"6 Million Lbs of explosives" found in LA

[CrossOut]

Hey guys.. i watched the news this morning.. top headlines were about over 6mil lbs of explosives found in louisiana.

 

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/12/04/louisiana-town-evacuated-after-6-million-pounds-of-explosives-discovered/

 

have you heard about this?

 

 

the article states that the "explosives" in question was smokeless BP but i would like to know if this was the case or if were talking about something more HE related. i know the news tends to severely over exaggerate such events but this seems to be pretty legit..

 

whats your opinions about this..

 

 

I feel like "safety" was the proper section for this as it does have a lot of safety concerns.. if this is the wrong location please move it for me.

 

-Cross

[Short5]

Wow! 6 million pounds of anything flamable is a lot. Smokless burns pretty slow but still would make a heck of a fire.

[dagabu]

Lets make the biggest flame projector ever!!

 

-dag

[Algenco]

Lets make the biggest flame projector ever!!

 

-dag

 

PGI 2013

[NightHawkInLight]

Wow! 6 million pounds of anything flamable is a lot. Smokless burns pretty slow but still would make a heck of a fire.

In that quantity I would be stunned if it didn't go high order if it were touched off. When you get upwards of a few hundred pounds of any explosive that can deflagrate by flame or spark it will almost certainly hit a deflagration to detonation transition. Tell you this much, I'd be among those evacuating, or at least hanging out in the basement a lot if I were within a three mile radius while the police were bumbling around moving the stuff.

[taiwanluthiers]

Smokeless burns very fast when confined, such as inside a gun barrel or piled within a 6 million pound pile.

[dagabu]

PGI 2013

 

8' concrete culverts on end filled with M-6? WHOOT!!

[Shadowcat1969]

It's actually a military propellant of some kind, something out of demilled artillery shells and the like. The company was supposed to be storing the stuff appropriatley in bunkers, but apparently there were boxes of it in storage sheds, stacked out back of warehouses, stored in drums (some of which were leaking). They are moving it about 6 miles into bunkers. All this was from a news article I read about it.

[NightHawkInLight]

It's actually a military propellant of some kind, something out of demilled artillery shells and the like. The company was supposed to be storing the stuff appropriatley in bunkers, but apparently there were boxes of it in storage sheds, stacked out back of warehouses, stored in drums (some of which were leaking). They are moving it about 6 miles into bunkers. All this was from a news article I read about it.

If it's M6 as the article claims it's basically smokeless gunpowder, about 90% nitrocellulose. The difference being the remaining 10% is primarily dinitrotoluene in M6, rather than the nitroglycerin in standard smokeless. Not sure why. Maybe to slow the burn rate to be more appropriate for large calibers? In any case, it wouldn't be great to have a few million pounds strewn about your back yard.

Edited December 5, 2012 by NightHawkInLight

[mikeee]

This was the same location and company that had a major unexplained explosion in a storage bunker earlier in the year.

I think I know what happended now :-)

They also recycle high explosives from ordinance shells.

[Peret]

Unfortunately, fraud and mismanagement by military contractors seems to be all too common these days. There seems to be no supervision. I wish I were a judge and the case came before me.

 

I wonder what the average penalty is for illegally storing (say) one ton of explosive. Let's assume it is 1 year. Here we have 3,000 tons, so the penalty should be 3,000 years divided between the number of company officers before the court. They probably won't live long enough to serve their sentences, so some of this time would be wasted. I'll sentence them to only 1,500 years, and distribute the remaining 1,500 years between the military officers that placed the contract and didn't supervise it, the Pentagon staff that told them to outsource it, and the politicians the company paid off to get the contract. Naturally I will not penalize the ATF - fine, upstanding civil servants, overworked and understaffed. But heed this warning from the bench - I will not be so lenient next time, so take your manpower off pursuing fireworks and put it on chasing these explosives guys.

[Potassiumchlorate]

Sounds like nipolit to me. Nipolit was a HE that the Germans used in WWII, when they got short of TNT etc. It was mostly "recycled" NC from artillery shells.

[NightHawkInLight]

They also recycle high explosives from ordinance shells.

Recycling by re-purposing the containers as a fencing material to line the property it would seem.

 

You've got my vote Peret.

[flying fish]

8' concrete culverts on end filled with M-6? WHOOT!!

 

Corbett will still out-do it with his fireball...

[Algenco]

Corbett will still out-do it with his fireball...

 

Bill would be the one to do it