to
> this page:
>
>      http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html
>
> that has pictures of the Texas City disaster, the largest non-nuclear
> explosion in American history. In 1947, a French freighter was docked at
> Texas City, carrying a half million pounds of ammonium nitrate in her
hold,
> when it caught fire. The resulting explosion leveled much of the town and
> killed perhaps a thousand people.
>
> This too was one of the case studies that we often used during my time at
> Nuclear Weapons Effects, and one we all studied extensively.
>
> Wirt Atmar
>
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