On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:

...

"No big deal"? Who are they kidding?

A 2-mile wide cloud is WAY too big to be caused by a single explosion, unless REALLY big.

Exactly. And there aren't many things *that* big.

The forest fire claim sounds more plausible in this regard. An existing cloud could be used for masking, though.

Wait a minute: since when does a forest fire create explosions? Or have enough ground force to push up a mushroom cloud?

But a surface or atmospheric blast would produce a flash plowing through the entire EM spectrum; from long-wave radio to microwaves to hard gamma. That's something the satellites Up There can't miss even through a smoke cloud - at least if they are still operational or replaced by newer ones.

Agreed. Except that _I_ do not have access to those sattelites, so I don't know what it is they saw (or didn't see).

(Remember the strong flashes of gamma bursts, originally discovered by satellites observing the nuclear test ban: <http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast19sep97_2.htm>.) Also a disruption of this kind would be perceivable in long range, possibly by quite many people.

And, lo, a *lot* of people noticed it.

An underground blast, if not screwed up, wouldn't produce a cloud at all.

That I didn't know.

However, both surface and underground blast would have a peculiar seismic signature. There is a network of both nonproliferation-surveillance and plain old scientific seismic stations all over the world. Something like that couldn't stay hidden for too long. Remember the day the the Kursk submarine became famous; the recording of the double signature, the explosion and shortly later following implosion, appeared online in couple days (or maybe even hours?) after the Event.

Yes, I do remember that. I also remember everyone denying it at first.

It's difficult to imagine a true nuclear blast would stay unreported for more than few days.

Agreed - we can only wait and see. However, I do *not* expect that the USG would want this out if it *is* a nuclear test - Shrub is facing a PR nightmare if it is, since he is the one who pushed them into the nuclear corner.

Even if it would really be a nuke test and the politicians would want to be quiet about it, there are too many subjects outside of the direct US political control to either report the measurements or the eventual pressure to not report them.

According to CNN, there was also a strong blast reported in the area of a missile base. We don't know how strong the blast was, and if it couldn't be just a "conventional" explosion, caused by eg. a combination of a forest fire and an ammo depot.

That of course brings us full circle: how many fuels can produce a blast which results in a 2+ mile mushroom? That's a *lot* of explosive force.

There is also a possibility the "senior officials with access to intelligence" were injecting media with false information. Remember there are many subjects with different agendas here and a little psyops here and there is quite common.

Let's not jump on the conclusions yet. Wait 2-3 days, optionally watch the traffic in conferences of geologists taking care of the seismic activity worldwide and in the vicinity of the area of interest. It's Saturday and many people who could know the answers are away from their instruments; let's wait what they will find on their screens on Monday morning.

Hey look here Shaddack: you're ruining a perfectly good conspiracy theory here! I'll have none of this well reasoned CRAP in *my* conspiracy theory! :-) I, like many other, will be looking at this as it develops... You may be right, but, really, a *forest fire*???? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden - - - "There aught to be limits to freedom!" George Bush - - - Which one scares you more?

That of course brings us full circle: how many fuels can produce a blast which results in a 2+ mile mushroom? That's a *lot* of explosive force.

Blast sets off the forest fire, fire makes the smoke. Not a problem. Go visit Northern California in late summer firestorm season (though we don't need fertilizer plants to start fires; smaller accidents or stupid people can do the job just fine.) At 03:07 PM 9/12/2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:

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http://www.muenster.org/uiw/fach/chemie/material/gif/oppau.jpg Wow! I had no idea ammonium nitrate (ANFO for all intents and purposes, yes?) could produce that kind of result! How much was there?

No FO, just AN all by itself. NH4NO3 turns into N2 + 2H2O + O, and the leftover O finds something productive to do, like combine with another O into O2, or burn some nearby carbon, and it's hot enough the H2O is gaseous also. If you've got FO, it'll happily combine with the spare O, producing lots of heat and speeding up the reaction. The first earthquake-like event I experienced was when a chemical plant across the river from where I lived blew up; I think it was a fertilizer plant of some sort. (I was in Delaware; the plant was in New Jersey, and it was ~1968.) Fertilizer plants blow up real good; about the only thing better are ammunition depots and maybe explosives plants, and usually those are built to contain the explosion better. (By the way, most people think of the Parthenon as an ancient ruin; it was actually in very good shape, roof and all, until ~1850, when the Greeks were using it as an ammunition depot during one of their wars with the Turks and the Turks blew it up.) ---- Bill Stewart bill.stewart@pobox.com

J.A. Terranson wrote:

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Thomas Shaddack wrote:

...

The forest fire claim sounds more plausible in this regard. An existing cloud could be used for masking, though.

Wait a minute: since when does a forest fire create explosions? Or have enough ground force to push up a mushroom cloud?

[...]

That of course brings us full circle: how many fuels can produce a blast which results in a 2+ mile mushroom? That's a *lot* of explosive force.

Doesn't have to work like that. The mushroom cloud is not "pushed up" by blast, it's carried up by hot air rising, which is replaced by cooler air rushing in below. There was a visible mushroom cloud at Hamburg in 1943 - I'm not sure but I suspect that that may have been the event that put the phrase into the language. FWIW the BBC is now saying that the NKs are claiming it was a civil engineering explosion connected with a hydro project. As with other list members I assume that if the explosion was nuclear someone would have detected EM from it immediately & radioactive particles soon after. And I also assume, perhaps with less justification, that at least some of those someones would have made the knowledge public - it must include at least military early warning organisation of China, Russia & the US, and very possibly Japan, SK, UK & maybe other countries as well, and also probably a number of space agencies and academic researchers. Would they all conspire to suppress knowledge of NK nuclear explosion? And if there was such a test, how long before China stomped all over them. Last thing they want is a looney dictator with nukes on their borders (If only to pre-empt Russia, US, or Japan intervening). Even if both the Chinese state capitalists and the North Korean absolute divine monarchy still use the locally redundant word "Communist" when describing themselves to us Western barbarians. Sometimes my friend's enemy isn't my enemy's friend.

On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Bill Stewart wrote:

The news says that North Korea's government says they were blowing the top off a mountain as part of hydroelectric construction.

Yes, I heard it driving home this afternoon. Blowing up a mountain without any kind of warning (assuming that this isn't a case of universal coverup, which it doesn't look like) is a sure fire way to make your neighbors nervous! Nice to know Kim has a [warped but effective] sense of humor :-)

They don't quote any unnamed officials saying "Whoops"...

If a nuke goes off a few dozen meters under a mountain, is there anyone there to see it? What is the sound of one mountain moving? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them." Osama Bin Laden - - - "There aught to be limits to freedom!" George Bush - - - Which one scares you more?

Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> writes:

About 4.5 kT of 50:50 ammonium nitrate/ammonium sulfate mix. One of the largest, if not *the* largest nonnuclear explosions ever.

The largest man-made explosion is usually claimed to be Halifax (about 3000 tons of assorted HE's), but there are a pile of others that also count: Oppau, Texas City, Port Chicago, Lake Denmark, Silvertown, Fauld (more explosives involved than Halifax, but less loss of life, so Halifax seems to get all the publicity), etc etc etc. Peter.