Well There's Your Problem | Episode 145: 2020 Beirut Explosion

storing massive quantities of ammonium nitrate goes wrong again. who could have seen this coming?
Seamus's Substack: www.seamus-malekafzali.com/
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Our Patreon: / wtyppod
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Chapters (Courtesy of user Mickulty)
00:00 Cities: Skylines 2 Update Update
0:00:55 Intro
0:02:03 The Line Update
0:04:15 Intro pt2
0:05:27 The GD News: Discount 2-Week-Old Discourse
0:13:22 The GD News: The Wider Horror of Gaza Under Attack
0:16:37 The GD News: The Wider Horror of A Toy Truck
0:20:46 The GD News: The Wider Horror of Selling Trains to NS
0:24:16 Background: This Shitty, Shitty Boat
0:29:40 Background: What Is Ammonium Nitrate?
0:30:56 International Sailors Not Well Treated
0:35:23 Background: Lebanon, Only Democracy In The Middle East
0:44:51 Lebanese Bureaucracy vs Spicy Warehouse
0:50:04 Action Finally Taken
0:52:38 Explosion and Broken Glass
0:55:29 Red Cloud
0:56:19 Immediate Aftermath and Gentrification
1:02:19 Our Hero, The Grain Flaktürme
1:08:32 Orient Queen
1:09:32 Political Aftermath
1:23:42 Investigation and Accountability
1:32:25 Lessons Learned
1:35:32 Safety Third: Halifax Citadel Nearly Make WTYP Joke Into Reality
in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

[@OkamiDrop]

This podcast nonfactual coverage of the news makes me question their coverage disasters.

[@mikehj9603]

How make words good?

[@masonturner0]

Cool sentence, definitely got all the words in there.

[@miawgogo]

I mean, this podcast is an engineering disaster unto itself, so we do expect coverage disasters

[@josephmartinez3518]

Got to respect their commitment to post the outdated bad takes on the news. Alice always has the best takes. Ross trying to transpose his altruistic good guy persona on the IDF, and Liam brining him down to reality. Love these nerds.

[@meganegan5992]

@@josephmartinez3518 Ah yes, my favorite hosts, Alice Caldwell Kelly, Liam Anderson, and Liam Anderson.

[@ReallyNotAGoose]

And thus the cycle is complete - from goddamn news to complete episode. Also: yay Liam!

[@Alevuss92]

Can someone on the ground please submit a safety third about this?

[@JoshSweetvale]

Are we done with wanting to 'live in historic times' yet?

[@jameslake7775]

Is this the first time that’s happened? I can’t think of a prior instance, but there’s also so much news happening all the time these days.

[@RooneyMac]

​@@jameslake7775east palestine

[@Cinerary]

@@RooneyMaccentral glass lake

[@GaldirEonai]

I remember the weird-ass theories that sprouted like weeds when the news of this first broke. Meanwhile a bunch of disaster-documentary watchers were immediately going "oh yeah, that's a nitrate blast."

[@eurybaric]

Yep! I'm from there and the theories were wild. Add to that a strong pinch of fakes and disinformation and jesus christ haha!

[@sir_stride]

I fucking hate conspiracy theories.

[@SewingandCaring]

​@@sir_stride Friend of mine who works for Rolls Royce on the actual engines on the plane heard about MH370 and immediately went "yeh nav equipment fucked up, and they got lost" Turns out there is a very clear correlation between people who cheap out on engines and poor maintenance of the rest of the plane. Then there is the position when it went off radar - you can't get bearings at high altitudes other than the stars and the sun and you would be amazed at how many people panic and can't figure out what side the sun is supposed to come up and it completely explains any random changes of direction because that's what lost people do. No conspiracy about aliens is needed, nav malfunctions have happened happened hundreds of times before only the pilots got lucky or the black boxes were found. Meanwhile, the internet is dedicating significant brain power to torturing the families.

[@GoredonTheDestroyer]

@@SewingandCaring The absolutely most unhinged thing I've seen about MH370 was on Twitter a few days ago, where this guy claiming to be a top secret US government contractor (Whatever the flying _fuck_ that means) posted a FLIR video of a plane being teleported away by... Something? Claims the plane was MH370, that it was on fire and the only way to save it was teleporting it to some random location(?!) without telling the families what happened? I mean, how does *_that_* make more sense to people than "The plane crashed in the ocean and we haven't been able to find it"?

[@MrTaxiRob]

@@SewingandCaring also, Oswald acted alone

[@gregorybertrand645]

Been such a long time WTYP fan that I'm witnessing news items from previous recordings become the top billing.

[@cookiesonastick]

Ye

[@4BYSSALTEETH]

looking forward to the surfside condo episode. the miami herald's engineering simulations for that one were as fascinating as its coverage of the tragedy on a human scale was harrowing

[@GoGoOtaku]

We're so much closer to finding out why that shopping aisle broke down

[@dgatos42]

as a military ordnance guy: the mk 84 is a 2000lb general purpose bomb. the mk80 series are the navy's version of US general purpose bombs, with mk 81, 82, 83, 84 referring to 250, 500, 1000, and 2000lb bombs respectively seamus is extremely correct that this could never have been a mk 84 for reasons of "there are still signs of a hospital ever having been there"

[@b.6603]

Gotta love the technical expertise in my engineering disaster podcast Ordinance guy? Check Radiodating guy? Check Geology guy? Check Radiation safety guy? Check (And gals of course)

[@zpydd_]

waow

[@emilyadams3228]

Then there's the bomb that's set off by a trigger phrase. MK Ultra.

[@outistynnanyt5153]

​@@emilyadams3228i thought that was the bomb made by Italian football fanatics?

[@Jakeurb8ty82]

@@emilyadams3228mk stands for 'mark'

[@forivall]

I looked up the Halifax explosion of 1917 for comparison. For all you Canadians out there, Halifax was about 2.5x the intensity and had like 8x more casualties. A part of our heritage.

[@forivall]

Note that I forgot they already did a Halifax episode, and I'll be re-listening to that one next

[@thomasdjonesn]

And the landscape.

[@alexroselle]

Halifax, Beirut, and especially Hiroshima: cities with long histories which are also known today as units of measurement 😔

[@stefangadshijew1682]

I don't know how it measures up to those two explosions, but there was a significant explosion of ammonium nitrate in the Oppauer Stickstoffwerke in germany. The hilarious thing about this is that the explosion was caused by _intentionally_ setting off explosions in a 400 t stockpile of this fertilizer in order to _loosen it up_ because it got wet, sticky and clumpy. Apparently, this has been done a thousand of times before without issue, but this one time, intentionally causing an explosion to loosen up an explosive fertilizer yielded a huge explosion, who could have known. Reminds me of me learning chemistry and my supervisor giving me 2,5 kg of ammonium nitrate for a reaction. It was, indeed, pretty sticky and clumpy, so how would I get the ammonium nitrate out of the bottle? Teacher gave me a hammer and a pickle and told me to do it like the miners do. I was hestitant for a bit and asked if that is really the best way to get explosive salts out of a bottle, by hammering sparky metals at each other. He told me that if anything goes wrong, I won't feel a thing, so I hammered away. I fucking love chemistry. The same teacher once found a bottle of picric acid that was some 50 years old and pretty dry. It should be noted that dry picric acid has a habit of exploding when you open a bottle if crystals found their way into the cap. We both went out on the courtyard to open it, the rest of the school evacuated. I kept 10 meters of safety distance so that the shrapnel would kill me slowly and not the blast. Either I'm in heaven now, or everything went pretty okay either way. I liked that guy, I hope he's doing okay.

[@forivall]

@@stefangadshijew1682 hammer and a pickle? What's the pickle for?

[@ericfischer8295]

(several years ago) "So there was a Big Boom in Beirut!" "STOP TELLING US ABOUT IT!! WELL DO AN EPISODE SOMEDAY!"

[@Crossroadsinc]

its crazy to think the show has been going long enough that we even can say "Several years ago" !

[@onivlasbrony7432]

THAT'S WHY I HAVE A FEELING OF DEJA VU!

[@FieryRedmond]

What episode did they do it in the god damn news?

[@ericfischer8295]

pretty sure it was the Coasta Concordia@@FieryRedmond

[@Cinerary]

@@ericfischer8295Costa Concordia is a gem of an episode. Schettino getting skewered is never not funny

[@andrewbergheim5238]

Lebanon is a beautiful place with wonderful people and a rich culture that's spent the last century getting its dick kicked in sequence by every passerby.

[@brippie]

Accurate description

[@piccalillipit9211]

In about 2005 it was possible to drive full circle around the Mediterranean - all the borders were open for the first time ever and I was planning to do it. I contacted every country and the Lebanon Govt were AMAZING - they were going to put on a diplomatic banquet for me and everything. THEN Netanyahu became leader and the boarders were closed immediately and the troubles started.

[@outistynnanyt5153]

I didn't think many things on this podcast, after almost 150 episodes, could give me chills and make me hold my head in my hands. But hearing "this could have been 80% worse" certainly did it

[@Blink1826000]

If I heard correctly, 80% of the nitrate was gone, which means it could have 5x as bad, or 400% worse.

[@Frommerman]

@@Blink1826000 This is an engineering podcast, not a math podcast. Nerd.

[@TheGolux]

it's only 20% as bad as it could have been@@Blink1826000

[@no_road_map]

Devon, thank you for the clicky noises when you interject text, that is very useful, since I do other things while listening, and look up at "next slide please" and Devon's clicky-noises.

[@gramathy999]

Devon most underrated part of the podcast

[@lyndonwesthaven6623]

Devon has successfully clicker-trained the audience

[@LifesNeverHumDrum]

@@lyndonwesthaven6623it’s true….now why am I salivating all of a sudden??

[@ebnertra0004]

The hit-marker sound hss been ingrained in my psychy, even before Devon unleashed it upon us. They even use the symbol once in a while

[@devinfaux6987]

The thing that broke my heart, then and now, was that the firefighter & EMT crew responding to this took a group picture as they were rolling out on their final call. They were all smiling and so young and in a matter of minutes they would be vaporized.

[@meganegan5992]

4:00 Funny enough, my school has a building that was specifically designed by Zaha Hadid, and was only the second project that she worked on in the United States. It was an art museum with some of the things she worked on, including some melted bench thing she made out of marble with a hole in the middle. I ended up thinking "Wow, I can't believe rich people would do hostile architecture to themselves." when I saw it.

[@jcardboard]

There's a transport museum in Glasgow that's a Hadid building. They only realised after it was built that it was too small inside. So they had to mount cars on a wall 20 feet in the air, totally useless!

[@isaacanderson5083]

The Broad?

[@meganegan5992]

That one, yes@@isaacanderson5083

[@_oe_o_e_]

The first result of the “Goddamn News to Full Episode” pipeline

[@TheFirebird123456]

You forgot east Palestine ohio

[@mikeschumacher]

"The internal dark shipping world" could probably be a podcast series on its own that I'd listen to.

[@LeCharles07]

There's an episode of The West Wing where Rob Lowe is working in a law firm before going to work at the white house and he's buying a shitty ship for a shady shipping company and he's super lawyer boy so he does a super good job shielding the company from any liability. Later in the series the ship crashes and makes an oil spill. It scares me that is actually how international maritime shipping works.

[@WaterMan416]

Coincidentally, it's also how establishment Democrats work. I love hate the west wing. Such a shitty show that keeps drawing me back with its naive optimism of "this is the best we can expect out of our government" and it's still like 75% fantasy

[@th3oryO]

Guess who's back, back again? Seamus's back, tell a friend.

[@doomgardener1495]

That Safety Third segment reminds of the stories a coworker of mine told of going to "Historical Weapons Training" to be a safety officer for a public park. There were apparently many poor quality "shot on a phone" videos demonstrating all the horrible things that can go wrong when messing around what is essentially a tube full of black powder. There was one especially terrifying video of a reenactment crew doing it's thing with a cannon and due to the cannon bore never being inspected there were some nasty little cracks for sparks to hide in. Well, black powder and sparks did what they do and the ramrod guy lost an arm to the boom. And said ramrod guy was also a teenager (like 14-16 or something). This was used to illustrate several points; cannons are scary, you have to be an adult to be on a gun crew, and only one facility in this organization allows cannons to operate on their premises so that they can keep a tight control on their operation and prevent the insane middle aged white dudes who use them from turning the audience into mulch.

[@spleeble]

Grain silos be like "Idk i would just not collapse in the explosion guess I'm just built different"

[@Cinerary]

Why did all those other non-reinforced concrete structures collapse? Are they stupid?

[@DAFLIDMAN]

So there was only 20% of the explosives left??? This could have been so much worse

[@weatheranddarkness]

I like that the MV Rhosus brings together what we learned about limousines in Ep:141, what we learned about shipping, reflagging in EP:61

[@JammyD2579]

And, if only tangentially, Ep.104 with the SS El Faro, because this sort of thing happens to US flagged ships, with US crew shipping perfectly legitimate cargo too. Not being from the periphery of the global economy doesn't make people immune.

[@danielkorladis7869]

yeah, when Alice went into describing a rotating series of flags of convenience and renaming I was like "HMMMMMMMMMMMMM"

[@OrinLinwe]

...it's maybe neither here or there, but it is oddly fascinating to think about how "completely benign substances can spontaneously become bombs" just by acts of miss-managing massive volumes of the stuff, and packing it into very compact spaces. It makes for sort-of-interesting party-chit-chat to explain to someone (who wasn't aware) that old-timey flour-mills could be incredily dangerous, both as a matter of physic and chemistry (incredibly fine, flammable particles being released in the air), but ultimately as a consequence of political decision-making (ie, "yes, we know that this can happen, if we insist on working with this material in these poorly ventilated, cramped spaces, but it doesn't happen frequently enough, and catastrophically enough for us to feel forced to do it any other way".) It's a drunk-saturday-thought, but it is inherently sorta interesting to think about the intersection of politics and chemistry/physics, and how the former keeps not only creating needlessly dangerous situations in the first-place, but also covers the "back-end" of dryly calculating whether or not it's enough of a hassle to do anything about it. And if it isn't, it gets folded into the same mathematics of "the cost of doing business" that retail-stores do, when they account for shop-lifting as an inevitable loss that you can comfortably accept.

[@sarapocorn]

I feel you. Recently went to see a play a fellow biology teacher had written. There was a scene in which someone played a mushroom distributing its spores (flour). The scene was great, it was presented as a rap act with everyone dancing and flour flying EVERYWHERE. I was watching the particles floating in the beam of the intense stage lights and was very uncomfortable in that small space hah it seems like people just don‘t know.

[@OrinLinwe]

That sounds like the worst time. The rap part, I mean.​

[@theryanbard]

Glad to see Seamus has finally forgiven them for how long the Gulf state vanity project episode was

[@sarapocorn]

truly happy about that. I love that episode and have listened to it multiple times, despite its length. or maybe even because of it.

[@FreeRadicalX]

Thank you Alice for fulfilling my lifelong wish of hearing a British person parse out live wtf a Hess truck is. It's also specific to the US northeast, which is the only place there are Hess gas stations. tragic That you don't have the sound board for this one as "FBI! OPEN UP!" would have been the perfect response to Roz saying "It has four sound buttons. I wonder what they are?"

[@ssgtmole8610]

What was weird for me was the shape of the "police car" - similar to one designed to survive an MRAP. Militarizing civilians is where it's at. 🙄

[@05Matz]

Don't a lot of American cops drive military-surplus mine-resistant vehicles? Fresh from the wars in Middle East, delivered to police forces in military configuration? @@ssgtmole8610

[@thomasdjonesn]

Funny, we had Hess in South Carolina when I was a kid, wonder if they closed up? I had a couple of those trucks.

[@Joesolo13]

@@thomasdjonesn They're closed in the northeast too, you can still get the trucks online though.

[@russianbear0027]

​@@ssgtmole8610a lot of police departments buy surplus from the military at a steep discount, including vehicles like MRAPs. If you look at videos of the blm protests you'll probably spot a few driving around harassing protestors with teargas launchers and sound cannons etc.

[@ig7157]

When Roz said "I'm doing a Mr. Beast Face" I nearly made it on Safety Third (Home Improvement Edition) by almost making Listerine come out of my nose.

[@Nestor_Makhno]

This is the going to be the *only* youtube video about this event which includes no footage of the explosion.

[@mathieup5024]

What kind of nerd would want to stare at harrowing footage of a massive explosion when you could instead look at PowerPoint slides? No true infrastructure podcast fan 😤

[@Mickulty]

Timestamps: 0:00:00 Cities: Skylines 2 Update Update 0:00:55 Intro 0:02:03 The Line Update 0:04:15 Intro pt2 0:05:27 The GD News: Discount 2-Week-Old Discourse 0:13:22 The GD News: The Wider Horror of Gaza Under Attack 0:16:37 The GD News: The Wider Horror of A Toy Truck 0:20:46 The GD News: The Wider Horror of Selling Trains to NS 0:24:16 Background: This Shitty, Shitty Boat 0:29:40 Background: What Is Ammonium Nitrate? 0:30:56 International Sailors Not Well Treated 0:35:23 Background: Lebanon, Only Democracy In The Middle East 0:44:51 Lebanese Bureaucracy vs Spicy Warehouse 0:50:04 Action Finally Taken 0:52:38 Explosion and Broken Glass 0:55:29 Red Cloud 0:56:19 Immediate Aftermath and Gentrification 1:02:19 Our Hero, The Grain Flaktürme 1:08:32 Orient Queen 1:09:32 Political Aftermath 1:23:42 Investigation and Accountability 1:32:25 Lessons Learned 1:35:32 Safety Third: Halifax Citadel Nearly Make WTYP Joke Into Reality PS: Grats to WTYP on 100K, guess the plug to subscribe aged poorly as well

[@Mickulty]

Someone (Devon?) was quick today!

[@eclipserepeater2466]

Thank you sir/ma'am/them

[@Mickulty]

@@eclipserepeater2466 (he/they if you're asking)

[@Deimonik1]

A true legend of the pod you are.

[@darthbob88]

I have to disappoint Seamus, the porno Pirates was filmed on a replica of HMS Bounty, not Old Ironsides. The production company did tell the owners that it was a Disney-type, family-friendly pirate movie.

[@jsrodman]

And for some types of families...

[@dougbuchanan784]

The emotional whiplash of being STOKED there’s a new wtyp then BUMMED when you realize it’s on the Beirut Explosion

[@johannageisel5390]

All episodes on stuff happening within the last 10 years is sobering. However I enjoy this podcast (and also one about airplane disasters) because dealing with the technical aspects of a catastrophe helps me process it.

[@Zippsterman]

"It's like Threads" Damn, enough said

[@Madhouse_Media]

The ship that was used as a porn set was the 1960 HMS Bounty if I recall. That would be a great subject for a future episode, really. It was lost in hurricane Sandy because it was under the command of a guy who made the captain of El Faro look reasonable and competent.

[@Quackagate]

That's a feat making captain. "I like this software, so it's right" look good.

[@Madhouse_Media]

@@Quackagate The captain of El Faro didn't know where the hurricane was. This guy knew exactly where the hurricane was, and he once said he liked to "chase hurricanes" with the Bounty. Which was a functional sailing ship, yes, but it was built in 1960 as a movie prop. The ship itself was going to be destroyed at the end of filming but Marlon Brando threw a fit so it ended up as a tourist attraction and at one point lost it's Coast Guard certification due to its deteriorating condition. Oh ... The Bounty captain did at least call the Coast Guard when he realized the shit was getting deep, so I guess one point in his favor compared to Michael Davidson there.

[@Cinerary]

@@Madhouse_Mediathe captain of the El Faro absolutely knew where the hurricane was. He just convinced himself it wasn’t going to be as bad as it was, and he was going to skirt around the edges of it. He wanted another bar story to tell his buddies

[@Madhouse_Media]

​@@Cinerary I suppose that's possible, but he was also going on data that was half a day out of date. I'm convinced he only had a vague idea where the hurricane was.

[@atn_holdings]

oh yeah I love this "let's setup a email notif" culture. someone sees a problem and goes "we need to at least know more about this!" and the boss goes "setup an automated thing that sends email if it sees the issue" and then the end result is that I need to mass delete 5 more automated emails out of my inbox every morning from now on

[@wizardapprenticeIV]

idk how i feel about remembering an episode happening

[@joearnold6881]

Yeah? Wait till you’re 40 and you remember like half of them

[@gramathy999]

@@joearnold6881 I don't think we're quite there yet, most of the disasters are still pre-90s and you might hit 50% during your lifetime at this point but not necessarily that you remember

[@wizardapprenticeIV]

@@joearnold6881 cannae wait to be a ghost watching an episode about me

[@ExperimentIV]

oh god this episode is going to be harrowing, isn’t it?

[@steveg5122]

a fine grain approach

[@HarryDirtay]

A whole big pile of anxiety for some

[@Tinblitz]

At this point, very few episodes aren't.

[@iciajay6891]

Always gurd your loins.

[@FerretKibble]

And that's just The Gods Damned News...

[@indyjacob4597]

glad to see seamus on again, he's one of the reasons why the gulf state vanity projects episode is my favorite

[@keepyourbilsteins]

The moment Seamus mentioned Venice i knew i was going to be disappointed Alice wouldn't bring up the Equitable Lagoon. One of the best Trash Future episodes ever recorded.😢

[@prinzpac]

Truly a gem of an episode

[@OutbackCatgirl]

I'm still waiting for some mad fan to animate that bit. somehow. despite its length

[@elfomarcio]

New bonus guest, the ccleaner pop-up, with the return of fan favourite windows activation logo! What an episode!

[@miikomakes8083]

With this, Katrina and all foreseeable god damn news is the “sad episodes” playlist is gonna be eating good

[@michaelbouvier550]

Congrats on the fancy plaque y’all

[@redroC171]

Pirates was actually shot onboard the Bounty II, a replica of the HMS Bounty, not the Constitution. The part about them lying and saying they were filming a Disney movie, that part is true though.

[@johnher4946]

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said-“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert--" "Oh so you've been to the port in Beirut, huh?"

[@karlydoc]

And his name was Ozymandius.

[@fauxpinkytoo]

Woooo...just in time. On tinderhooks over a job I really want, and need distraction before I stroke out. A solemn Yay, Liam to you all.

[@weatheranddarkness]

*tenterhooks, comes from drying wool fabric, fyi for next time.

[@thomasgiles2876]

Get that cheddar.

[@carinafreeman6432]

Yay Liam! Yay Alice! Yay Justin! Yay Devon! Yay Seamus! Yay you getting the job you really want!

[@MisutaaAsriel]

I was wondering why the recording date was being shown atop the GDN. Then they started talking about theories and I went "oh. Yes it's probably a good idea to inform people that these opinions are very much outdated and do not reflect the reality of the situation."

[@biscuit715]

Mr pinned comment still found a way to get mad about it!

[@knightofficer]

What did it end up being? I've been trying to avoid Israel/Gaza news

[@MisutaaAsriel]

@@knightofficer More or less? An Palestinian Israeli-Resistance group carried out an act of aggression which *could* constitute a terrorist attack, in response to years of constant aggression from Israel. Israel responded by using the attack to justify genocide they've been openly eager to carry out, have been indiscriminately bombing Palestinian civilians, medical professionals, hospitals, refugee camps, etc.; and have even said everyone from children to literal UN officials on the ground were terrorists, to excuse such acts. It's… a pretty major shitshow. And worst of all is there's been a striking divide between the upper and lower class; the upper class, from celebrities to politicians, including ones you might like, have been voicing support for Israel's genocide, likening the "terrorist attack" they are "responding to" to 9/11, and saying anyone pro-Palestine are pro-terrorists. Meanwhile, even a majority of working-class republicans are apparently in support for the Palestinians, not to mention an overwhelming majority of anyone *not* Republican. It's *that stark* of a divide.

[@reidfann]

​@knightofficer The preponderance of evidence leans towards it being a misfire of a PIJ rocket into the parking lot, and that Hamas initially lied about the number of casualties.

[@fanyar_]

my favourite genre of WTYP episode where an originally news segment gets its own episode

[@jansamohyl7983]

Will there be a Gaza episode?

[@LauraLovesHugs]

@@jansamohyl7983 well the genocide in gaza isn't really an engineering disaster as much as it's a deliberate policy of destruction so I don't think it'd necessarily make sense

[@masonturner0]

Too bad that Seamus wasn’t Driven To Madness with another 3 and a half hour episode

[@morganambler5281]

Nothing like waking up to a hot, fresh, organic cup of Well There’s Your Problem.

[@BBJBS]

Last time I was this early, the Beirut blast was still on The Goddamn News.

[@blackmagemasher4031]

Thank you to everyone (and guest), and thank you Devon for editing this monster

[@sunyavadin]

The sequel to Episode 18: Texas City. Ammonium Nitrate 2: Beirut Boogaloo

[@spacedonut8157]

Oh hell yeah, time to learn about the world's largest fertilizer bomb.

[@jeremiahthomas3542]

21:00 Cincinnati isn't the only city with a railway, my city (Tacoma) owns one too, and coincidentally also recently sold off most of their trackage.

[@alistairsmj1602]

Yay Tacoma 🙄

[@ExperimentIV]

oh also congrats on 100k! can’t wait to see all your plaques

[@thomasgiles2876]

NOT THE TEETH ONES!!!

[@blackzeroflame]

On the topic of repurposing grain silos, there was a really cool one in Dallas for a while. They'd cut pathways between the different silos and turned the whole thing into an indoor climbing gym. Every surface was covered in holds for the first 15" or so for bouldering and then there were full climbing walls all the way up the silos. The added in a few floors and each silo was a different difficulty. It felt like a maze-like cave and the tallest wall was 400" I think. Supposedly it was the tallest indoor wall in North America. My Aunt got me an annual pass and I started spending 1-2 days a week there with my roommate climbing and hanging out.

[@nebbit1]

Yay Seamus! Loved the gulf state vanity project episode, been wondering if he'd ever be back on.

[@GideonWells]

Until “City Skylines 2” I was having the oddest case of Deja vu and was double checking the publication date.

[@ketrakrelek2347]

when I was at school I did work experience at the London Olympic park about a year prior to the games and encountered zaha hadid when I got taken to the aquatics centre while she was there on a site visit. She was literally on the other side of the giant venue so I barely saw her irl tbh but one of the people showing me round was like oh yeah zaha refuses to wear PPE for site visits and I could indeed see she was the only one not wearing a hard hat lol. The centre was nearly complete so the risk was not high but i think it does say something about her vibe for sure

[@safetybrain8824]

Congratulations on your 100K subscribers! Keep up the great and entertaining work! :-)

[@patricklynch9574]

Going to have to wait until Monday morning to listen at my wage slave job. Till then great job love you guys.

[@JoshSweetvale]

First slide: "Why is there a rocky mesa in a major port city?" Remembers topic "Jesus!"

[@stephanief5794]

i think that would be considered a butte

[@jimb9063]

I appreciated the Engelbert Humperdinck reference. Thanks for the information concerning how the fertilizer got there, and ended up being stored with fireworks. Never understood how that happened that until now. The last few seconds of the tragedy reminded me of a catastrophic magazine detonation on a large 20th C. warship. The woosh of the fast burn of the propellant, followed by the huge explosion when it reaches the magazine.

[@SnifflyWhale]

When the explosion happened I had a good idea of what caused it immediately thanks to this podcast

[@LoPhatKao]

officially finished all 144 free episodes last night (and even the elevator video) was sad that i was out of wtyp now my sadness is banished for a few hours

[@Smokescale]

Interesting/morbid fact: you can open up google maps and go to the port--where they list "Beirut Blast 2020" as an historical landmark, same with the Orient Queen cruise ship wreck. It should be noted that the Orient Queen was ACROSS THAT SECTION OF THE BAY from where the explosion was... HALF A KILOMETER AWAY. That is how powerful this blast was. It rolled a cruise ship 500 meters away.

[@cupidhoodlum]

Thanks for shining a light on the structural security of grain silos. Im glad to know buffalo will be safe if canada ever decides to settle their score with the white house

[@LavastormSW]

I have been WAITING for you all to cover this! I'm so excited to watch!!

[@CreeperOnYourHouse]

Thank you for adding back the pre-pod banter

[@pearceburns2787]

From a God Damn News to Episode in [to be checked eventually] years.

[@larsvontrash]

i was a grad student in 2020. One of my professors was scheduled to give a keynote speech at some academic conference and she spent about 10 minutes of class time complaining about her conference being canceled but not a word about the thousands of people injured and hundreds dead????

[@travismatheson2884]

Many moons ago, my high school backed onto a railway and grain silos. These were not the big cement ones here, smaller ones that would store grain before transit on grain rail cars. We used to have evacuation drills for fire and "Grain Silo Explosions". Although at the time this disaster occured, we did not know that this was caused by ammonia nitrate, this event made me realise that if the grain silo did explode, there was never going to be an evacuation, we would all have been flattened.

[@johannageisel5390]

Oh, that's neat. I was hoping for a new episode. I have kitchen chores to do and my favourite podcast is helpful for that.

[@SparkIgnitionv2]

The same runtime I would consider just on the excessive side for a movie makes me say ‘aw just a short one’ for WTYP.

[@tarasaurus98]

51:20 No that was a crude form of anfo. Iirc he poured diesel fuel and nitromethane over the ammonium nitrate.

[@codemonster8443]

This one has been a long time coming. That said, if you guys did not talk about the bridal photoshoot during this explosion then I'm gonna do the one thing you have asked us not to do.

[@nataschavisser573]

Talking about Venice, its inevitable demise can be the topic for a future episode.

[@Critical_Hit]

They should get somebody from trashfuture because of the banished to the lagoon bit

[@merrydaye4763]

Alice the Seagal vehicle house ramming happened in Arizona and yes he did kill a puppy. This was with our crazy ex Sheriff Arpaio.

[@drewkennerly7029]

I work in Dearborn at a Lebanese owned business. Everything you said tracks, even the use of whatsapp.

[@elijahthorne303]

the "corporals" etc in the safety third are giving such stanford prison experiment energy. you put an extra stripe on a guy's uniform and he immediately just goes mad with power

[@GreatSwordNH]

yay new wtyp! congrats on 100k!

[@johnher4946]

1.5kt TNT was only 20% of the original amount and was still 10% of a Hiroshima. If not for the thefts it would have been a full 50% of Hiroshima in raw energy.

[@samhunter6831]

100k when did that happen?! Congratulations 🎉

[@jbkjbk1999]

Incredible to open both this and the last podcast that Seamus was on with Justin worrying about how much space he has on his computer and Liam berating him for it and talking about how many hard drives he's given him

[@mishkamcivor409]

57:00 holy shit the panels on those cars look like were crushed inwards by the shockwave thats insane

[@joinedupjon]

50:18 Scotland confirmed - in England you'd try fix the landlords lightswitch yourself because the outcomes of reporting it to the landlord are either. 1. you get no-fault evicted 2. the landlord sends a young offender who claims to have a part P domestic installer ticket round while you're out at work - he'll probably replace the lightswitch in some fucked up way (upside down, too long woodscrews sticking out the front plate etc), but he'll also steal your video games.

[@50043211]

The first episode I watched from these three started the same way, minus the cities skyline game. 😆

[@elfinfluff]

According to a google maps search, it looks like the Orient Queen was left where it sank and scrapped down to the water line.

[@sabinetronco9017]

You know, if y'all want a good silly episode that's reasonably well documented, you should do the 1970 Exploding Whale in Oregon.

[@OrinLinwe]

...am I crazy for thinking that this was already covered? I know it was "featured" on the goddamn-news-segment shortly after it happened way back when, but I think my brain is confusing it with another long-form episode dedicated to "improper storage of large volumes of fertilizer or equivalent, suddenly explodes devastatingly". Had to go back and double-check that this was a new episode.

[@Spanderson99]

Texas City explosion, I think. That one had a bonus oil refinery as well. Have these guys done the Halifax explosion as well? Now that I think about it, there’s a few exploding-cargo disasters out there.

[@datfisheboi6519]

I honestly think this'll be the first episode for an event that I actually remember happening at the time

[@RBrogan27]

congrats on 100k!

[@joshuasutherland6692]

Congrats on 100K!

[@patrickmcneilly4293]

To add severity to this explosion, the Hercules Powder Company explosion of September 12, 1940, had approximately 297,000 lbs of explosives detonate. The Hercules explosion killed 51, injured 200+, and was felt as far away as Poughkeepsie, NY.

[@fuzzydunlop7928]

This is the one I was hoping for the most. Thank you for delivering the goods!

[@Happy00Fangirl]

Wow, never been this early to an episode drop. Bring on the chaos.

[@Rinasoir]

The eternal war of Roz vs Hard Drives

[@jamiekamihachi3135]

It’s weird to see a goddamn news segment finally reach episode form.

[@LudicrousBarchart]

100k! Well done gang!

[@thomaspalazzolo5902]

Ooo, Seamus! *checks the runtime and awws*

[@trevorborth1141]

Love this podcast, love the hosts.

[@oli24yt]

The absolutely hilarious double-take I as a Halifax resident did when I nonchalantly half-glanced at the screen near the end just before the safety third location was actually namedropped and went "wh- wait a minute I KNOW THAT FORT" lmao

[@xmlthegreat]

From the Goddamn news to an episode, finally.

[@Grumskiz]

having a lot of mental health today, let's listen to a new episode of my favorite podcast