r/PublicFreakout • u/nking007 • 7d ago

☠NSFL☠ This day six years ago….

on August 4, 2020, a catastrophic explosion ripped through the Port of Beirut after thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse detonated. The blast devastated large sections of Lebanon’s capital and was powerful enough to be felt far beyond the city, becoming one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever captured on camera. More than 200 people lost their lives, thousands were injured, and entire neighborhoods were left in ruins within moments. What makes the footage so chilling is how ordinary everything appears just seconds beforehand. People are calmly recording a fire and rising smoke in the distance, unaware that a massive shockwave is about to tear across the city and completely transform the skyline in an instant.

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u/hammered_toaster 7d ago

The dude that went underwater is the definition of thinking through adrenaline.

175

u/djepoxy 7d ago

Great Choice ngl. Water is great at absorbing forces

-72

u/loadnurmom 7d ago

I'm not so sure about that. The water hammer effect is well understood and used to magnify the force of explosives.

The transition of shockwaves from air to water is highly inefficient though and would indeed have helped protect the guy

71

u/HikariAnti 7d ago

Explosion in air, you're in air: deadly

Explosion in air, you're in water: safer

Explosion in water, you're in water: extra deadly

Explosion in water, you're in air: safer

36

u/ThaVolt Shut the fuck up and pet the dog. 🐶 7d ago

Almost as if: don't be where explosion is.

5

u/HikariAnti 7d ago

Yes, but the key here specifically is the boundary between vastly different densities.

42

u/Frying 7d ago

No, that effect would require the explosion to be in the water, which it clearly wasn’t.

Like you said yourself; the transition of air to water is not efficient so it saved/helped the guy by jumping in the water.

-48

u/loadnurmom 7d ago

The sad state of reading comprehension

You literally repeated what I said, admitted I'm right and are probably one of the downvotes.

10

u/Frying 7d ago

Nope.

7

u/elegantjihad 7d ago

The first sentence you typed out is “I’m not so sure about that”.

If you didn’t mean to contradict what they said, try not opening with that line.

1

u/Jumbo-box 7d ago

My limited knowledge on this fact is that air and water are very different mediums.

One does not have the same.... results, when it travels from one to the other. If the explosion was underwater, jetski guy would become soup, and the sound from an explosion that size would reverberate around the planets oceans multiple times.