reSee.it - Tweets Saved By @drbairdonline
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The "official" story says perimeter steel columns "falling" from #WTC1 "punched" through Building 6 #WTC6 on 9/11 & created this huge "crater" down to sub-basement levels? Others look at this crater and think "No way! This HAD to have been an explosion!" So which is it? Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For nearly a year after 9/11 there was nothing controversial about the #WTC6 crater. On 16 Sep 2001 #NYTimes published this satellite image that clearly shows the black hole marked "6" but it certainly didn't stand out from all the other destruction 2/ https://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/16/us/after-the-attacks-a-look-at-the-destruction-and-the-rescue-effort.html?searchResultPosition=1
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
On 5 Oct 2001, AP released a photo of a priest blessing a cross of steel beams that reportedly had fallen from WTC1 into #WTC6 that a laborer had found in the WTC6 rubble two days after 9/11 3/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
What should have gotten - but apparently never did get - people's attention that maybe it wasn't WTC1 steel beams that caused the #WTC6 crater was a segment of Sixty Minutes II broadcast on 31 Oct 2001. 4/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1HDQhYsiX8&ab_channel=60Minutes
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In this must see segment titled "Under Ground Zero," CBS's Dan Rather takes a tour under Ground Zero with Ken Holden, Commissioner of New York's Department of Design & Construction, starting with #WTC6. 5/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/i60-minutes-ii-i-under-ground-zero/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Providing our first close-up views of the #WTC6 crater, Rather reports that Commissioner Holden says "debris from the tall towers crashed through the roof" of #WTC6 & "through the basements six stories underground" 6/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For those unfamiliar with the WTC underground, #WTC6 was in the "Deep Foundation" (aka "Bathtub") section that had six basement levels (B1 to B6) protected from the Hudson River by the slurry wall. 7/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Holden: "Large chunks of that heavy facade broke off, presumably from the upper floors 90 or higher & just crashed through the center of this building [#WTC6], crashing through the nine floors of this building" & "many of the concrete slabs that create the parking structure" 8/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Holden is referring to pre-fabricated sections of vertical columns attached to horizontal beams (called spandrels) 48 ft long x 10 ft wide that weighed about 22 tons 9/ https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/wtc.htm
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Rather: "The debris, some of the individual pieces weighing 30 tons, cannonball through Building 6, creating an open space that looks like an atrium." 10/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Deeper under #WTC6, Comm'r Holden points at one of "the huge exterior columns that support the exterior of the building" & said "you can see the force of the fire and the explosion has basically sheared off." Excuse me! "Force of the fire"? "Explosion"? "Sheared off"? 11/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Comm'r Holden adds: "And so that when you look at it [WTC6] from the outside, you see that northern facade is leaning against this building, and that's why it's leaning because these have sheared off.” (It's hard to judge from photos of #WTC6 any leaning facade. ) 12/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Descending further, Comm'r Holmes announces “This is level B3, three floors beneath Ground Zero,” what used to be a garage for fed govt employees who worked in #WTC6 where Rather says daylight "filters in from that giant crater at the bottom of what Holden calls, the atrium." 13/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In the 20 years since 9/11, there has been much confusion abt how deep the #WTC6 crater was. Indeed in this very segment Rather had earlier reported Comm'r Holden said debris crashed "through the basements six stories underground" suggesting bottom was not B3 but instead B6 14/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Similarly #NYTimes reporter James Glanz after taking a tour of the WTC basement wrote "a giant hole punched through the middle of the U.S. Customs House [aka #WTC6] by falling debris from the north tower continues to the bottom of the basement" 15/ https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/An-underground-wasteland-Journey-to-trade-2856669.php
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For my part, I have oft tweeted Jack White's claim that the #WTC6 crater was 10-story crater in an 8-story building. White simply assumed #WTC6 had only a two-story basement and the debris one could see in photos was lying on the bottom of the crater. 16/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
What's the greatest mystery about #WTC6? 1) Two 10-story craters in 8-story building? 2) Explosions at same time "second plane" hit? 3) Collapsed before either tower? 4) The missing gold? 5) Tritium in basement 55x normal background level? 6) The fact that nobody talks about it?
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But looking at this still that Comm'r Holmes says is level B3 & Rather says daylight "filters in from that giant crater at the BOTTOM" of the "atrium", it appears B3 is the BOTTOM of the "crater." The B3 floor seems to extend to where the car is parked in the daylit area. 17/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
However George Tamaro (who supervised repairs to slurry wall) in 2004 reported "tiebacks" were installed on segment of Vesey St wall where falling debris had punched thru #WTC6 & 3 levels of basement floor slabs - suggesting damage to B3 floor as well 18/ https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2607&context=icchge
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
This diagram of WTC basement damage posted by Lawrence B. Karp, Consulting Engineer, seems consistent w/George Tamaro showing greatest #WTC6 damage to B1 & B2 where "crater" located, reduced damage to B3 & no damage to B4, B5 & B6 19/ lbkarp.com/wtc/basement.j…
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Knowing that the bottom of the "crater" lay on B3 and maybe in part on B4 we could ask "How much debris was on the bottom of the crater?" Well, to judge by this image - with all that daylight coming in - I would say on B3 (& thus likely B4) the debris pile was NOT VERY HIGH! 20/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed to judge by this photo captioned "This debris field in the center of the U.S. Customhouse at 6 World Trade Center," if this represents B3 we might surmise the pile was no higher than HALF the height of the basement floor or about 5 feet. 21/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CBP_World_Trade_Center_Photography_6.jpg
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
While we're on this photo, we might ask where are all those "large chunks" of perimeter columns from #WTC1 that Comm'r Holden & Dan Rather referred that "cannonballed" into #WTC6 b/c I certainly don't see many of them at the bottom of the "crater"? 22/ https://t.co/yNePjVE0cQ
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
It is not clear what part of the #WTC6 "crater" the earlier video clip of the jumbled "large chunks" of #WTC1 perimeter columns was taken, but if anything it appears to be from the TOP of the crater where they penetrated only partially into #WTC6 23/ https://t.co/BhIMDTHWii
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
And while we're on this photo we might note it is strange how these #WTC1 perimeter columns seem to have broken in two. How does that happen? Were they supposed to be from the north side of #WTC1 that American Airlines Flight 11 reportedly crashed into? 24/ https://t.co/FEWwWaVebB
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The #WTC6 "crater" photo caption also states "Steel beams formed several crosses in the midst of the debris field." We might ask from WHAT PART of #WTC1 or #WTC6 did these "crosses" supposedly come and what function could they have possibly served? 25/ https://t.co/dEjcpqIXUh
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
WaPo reported these "crosses" were actually "T-beams" & stated "There were T-beams on every floor of the World Trade center buildings." But these "crosses" are NOT "T-beams". So what are they? Were these "crosses" somehow planted for laborers to find? 26/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/911-memorials-the-story-of-the-cross-at-ground-zero/2011/09/07/gIQA2mMXDK_story.html https://t.co/9FrcxUXPN4
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
From these photos it appears the debris field at the bottom of #WTC6 "crater" is all on one level (B3) but, whether on 1 or 2 levels, it seems the debris was only about 5 feet high. So where did all that steel, concrete, office furnishings, etc. from an 8-story building go?! 27/ https://t.co/HMlBSBfraZ
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But there was a lot more happening on B3 than the bottom of a scooped out crater. Dan Rather exclaimed “Good God, this is an automobile hanging like this" & Comm'r Holden added "With its tires burnt off. Obviously the rubber has been burnt off. The fire here was so hot." 28/ https://t.co/iQOtmbfxBv
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As they walked past many other burnt out cars on B3, Comm'r Holden observes "Obviously, these cars are all burnt out, but you'll be able to see over, I believe it's over here, and see the aluminum hubcap is just melted right off. That's a puddle of aluminum from the fire.” 29/ https://t.co/QELtEs0Y0b
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Yes, indeed, that's "a puddle of aluminum"! But it's not the hubcap. That the entire rim that has melted! FYI the melting point of aluminum is 1221°F/660°C while the melting point of the standard A356 aluminum alloy used for car rims is a little less 1130°F/610 °C. 30/ https://t.co/Oa83nFirH4
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Aluminum alloy rims have been known to melt when cars are left abandoned in forest fires but it is curious what could have possibly caused and sustained this fire on B3? From the photos the debris field itself on B3 does not seem to have suffered any fire damage. 31/ https://t.co/NW55mB6wzq
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
@911Revisionist If you actually read that thread, you will see that I discuss Wood's theories about what happened to WTC6, the craters & all that black smoke. In other threads I discuss other parts of her theory. Just search @drbairdonline & "Judy Wood"
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Curiously around same time Bollyn & Hoffman abandoned DEWs for super-thermite, Oct 2006 Drs Judy Wood & Morgan Reynolds (W&R) began posting web articles advocating DEWs as best explanation for utter destruction of WTC on 9/11, including #WTC6. 58/ https://www.drjudywood.com/articles/DEW/StarWarsBeam1.html
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
@independentssd I discuss Jack White's photos and much more in detail in the first of the two long threads https://t.co/CqbiJXCFBU
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
On 7 Aug 1998 was it really Osama bin Laden & Al Qaeda's Mitsubishi van w/800 kg TNT that caused such devastation in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 213 & injuring 4000+? Hardly. How about an Israeli nuclear #FalseFlag to set up bin Laden as the fall guy for 9/11? Hmm. Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
To make the case that a Mitsubishi van loaded w/800 kg TNT could "hardly" cause the devastation in Nairobi, I draw here on 5+ years of analyzing some two dozen car/truck bombings 1981-2017 (listed below) drawing on extensive reading in the literature on explosive cratering. 2/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I also stand here on "the shoulder of giants" who paved the way for challenging "official" stories of so-called terrorist car/truck bombings, beginning with the work of the rather mysterious Australian investigator Joe Vialls. 3/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
On 22 Jan 2004, "Joe Vialls" posted an article "Fortress Americas, Part 2" on his website in which he made the startling claim "the Zionists" were responsible for blowing up the US & French Marine barracks in Beirut on 23 Oct 1983. So WHO was this mysterious Joe Vialls? Thread/ 1
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In his article "Nuclear Bombs in a Briefcase?" in Aug-Sep 1993 issue of alt Aussie magazine Nexus New Times, Vialls in critiquing the "official" story of Apr 1993 Bishopsgate bombing was the first to point out the simple FACT that car/truck bombs can NOT blast large craters 4/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
"Explosives experts" told Vialls "The blast from most bombs takes the easiest path, in this case outwards then upwards to atmosphere" thus a large "crater could only have appeared if the bomb was dropped from an aircraft, or was buried in advance, or was a nuclear device" 5/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In his extensive reporting on Oct 2002 Bali blast, Vialls was also the first to detail the Israeli modus operandi of nuclear terrorism/extortion employing shallowly buried "clean" micro nukes developed in "top-secret projects" in US & Israel by 1981 6/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In his reporting on 2002 Bali blast, Vialls also first described Israel's use of these "clean" micro nukes in false flag operations as part of Israeli modus operandi of nuclear terrorism/extortion to force other states like Australia to support Israel's "War on Terror" 11/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In later reporting, Vialls further identified Israel w/their "clean" micro nukes as the perp behind several other supposed car/truck bombings incl Oct 1983 US Marine barracks, three in London in 1990s & Feb 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri in Beirut 7/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Former French Defense Minister Michel Alliot-Marie renews LIE that Hezbollah & "the Syrian regime" "jointly responsible" for 2005 assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri, once again ignoring clear evidence reported by Joe Vialls pointing the finger at ISRAEL Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Building on Joe Vialls' insights on craters & micro nukes, Dimitri Khalezov in his book 9/11thology detailed DOZENS of explosions around the world "officially" blamed on car/truck bombs that he asserted were actually shallowly buried micro-nukes 8/ https://www.scribd.com/document/170266922/9-11thology-The-third-truth-about-9-11-or-Defending-the-US-Government-which-has-only-the-first-two
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Was "Russia's 9/11" - the explosions that rocked Russia in Sept 1999 officially blamed on Chechen Muslims - a Putin #FalseFlag? Actually these bombings have all the fingerprints of ISRAELI nuclear terrorism/extortion aimed at forcing Putin to join Israel's #WarOfTerror Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In my Twitter search for years 2013-22 I find an almost unanimous consensus that the 1999 bombings were a #FalseFlag pulled by Putin & FSB (main Russian successor to Soviet KGB) to trigger Second Chechen War & promote Putin to Russian presidency. Cui bono? "False Flag Putin"! 2/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
References to the 1999 bombings on Twitter as PROOF of #FalseFlagPutin zoomed exponentially in Feb-Apr 2022 - spurred undoubtedly by several Feb 2022 articles - and then picked up again in the fall w/Nord Stream pipeline & Kerch Bridge incidents & "dirty bomb" accusations 3/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
ALL of the 2022 tweets that refer to 1999 explosions use the "fact" that Putin rose to power based on a "false flag" to PROVE that anything BAD that Russia accuses Ukraine of doing (or planning to do) is REALLY just a Russian "false flag" JUST LIKE "Russia's 9/11" 4/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
This unanimity of opinion in Twitterverse in support of "conspiracy theory" that Putin & FSB pulled a #FalseFlag in 1999 is interesting b/c even WIKIPEDIA states historians & journalists divided. Philip Short's 2022 Putin biography completely rejects. 5/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_apartment_bombings
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now I certainly wouldn't put it past Putin - or indeed ANY state leader - to pull a "false flag" but as for "Cui bono?" there was another who benefited from "Russia's 9/11" - ISRAEL. Since 1979 Israel had been pressuring states all around the world to join the "War on Terror" 6/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Why there has been NO "expert" or popular interest in Israeli involvement in "Russia's 9/11" is quite curious since quite a few researchers have asserted Israel was behind "America's 9/11" - an Israeli #FalseFlag to pressure US into joining #WarOfTerror 7/ https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Several researchers (e.g., Victor Ostrovsky, Ronen Bergman, Remi Brulin, Christopher Bollyn) have done much to expose smaller-scale Israeli #FalseFlag terrorism (e.g. car bombings) but I see them as #LimitedHangouts intended to shield even more than expose Israeli terrorism 8/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But I am certainly not the first to investigate the "true" nature of Israeli nuclear terrorism/extortion. Back in 2002 Aussie investigator Joe Vialls (1944-2005) exposed Israel's racket in the 2002 Bali explosion caused by a Dimona “stealth" micro nuke 9/ web.archive.org/web/2003021022…
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Vialls claimed the purpose of Israel's nuking of Bali in 2002 was “the ‘punishment’ meted out to Australians & others opposed to the Judeo-Christian Crusade agst Islam", to extort Australia into joining the Israeli #WarOfTerror 10/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In 2004 Vialls reported Jewish “Special Forces” used Dimona micro-nuke to assassinate former Lebanese PM Hariri & had used same tactics in Beirut in 1983 bombing of US Embassy and US & French marine barracks, each time false flagging Hezbollah & Syria 11/ web.archive.org/web/2005022302…
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
My own research has confirmed much of what Vialls reported over 15 years earlier. In this thread I conclude Israeli PM Menachem Begin had "means, motive & opportunity" to order shallowly buried 10-ton "clean" nuke to blow up US Marine barracks in 1983 12/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
1983 bombing of US Marine barracks in Beirut called repeatedly “the largest non-nuclear explosion ever" (or since WWII). This propaganda served many purposes, incl possibly providing cover for what was actually an Israeli “clean” micro-nuke that Joe Vialls ID'ed in 2002 Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
On 2005 Hariri assassination I concluded caused by 10-20 ton nuke buried below street, consistent w/Vialls reporting "a highly specialized micro-nuke sourced from Dimona" "detonated by remote control in an underground sewage conduit" 13/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I also concluded that Israel's nuclear terrorism/extortion racket worked perfectly because as a direct result of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing, President Reagan ended up giving Israel practically everything they had wanted for the #WarOfTerror! 14/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In addition, Reagan in his Dec 27 Q&A enlisted the US in Israel's "war on terrorism", a pledge he repeated in his 1984 State of the Union. Thus, as a direct result of the Oct 23 attack, Israel got practically everything they had wanted from the US! 75/ https://youtu.be/TdMTTlpfNP4?t=2021
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So how might this Israeli racket have played out in Russia in 1999? To answer this question I will focus on Volgodonsk, the largest of the explosions in terms of extent of damage, an explosion likely caused by same 10-20 ton micronuke responsible for 1983 & 2005 Beirut blasts 15/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I should note that details about ANY of the four explosions that destroyed apartment blocs in Buynaksk, Moscow & Volgodonsk in Sep 1999 is much sparser than, say, an explosion in the US. The best resource I found was John Dunlop's The Moscow Bombings of September 1999 (2014) 16/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
According to Dunlop & other sources, the Volgodonsk explosion on 16 Sep 1999 killed 19, injured more than 1300, "blew off the front of a nine-story apartment block" and "severely damaged a nearby police station & about 20 other surrounding buildings" 17/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The fact that "parts of the vehicle that carried the bomb were dispersed over a radius of nearly a mile" also suggests how powerful the Volgodonsk blast was. But the most telling evidence of explosive yield is the large crater left in the street in front of the apt building. 18/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
CNN on 16 Sep 1999 reported Volgodonsk crater was "a five-meter (16.4-foot) deep crater" & claimed the "explosives hidden in a truck OR an underground pipe". An FSB spokesman said "the force of the blast was equivalent to about 100-300 TONS of TNT"!! 19/ web.archive.org/web/2011030206…
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
CNN also reported a Moscow daily newspaper suggested FSB had "engineered the blasts to allow for the declaration of a state of emergency -- and the cancellation of planned elections" wch the Kremlin denounced as "lies" & "wickedness" claiming explosions caused by "terrorists" 20/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The story of how an inter-agency investigative group formed by the Procurator for Rostov Oblast quickly identified the three Volgodonsk bombers & determined exactly what caused the explosion reads just like one of those FBI stories where everything is figured out in hours! 21/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
According to May 2002 report on Volgodonsk issued by the Russian General Procuracy (as translated by Dunlop) "it was established that the homemade explosive device had been located in a GAZ-53 vehicle", fragments of which "had been located spread out to a radius of 1.5 km" 22/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
"At the locus of the [Volgodonsk] explosion, "there was formed a crater 3.5 meters in depth and 13-15 meters in diameter" & "it was established that the power of the explosive device used in the bombing was equivalent to 800-1800 kilograms [.88-1.98 US tons] of TNT" 23/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
According to Felshtinsky & Litvinenko, on 10 Dec 2002 the Rostov Region office of FSB announced "the solution of the terrorist act in Volgodonsk" concluding "the power of the explosive device was equal to about two tons of TNT" w/no info on the explosive substances used 24/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
However, according to Dunlop, the Jan 2004 report of the Russian General Procuracy "repeatedly underscored that in the bomb detonated in Volgodonsk there was 'a mixture consisting of TNT, hexogen and, most likely, aluminum'" transported in sacks disguised as sugar 25/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now anybody who has followed my work would know that this "official" story is complete BS for the simple reason that there is NO WAY a GAZ-53 truck carrying HOWEVER MANY tons of high explosives could possibly blast "a crater 3.5 meters in depth and 13-15 meters in diameter"! 26/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Just like this kind of Mercedes truck loaded with HOWEVER MUCH high explosives could NOT have blasted this crater "officially" reported 39' long by 29' 6" wide by 8' 8" deep in the center of what was the US marine barracks lobby floor in Beirut in 1983 27/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The witnesses agreed it was a Mercedes truck with a yellow stakebed. Two also said it look like a "six-by"(US military 6x6 medium-duty truck) (right). One mentioned "a gray, pugnose cab". That description seems to fit pretty closely the Mercedes 5-ton L 911 B (left). 35/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
And there is no way a Mitsubishi truck packed w/two tonnes RDX or HOWEVER MANY tons of high explosives could have blasted this crater in Beirut in 2005, officially reported as 11.4 m (37.4 ft) in diameter & 1.9 m (6.2 ft) deep 28/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
And a Ryder rental truck packed with 2200 kg ANFO or HOWEVER MAY tons of high explosives could NOT have blasted the crater officially reported as 28 ft in diameter and 6.8 ft deep behind the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995 29/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Others like Joe Vialls & Dimitri Khalezov have challenged "official" LIES abt explosions based on FACT truck bombs can NOT blast large craters. Indeed I first learned about Volgodonsk from Khalezov altho he questionably accepts CNN's 100-300 tons & only blames the "good guys" 30/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Over the past three years I have researched & analyzed everything I could find on evidence of explosive cratering in order to understand how to use the crater as a forensic tool to dissect the explosion - not just truck bombs but also incidents like 2020 #BeirutBlast 31/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I have provided evidence for the claim that truck bombs can NOT blast large craters in numerous threads. But I am also starting to bring all the pieces together in a manuscript titled The Telltale Crater of which Chapter 1 is "Oklahoma City 1995" https://www.drbairdonline.com/the-telltale-crater/oklahoma-city-1995/ 32/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So if a GAZ-53 truck loaded with HOWEVER MANY sacks of high explosives could NOT have blasted the Volgodonsk crater, what kind of explosion COULD have? At the very least such a crater would have required an UNDERGROUND explosion. 33/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed before the "official" truck bomb story kicked in, there were initial inklings that the Volgodonsk explosion was underground as CNN reported on 16 Sep 2022 that the explosives were "hidden in a truck OR AN UNDERGROUND PIPE" 34/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Khalezov relates two people he knew saw the crater before it was filled w/water & neither believed it was a car bomb, saying obvious explosive device hidden in the sewage system deep underground because they could clearly see remnants of torn piping at the edges of the crater 35/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Also indicative that the Volgodonsk explosion was underground rather than aboveground, one of the acquaintances, a commander of a firefighters' shift who was on duty at the moment, said that the explosion "shook the ground and could be felt at a minimum of 15 kilometers away" 36/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Could high explosives (HE) detonated underground have blasted the Volgodonsk crater? Most definitely! But an underground HE explosion would NOT have caused all the OTHER damage. Take, e.g., the HE blast that killed PM Carrero Blanco in Madrid in 1973. 37/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Of course, a nuclear truck bomb would NOT have been necessary to blast the 1.9-m deep Hariri crater. An underground high explosives bomb could easily have blasted that crater. One thinks immediately of the explosion that killed PM Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid in Dec 1973. 47/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The 1973 Madrid (l) & 2005 Beirut (r) blasts left similar craters but the Madrid underground HE blast caused little damage to neighboring buildings in contrast to extensive damage caused by Beirut & Volgodonsk blasts. 38/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In order to answer questions like how much HE or how big of a nuke it would take to blast a certain crater, over the past year I have tabulated ALL the explosive cratering tests - both nuclear & non-nuclear, aboveground, surface & underground - I have been able to discover. 39/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I realize that this brief technical aside will go over a lot of people's heads but I strongly believe in giving people all the tools they need to be able to do this kind of cratering analysis themselves so they don't have to take my word for it! 40/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For forensic analysis of explosive craters, I have found it most useful to start by graphing the apparent crater diameter-to-depth (d/p) ratio as a function of scaled depth of burst (DOB), where + values are for underground explosions and - values for aboveground explosions 41/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
This plot of d/p vs scaled DOB follows the most accepted rules for scaling explosions for cratering analysis, using 1/3.4 (0.294) scaling, thus Scaled DOB = DOB/W^(1/3.4) where W = TNT equivalent weight of the explosive. Here I use DOB in units of ft and W in units of kt. 42/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
To better understand the difference between HE and NE craters, I have divided the data in the Excel figure into into "Small HE" (< 1 lb - 320 lbs TNT), "Large HE" (1.28 - 493 tons TNT) and "Nuclear" (18 - 360,000 tons TNT) test craters. 43/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In order to determine the charge weight & DOB, take crater d/p ratio & use figure to determine scaled DOB. Volgodonsk had an average crater diameter 45.9 ft & depth 11.5 ft so d/p = 45.9/11.5 = 4.0. Assuming explosive was "Large HE," we find scaled DOB of (at minimum) 50 44/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Knowing scaled DOB = 50, we can then use either the scaled diameter or scaled depth versus scaled DOB curve to determine the actual charge & DOB. 45/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Assuming "Large HE" scaled DOB of 50 corresponds to scaled apparent crater diameter of 300 & scaled depth of 75. We then calculate for Volgodonsk crater HE charge of 1.70 tons TNT equiv @ DOB = 7.7 ft - CLOSE to the 2 tons reported but that was on the bed of GAZ-53 truck! 46/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Assuming instead a nuclear device (NE) was used, we can see Volgodonsk d/p of 4 is quite close to an actual data point - the Johnie [sic] Boy test, a 500-ton W-30 TADM (tactical atomic demolition munition) @ DOB only 2 feet below surface detonated 11 July 1962 at NTS. 47/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Scaling down from the Johnie Boy to the Volgodonsk crater, we calculate for Vologodonsk NE 11.7 tons TNT equiv @ DOB .635 ft (7.6 inches), quite comparable to the shallowly buried 10-20 ton micronukes I have previously IDed for the 1983 & 2005 Beirut explosions. 48/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Here we are talking about a micronuke akin to the Mk-54 (ul) manufactured in US 1961-65, width 10.75 in, length 17.6 in, weight 50 - 55 lbs, variable yields 10 & 20 tons, used for the Davy Crockett (ur) & SADM (ll, lr) (special atomic demolition munition). 49/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
If you are thinking at this point, "What about the radioactivity?" I will refer you to numerous tweets I have posted about the very real development of "Minimum Residual Radiation" (i.e., "clean") nukes in the US in the 1960s & 1970s. 50/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
At this point in discussion of nuclear terrorism somebody always asks "If it's a nuke, where's the flash? Where's the RADIOACTIVITY??" For starters underground nukes simply don't have as bright a flash as aboveground nukes. Compare Teapot ESS (left) & Jangle Sugar (right). 17/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In addition to relative ease to place micronuke (surely much smaller than Mk-45 by 1990s) compared to 1.7 tons TNT (for pure TNT cube 5.6 x 5.6 x 5.6 ft) @ DOB = 7.7 ft, an 11-ton micronuke @ DOB = .635 ft much better explains extent of damage in Volgodonsk (r) than HE (l) 51/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
There is other evidence to suggest Volgodonsk was nuked. Khalezov reports the firefighter commander told him at the moment of the explosion, he looked out the window & was astonished to see a perfect "mushroom" cloud of smoke that at once reminded him of a nuclear explosion. 52/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The commander was very familiar with various forms of smoke-clouds but said this was unique. It's hard to know exactly what he meant by perfect "mushroom" cloud, but it may very well have looked like this photo that Wikipedia says is "A possible test of the XW-54 warhead" 53/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Khalezov adds early news reports in Volgodonsk mentioned "the town officials were very much concerned with the 'cloud' & were very glad that the 'cloud' was luckily gone w/the wind towards a huge water reservoir located nearby, instead of being flown towards populated areas." 54/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As to WHO detonated this "clean" micronuke just below the street level in Volgodonsk, I have repeatedly stated that I believe only five nuclear states had ever developed & could have had access to this kind of 3rd-generation nuclear weapon - US, USSR, Israel, France & China 55/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So WHICH of these five states could have done such a dastardly thing? As far as Russia is concerned, although they were motivated to keep up with the US during the Cold War, I seriously doubt they maintained much interest in 3rd-gen nukes thru the turmoil of the 1990s. 56/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
And even if Russia somehow had a stockpile in 1999, I can't imagine why Putin/FSB would resort to an MRR micronuke to pull a #FalseFlag when they have access to all the HE they could ever want? Just to simulate the kind of blast people THINK a truck bomb makes? 57/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
However I can imagine quite a few reasons why Israel might use an MRR micronuke. A small team of Mossad agents can slip into any country & working with a few insiders, under the guise perhaps of road repair, plant a micronuke & later detonate it remotely. 58/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The Israelis would also have to be able to control the site "clean up" enough to prevent discovery of any incriminating evidence. But Joe Vialls showed they've proven they CAN do all this in 1983 & 2005 Beirut & 2004 Bali so quite conceivable could've done so in 1999 Russia. 59/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
A very big part of the success of these #FalseFlags is Israel's amazing ability to get ALL "experts", media & govts to NEVER point the finger at Israel or nukes though most assuredly there are true "experts" & leaders who KNOW - and Israel KNOWS they know - the #Truth 60/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed so complete is the silence over Israeli micronukes that I can hardly call what they do "nuclear terrorism" when NO ONE questions the "official" story that insists over & over that these terrorist attacks like the 1983 US Marine barracks bombing were NON-NUCLEAR! 61/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The final evidence I offer for Israel being responsible for micronuke blasts is in answer to question "Cui bono?" When Israel is the prime beneficiary, that's pretty good proof! Joe Vialls found this true w/Australia after 2002 Bali & I did too w/US after 1983 Beirut blasts 62/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So what did Putin do as a result of "Russia's 9/11"? He did exactly the same thing Reagan did following the 1983 Marine barracks bombing. Putin became a champion of Israel's #WarOfTerror! He went after Chechen Muslims, TWO years BEFORE the US went after Afghan Muslims. 63/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The day before the Volgodonsk bombing, Interfax reported Putin told a meeting of CIS defense ministers that "'INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM' masquerading under ISLAMIC religious slogans aims to destroy the CIS," words that could have come straight from Benjamin Netanyahu! 64/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
And as if that wasn't enough, on 14 Nov 1999 Putin published an NYTimes op-ed "Why We Must Act" that I'd SWEAR was written by BENJAMIN NETANYAHU himself! Just imagine explosions in New City and Washington DC! 65/ https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/14/opinion/why-we-must-act.html
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Putin in Netanyahu-like English proclaimed in this Nov 1999 op-ed: "No government can stand idly by when terrorism strikes"! "The WTC bombing in NYC [in 1993] was the sad result of such extremism"! "Terrorism today knows no boundaries"! And behind it all - Osama bin Laden!! 66/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
How far Putin's Russia had come since the July 1979 Jonathan [Netanyahu] Institute conference that launched "the War on Terror" at which the theme of the Israeli propaganda offensive was the SOVIET UNION was behind international terrorism! 67/ https://www.bollyn.com/the-israeli-origin-of-the-war-on-terror-2/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Furthermore, as Anna Borshevskaya reports, after "he came into office in March 2000," Putin pursued improved ties with Israel that had deteriorated in the late 1990s, motivated in part by the Chechen struggle. 68/ web.archive.org/web/2020051019… https://t.co/PzuYRmkT0P
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
"Putin has drawn parallels btwn Russia's & Israel's respective struggles agst terrorism" in mtgs w/many top Israeli officials. For its part Israel was one of few countries that didn't criticize Putin over Chechnya. Ariel Sharon in 2003 called Putin "a true friend of Israel." 69/ https://t.co/H3mN6bcsmi
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Dec 2000 Putin & Netanyahu symbolically together attended the new Jewish Community Center in Moscow where Putin lit the first Hanukkah candle. Netanyahu said "This is change! Big change! Positive change! Powerful change!" Afterward they spoke for 1 1/2 hrs over kosher wine. 70/ https://t.co/aW9fqjZXHj
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
While Putin's Russia could never top US as "Netanyahu's bitch" - I mean the Russian State Duma never gave Netanyahu 23 standing ovations in 40-minute speech like US Congress did 2015! - I think it safe to conclude "Cui bono?" that Israel benefitted greatly from Russia's 9/11! 71/ https://t.co/wX1yhNaL3Q
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Within hours, the "official" 9/11 & #BeirutBlast narratives were established, not to be questioned. On 11 Sep 2001 legacy media led the way as if guided by some prepared "9/11 script." On 4 Aug 2020 Twitter led the way. Was Twitter also guided? Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Back in Oct 2019 I posted a long two-part thread asserting the existence of a "9/11 script" in the news coverage on 9/11 designed to promote the idea that it was inevitable that two jetliners crashing into the Twin Towers would cause them to "collapse" 2/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Unfortunately, although Twitter maintains significant historical information in its hundreds of billions of stored tweets, it is often difficult to reconstruct what exactly was tweeted, retweeted, liked, replied, etc., due to deleted tweets, suspensions, blocks, etc. 3/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Furthermore, while http://archive.org maintains an excellent video compilation of 9/11 network TV news coverage, for deleted tweets they quite often have only a single snapshot of the tweet that does preserve all the replies, likes, etc. 4/ https://archive.org/details/911/day/20010911
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
This thread will focus on how the Twitterverse moved from complete bewilderment over the massive blast that rocked Beirut at 18:08:18 local time to dominant acceptance of the "official" 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate story in just a few short hours. 5/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For an earlier alternative take on this subject, focusing on the way so-called "fact checkers" and "alternative media" propagandized the "official" #BeirutBlast narrative, check out this article on my website 6/ https://drbairdonline.com/i-dont-know-about-you-but-id-swear-beirut-was-just-nuked
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
When the massive blast happened at 18:08, tweeters immediately started posting comments, images & videos. The earliest image I found was this one posted at 18:09 showing a mushroom cloud already 8x higher than the tallest building on the Beirut skyline! 7/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Leila Molana-Allen (at the time a France24 correspondent) at 18:13 posted the earliest theory on Twitter as to what had caused this massive explosion: "My apartment in Beirut was just blown apart. We think it was a missile from a jet. We're ok." 8/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Although Molana-Allen's tweet would go viral & there are reports Beirut was abuzz w/talk of seeing Israeli jets before the explosion, curiously this was ignored in shaping the "official" narrative & she herself refuted it the next day in NPR interview. 9/ https://www.npr.org/2020/08/05/899231427/journalist-near-beirut-explosion-provides-update
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In the earliest tweets dealing with the CAUSE of the Beirut blast, I noticed a significant rift btwn Arabic & English language tweets. (Since searching Arabic language tweets is much more challenging for me as a non-Arabic speaker, I welcome any comments & corrections!) 10/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
By 1818 (just ten minutes after the blast) an "official" explanation of the blast had already clearly emerged in Arabic language tweets. The first statement came in this tweet from @IMLebanonNews 11/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The earliest version of the message suggests an initial explosion & fire in Warehouse No. 12 led to a second explosion of firecrackers (النارية) but two reporters (Mohamed Nasr & Souheil Diab) tweeting at same time interpreted the message as just a fire caused the explosion. 12/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Within SIX minutes this "fireworks message" (edited and unedited) was tweeted in Arabic 30+ times by major Lebanese news agencies (LBCI, MTV); dozen smaller news sites; reporters like Nasr, Diab, Adel Samia, Hosein Murtada & Al Manar's Mona Tahini; and other individuals. 13/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Furthermore, between 1825 and 1851, 25+ news agencies/sites outside Lebanon (including some with over 1M followers) further tweeted the "fireworks message" to the rest of the Arabic-speaking world typically just crediting "Lebanese media" as the source 14/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But WHO was Lebanese media's source for the "fireworks message"? Most of the Lebanese tweets give no cite but a few credit a "security source" (e.g., "a security source for MTV") suggesting the source was known to the agency and/or reporter as a reliable "security source". 15/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
It seems likely one or more individuals in a coordinated effort texted the same "fireworks message" to several news agencies, reporters & individuals - likely the message that awkwardly used the term "explosion" twice that some tweeters edited - some time just before 1818. 16/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As for the English-speaking Twitterverse, there was NO WAY the "fireworks message" was going to become the "official" story whatever status it might achieve in Lebanon. As far as I know, no non-Middle East news site even mentioned it altho @MTVEnglishNews did post translation 17/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Timour Azhari, at the time the Beirut correspondent for Al Jazeera English, interestingly posted a different take on the "fireworks message" claiming "Security source tells me the explosion at the #Beirut port was the result of an error involving fireworks, not an attack." 18/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Heshmat Alavi (who the Intercept suggests might be an MEK propaganda operation!) included an unsourced English translation of the "fireworks message" in the lead tweet of a thread he kept adding to in the first few hours after the #BeirutBlast 19/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
However, the "fireworks message" in English-language tweets from a handful of tweeters (as distilled from Lebanese media) was essentially reduced to the claim that the #BeirutBlast was a fireworks explosion 20/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In retrospect, it's hard to understand what the "fireworks message" was supposed to accomplish b/c the idea that the monstrous #BeirutBlast was just a "fireworks explosion" could be very easily debunked & WAS thoroughly debunked in subsequent Arabic- & English-language tweets 21/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
When Arabic-language tweets would use a video to accompany the "fireworks message" text, they would always pick particular short clips to show the first moments of the explosion of the firecrackers when actually you couldn't see any evidence of firecrackers in the clips 22/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But at 18:41 SV News (later suspended from Twitter in Nov 2020 for online election manipulation!) posted a widely seen clip that would convince most viewers that indeed there were fireworks in that warehouse but the massive explosion was SOMETHING ELSE 23/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As to WHAT that SOMETHING ELSE was, there was not much agreement until Prime Minister Hassan Diab (using the President's Twitter account) tweeted about the 2,750 tons of "ammonium nitrate" at 23:53 just before midnight local Beirut time, 5 hrs 45 mins after the blast 24/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Some tweeters like @AJABreaking with its 1.5M followers seemed to want to sidestep the whole issue by quoting the Lebanese Minister of Health as saying "the explosion of explosives" while most like @RTarabic with its 5.3M followers reported "the explosion of firecrackers" 25/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed the Lebanese Minister of Health was quoted by David A Daoud - research analyst on Hezbollah & Lebanon at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) - as saying more specifically "a SHIP carrying fireworks exploded in Beirut Port" 26/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Confusingly, at the same time, Leila Hatoum was reporting Al-Manar TV had quoted security sources that the explosion of fireworks at a port hangar had caused nearby nitrates tankers to explode! 27/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In the free-for-all to identify the SOMETHING ELSE, the "fireworks explosion" theory will never totally disappear but the trend in the hours after the blast is definitely focused on far more powerful explosives, whether chemical or nuclear, being in Warehouse 12. 28/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Although the "fireworks message" was easily & quickly dismissed, one still wonders what it was supposed to accomplish? A few tweeters suggested that it was Hezbollah propaganda to cover up that what blew up was Hezbollah weapons. 29/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
An unbelieveable cover story might work if Hezbollah controlled the media to prevent anybody asking critical questions but Hezbollah does not. I would think more realistically it would be the ENEMIES of Hezbollah who would have planted the message as a way to discredit them. 30/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed, the assertion in the "fireworks message," delivered within 10 minutes of the blast, that fire led to explosion of fireworks inside Warehouse No. 12 - all incorporated into the "official" story - suggests foreknowledge that only PERPETRATORS would likely know. 31/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In the seeming Twitter free-for-all to identify the explosive responsible for that second monstrous Beirut blast, in this thread I will focus mainly on the two theories that received the most attention in the hours following the blast: ammonium nitrate & nuclear weapons 32/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I will only touch briefly on theories of Hezbollah munitions, Israeli missiles, etc., to keep this thread from becoming unmanageably long & because these theories really deserve a separate thread focusing on WHO was responsible for the #BeirutBlast 33/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
What I have identified in examining tweets in the hours after the #BeirutBlast is a coordinated propaganda campaign from the first minutes to (1) champion ammonium nitrate as the prime force & (2) gaslight people into believing they were insane to think Beirut had been nuked 34/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I identified "the Beirut blast script" in the same way I previously identified "the 9/11 script". I looked for anomalies, people saying/tweeting things that showed foreknowledge of what would become the "official" story well BEFORE there was any inkling of an "official" story 35/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
When you realize that Mark Walsh was only saying what news anchors like Fox's Jon Scott had already said TWO HOURS EARLIER - immediately after the "collapse" of #WTC2 - you can figure the source for the story KNEW what was going to happen IN ADVANCE! 36/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I have already shown how major elements of the "fireworks message" (i.e., fire caused fireworks explosion in Warehouse No. 12) suggests this was part of a preplanned "Beirut blast script". But there is also evidence to suggest ammonium nitrate was also part of that script. 37/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The first anomalous AN-related tweets I noted were 43 tweets in Roman characters (only 1 in Arabic) between 18:28 and 19:00, almost all essentially saying the Beirut blast "reminded me of" or "was similar to" the 2015 Tianjin blast. 38/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now for anybody who actually knew something about the 2015 Tianjin explosion, it is very hard to understand how any of the videos of the daytime Beirut blast could possibly have reminded them of videos of the quite different nighttime Tianjin blast 39/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv5g2MhPT5I
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now if these tweeters had gone to Wikipedia they could actually have found some interesting parallels btwn Beirut & Tianjin. Both began w/a fire in a warehouse in a seaport that in less than an hour led to an explosion followed some 30 seconds later by 2nd massive explosion 40/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Three hours later these tweeters would have been able to see the first public images of the massive Beirut crater (l), another significant similarity w/Tianjin (r). But they would not have known that at the time they were tweeting. 41/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But wrt what would become the "official" Beirut blast story, the most significant thing abt Tianjin was, as the tweeters could also have found on Wikipedia, Chinese scientists had claimed the larger explosion "involved the detonation of about 800 tonnes of ammonium nitrate" 42/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed 3 of the first 43 Tianjin tweeters on 4 Aug 2020 @PanGalacGargle @SamHouseholder @ukskies in commenting on the Beirut blast actually did claim that ammonium nitrate blew up Tianjin. 43/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So what do we know about these first Tianjin tweeters? Well, 33 of 43 (77%) had never tweeted anything abt Tianjin before or after 4 Aug 2020. 8 of 43 (19%) had tweeted about Tianjin back in 2015. And 2 of 43 (4%) had first tweeted about Tianjin a few months before. 44/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Of those who had previously tweeted abt Tianjin, 7 of 43 (16%) @BeijingPalmer @nktpnd @ColeenFellows @_EmmaGH @mgerrydoyle @stoa1984 @ghoshworld in later posts would openly promote the "official' ammonium nitrate story. 45/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Ankit Panda was actually the first of several "nuclear weapons experts" that would jump into the Beirut blast discussion. As we will see, their presence seemed to have been required to give the imprimatur of "experts" to the gaslighting of those claiming Beirut had been nuked 46/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Gerry Doyle, Reuters Global News Desk editor for Asia would play a quite prominent role in the gaslighting effort, tweeting as early as 18:45 that the Beirut blast was "definitely not a nuke" and calling for everyone "to ignore or ridicule anyone who says it is" 47/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In all fairness, I should acknowledge that back in Jan 2019 Gerry Doyle had referred to an image of a very popular tweet of mine summarizing a 2015 Veterans Today article as "another exmaple of where obscenity is warranted"! 48/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The first use of the term "ammonium nitrate" (AN) doesn't come until 18:41 (33 mins after the blast) with tweets coming about one a minute at first, a total of 19 tweets (mostly replies) by 19:00. 10 of 19 (53%) never tweeted abt AN before or after 49/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
8 of 19 (44%) tweeters had never tweeted abt AN before but did add 1 or more tweets in the hours & days that followed. And one tweeter was a real live ammonium nitrate expert - Prof. Andrea Sella! @SellaTheChemist 50/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In addition to the 3 Tianjin tweeters, others believed AN b/c similar to other reputed AN disasters - 1947 Texas City @ryanlhogan (single tweet) & 2001 Toulouse @DrStefool (multiple tweet) - although there are no extant videos of those blasts to compare 51/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In contrast, in support of his view that 2020 Beirut was AN explosion, @GomesBolt said it wasn't his "8 years as a combat enginerd" but he had seen a video of 2013 West, TX fertilizer plant explosion and "it looked similar" 52/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I'll leave it to you whether you would have thought the 2020 Beirut blast was an ammonium nitrate explosion based on watching this video of 2013 West, TX fertilizer plant explosion that @GomesBolt linked to 53/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1UbSYOxhjU&t=1s
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As for Prof. Andrea Sella, at 18:59 (less than an hour after the blast), based on watching some video clips, he succinctly proclaimed what would become the "official" #BeirutBlast story: "Ammonium nitrate surely. IN some kind of fireworks or munitious [sic] store."!! 54/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now Andrea Stella is not your average Joe spouting off. He is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at University College London, prominent enough to have his own Wikipedia page, awarded 2014 Faraday Prize from The Royal Society for "his excellent work in science communication" 55/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So how could Prof Sella possibly be 100% certain that the Beirut blast was "Ammonium nitrate surely"? Well, Chemical & Engineering News reported next day Sella was "one of those who quickly identified ammonium nitrate as the LIKELY culprit based on the plume’s COLOR" 56/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed C&EN added that "Many chemists on Twitter identified that color as being a signature of NO2 gas, POSSIBLY produced from the incomplete decomposition of ammonium nitrate." 57/ https://cen.acs.org/safety/industrial-safety/chemistry-behind-Beirut-explosion/98/web/2020/08
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now "LIKELY" and "POSSIBLY" do not sound like the basis for ANY chemist to say "Ammonium nitrate surely". But there are further grounds for questioning Prof Sella's certainty. For example, what specific plume color are these "chemists" actually referring to? 58/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
One of C&EN's "many chemists" surely included Tariq Bhatti @iridium_tea who at 19:05 (just 6 minutes after Prof Sella's post) tweeted "Speculating: it looks like a large store of ammonium nitrate caught fire...The RED color of the plume is from NO2." 59/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Two minutes later, Sella replied to Bhatti's tweet "Yes. Not much doubt on that score" suggesting again Sella is 100% certain a large store of AN caught fire but further that "The RED color of the plume is from NO2." 60/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
A few minutes later in dialogue w/"retired nuclear scientist" Cheryl Rofer, Sella brings up that he was present in Toulouse at the time of the 2001 explosion and saw "a 'splendid' ORANGE mushroom" - a "huge ORANGE plume" - "echoes of Galveston" [Texas City] & "Waco" [West,TX] 61/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
One might not think Sella's reference to "a huge ORANGE plume" in Toulouse had anything to do w/the RED plume in Beirut, but back in 2011 podcast Sella reported having seen "a huge orange-brown cloud" in Toulouse & by evening was certain "industrial accident" involving AN 62/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now there is some video footage of 2001 Toulouse aftermath that shows evidence of what someone might fairly call "a huge orange-brown cloud" and what in the background (underneath the cloud) a similarly colored "plume" 63/ https://youtu.be/s10-ih2WIBI?t=3
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But the "huge orange-brown cloud" in 2001 Toulouse clearly does NOT look like the RED plume in 2020 Beirut! So one must seriously question how these colors are evidence of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and whether constitute "proof" Toulouse and/or Beirut explosions caused by AN 64/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Just to be clear what Prof Sella understood to be the color of NO2 (being offered as proof that 2020 Beirut blast was due to AN), he retweeted approvingly back in Jun 2020 (less that 2 months before Beirut blast) the observation these images were of a "spectacular NO2 plume" 65/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
One might well understand how Prof Sella could believe these 2001 Toulouse & 2019 Queensland images proof of NO2 b/c back in his office he has for long time had "a gorgeous bulb of NO2" that indeed looks similar in color and might easily be described as orange or orange-brown 66/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But I challenge anyone to make a case for orange or orange-brown color in this crazy palette of mainly REDDISH colors in 2020 Beirut plume! Indeed, Prof Sella himself later unreservedly stated "Red clouds are 'just' NO2...Classic to see this after ammonium nitrate explosion." 67/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
More recently, in May 2022, Prof Sella again asserted "that astonishing colour" of this image of the Beirut plume was indeed NO2, suggesting it was the same color as the NO2 in his bulb. 68/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Furthermore, Prof Sella has a penchant for striving to be the FIRST person to tweet that some explosion was caused by ammonium nitrate before seemingly ANY evidence is in, regardless of plume color, beginning West, TX explosion on 17 Apr 2013 (that he awkwardly calls "Waco"!) 69/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The day after West, TX explosion, Prof Sella was on @BBCNewshour bringing a "toy" (was it the glass bulb with NO2?) suggesting it was caused by AN even though he admitted in tweets there was still no evidence and was even suggesting evidence pointed to explosion of ammonia 70/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Questioning the claim that tanks of anyhdrous ammonia were the cause of the West, TX blast, Prof Sella told BBC that it was unusual for anhydrous ammonia to detonate "whereas ammonium nitrate has a track record of blowing up" 71/ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-22204391
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I'm sure Prof Sella was ecstatic to tweet to BBC Newshour presenter James Coomsrasamy 5 days after the blast "We were right. There WAS ammonium nitrate on site. A LOT of it." One question though. Is that "the royal WE" or were others involved in coming up with the AN theory? 72/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now in considering what Prof Sella has tweeted about 2001 Toulouse and 2020 Beirut, it is curious that if West, TX explosion is supposed to an AN explosion that (as far as I can discover) there are no images of an orange, orange-brown, or reddish plume! 73/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed, this aerial photo of the 2013 West, TX explosion looks totally UNLIKE the 2020 Beirut blast! So, if not plume color like Beirut, on what grounds could Prof Sella have believed, before any evidence in, that West, TX was an AN explosion? 74/ https://www.kxan.com/news/local/williamson-county/six-years-later-learning-from-the-deadly-west-fertilizer-plant-explosion/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Sella suggested after first seeing a video of the #BeirutBlast that "The sound often gives ammonium nitrate away" altho he decided it was "hard to tell in this vid." BTW, this is a reply to a tweet from @DanKaszeta who long ago blocked me. Anyone willing to share it? Thanks! 75/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In a BBC Newshour broadcast on 14 Aug 2015, two days after 2015 Tianjin explosions, Prof Sella seems to have relied on his understanding of the "sound" of AN to suggest ammonium nitrate might be the culprit in Tianjan. (The segment starts at 32:54.) 76/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p02yg6zh
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Prof Sella noted "some sort of roaring noises" followed by "some very, very short, sharp kind of blasts" which makes him think "they might be storing fertilizer and, in particular, AN which has...a very long, tragic and sorry history of industrial accidents over the years." 77/ https://t.co/8hjvFUmR9f
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
At least once Prof Sella has admitted he might have been wrong about an AN "prediction". The day after 21 Mar 2019 Yangcheng blast, Sella tweeted it "sounds like ammonium nitrate. It's déja vu all over again" even though the image in linked BBC article showed very BLACK cloud 78/ https://t.co/znaz0gUdBX
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But less than four hours later, Sella tweeted "After watching the videos of Yangcheng I'm not so sure it's ammonium nitrate" although WHY he's unsure is unclear b/c his linked Yangcheng video looks VERY similar to 2013 West, TX video tweeted earlier! 79/ https://t.co/mTs7wvV8Gf
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Now if Prof Sella clearly believes AN explosions do NOT necessarily produce orange, orange-brown, red, etc. colored clouds, did he honestly believe an orange, orange-brown, red, etc cloud was PROOF of an AN explosion, a claim he makes less than an hour after the Beirut blast? 80/ https://t.co/Z9SOYfft13
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Once you've looked at enough videos of nuclear, TNT & ANFO explosions, you realize the perpetrators of the 2020 #BeirutBlast actually stitched together this Frankenstein's monster from TWO huge explosions, one aboveground & the other belowground #25MonthsAndCounting Thread 1/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
It was the aboveground (possibly nuclear) bomb that produced the blast that rocked Beirut & the strange reddish mushroom cloud. And it was the belowground definitely nuclear 5+ kiloton bomb that blasted the grayish earth below the cloud, leaving behind a massive crater. 2/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
If the word "nuclear" hasn't scared you off, you should know I premise my use of the word on the conclusion (discussed in numerous tweets) that the perps of #BeirutBlast & other state-directed terrorism for the past 40 years have mastered Minimum Residual Radiation (MRR) nukes 3/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Since almost everybody believes the 2020 #BeirutBlast was caused by an aboveground explosion involving 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, let's begin our comparative video analysis with the aboveground explosion. 4/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In an Aug 2021 thread I showed it was highly doubtful any of this AN could ever detonate, even more doubtful detonate simultaneously & even if they all miraculously detonated at once the configuration is not conducive to generating a concentrated blast 5/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For their part, in #BeirutBlast aftermath, several teams of "experts" - who NEVER question the "official" AN story - based on analyses of blast arrival time, structural damage, seismic signals, etc., calculated an explosive yield ranging from 100 to 1100 tons TNT equivalent 6/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
"Experts" use the term "TNT equivalent" to compare different effects (e.g., blast) of both nuclear and nonnuclear explosions by using various formulas to calculate how many, pounds, tons, kilotons, etc. of TNT it would take to produce the same effect. 7/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Although the "official" AN story is ridiculous, it is entirely possible that properly configured & detonated high explosives (HE) like TNT or ANFO could have been used. Indeed there are numerous examples of aboveground HE explosions used to generate exactly this kind of blast. 8/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed, from late 1950s to early 1990s, US & Canada engaged in extensive program using aboveground hemispherical charges of TNT or ANFO with yields 450-4300 metric tons TNT equivalent as a way to test blast effects sidestepping nuclear test bans 9/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For our purposes, the most eerily similar HE test for comparison to the 2020 #BeirutBlast are the three tests of hemispherical charges employing 500 US tons TNT carried out by US & Canada on the island of Kahoʻolawe, Hawaii from Feb-June 1965 10/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Like the #BeirutBlast, the Sailor Hat tests (Bravo, Charlie & Delta) took place near open water, formed transient white Wilson clouds, had lots of reddish colors, created huge air blasts, blasted large craters & movie clips taken from land, air & sea capture all this 11/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
However, using Windows Video Editor to examine the #BeirutBlast and Sailor Hat videos at 33 millisecond (ms) intervals (with t = 0 marking earliest appearance of a flash) reveals some major differences btwn the 500-ton TNT Sailor Hat blasts & the uncertain Beirut explosive 12/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For this analysis I will focus on the first of the Sailor Hat tests (Bravo) carried out 6 Feb 1965 b/c it is the best documented in the film & writings of Canadian chief scientist Dr. John Dewey as well as the only crater that was thoroughly measured 13/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxu0CujPU2A&ab_channel=RichardDewey
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
First, let's examine the kind of fireball of 500-ton hemisphere of TNT sitting on Hawaiian basalt produces. After the initial flash (t = 0, ur) recedes, by 66 ms (ll) one can make out a bright white hemisphere that by 133 ms (lr) has spread slightly & become more yellowish. 14/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
By 166 ms (ul) one can clearly see darkish ejecta with the glowing hemisphere becoming increasingly yellowish as more and more basalt is blasted out @ 300 ms (ur) & 600 ms (ll) while @ 766 ms (lr) you can even see ejecta splashing in the water. 15/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
At 833 ms (l) one san see that the fireball is no longer really hemispherical & one can just make out the formation of a white Wilson condensation cloud, that by 1000 ms (r) (i.e., 1 second from the initial flash) only slightly obscures the fireball. 16/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
By 1633 ms (ul) as the Wilson cloud lifts, one can see the fireball is increasingly reddish-orange with the base of what was the fireball increasingly covered by large blackish sections until there is no more fireball in contact with surface by 7600 ms (lr). 17/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
From a distance we can see the fireball itself is simply slowly rising in the air - 2 sec (ul), 4 sec (ur), 6 sec (ll), 8 sec (lr) - as the fireball increasingly turns blackish 18/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
After the fireball turns completely blackish @ 10 sec (ul), the still very hot cloud continues to rise as the base becomes narrower 12 sec (ur), 13 sec (ll) until the last still from the clip @ 13.733 sec (lr) 19/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So how does the known surface explosion of a 500-ton hemisphere of TNT compare to the #BeirutBlast? In short, not very well! First, although the Beirut flash is the same kind of bright white color, it is NOT a sphere. Is this b/c the detonation took place inside a warehouse? 20/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
More amazingly the Beirut flash by 33 ms (ul) had transformed into a multi-colored fireball taller than the grain silos & continued expanding, rising, becoming more spherical & turning blacker @ 66 ms (ur), 100 ms (ll) & 133 ms (lr) 21/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Since quite a few "experts" have used this exact sequence of video images in support of the "official" 2020 #BeirutBlast narrative, it behooves us to examine more fully what this particular video has to reveal 22/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
These "experts" used the radius of the Beirut fireball to calculate the explosive yield of the #BeirutBlast and in so doing showed the fireball @ 33 ms was almost perfectly spherical & the fireball was only slightly affected by ground surface effects as the fireball expanded 23/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
What these "experts" seem to not know (or don't care) is that the critical thing about a fireball unaffected by ground surface effects is that there is NO way such an explosion is going to even compress the soil beneath it let alone BLAST a conventional crater! 24/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
To demonstrate this w/o resorting to talk about nukes let me draw on the largest HE "air burst" ever carried out by US, the pre-Trinity detonation on 7 May 1945 of 100 tons of TNT stacked on a platform so that height of burst (HOB) was ~ 28 feet above the Alamogordo playa. 25/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The 100-ton TNT shot was a test run for Trinity, the 1st nuclear explosion 16 July 1945 on same spot, based on belief that blast properties were a function of cube root of explosive yield, thus 100 tons TNT @ 28 ft comparable to Trinity's estimated 4-5 kt TNT @ 100 ft 26/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
It's hard to judge how much of the 100-ton TNT test shot's base we're seeing but fireball first appears nondescript (ul), forms a hemisphere 300 ms later (ur) & steadily rises to form a sphere @ 2 sec (ll) & continues to rise w/narrow cloud stem thru last still @ 5.5 sec (lr) 27/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The pre-Trinity 100-ton TNT test with its fireball did NOT blast a conventional crater. It merely compressed the ground forming a shallow "compression crater" abt 29 ft wide & less than 5 ft deep (seen in the lower right corner of photo next to Trinity's "compression crater") 28/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Based on cube-root scaling, Beirut's estimated 500 metric tons TNT - arranged the same way as pre-Trinity's 100 tons of TNT - would have to be stacked on top of a 36-ft high platform @ HOB = 49.5 ft inside that warehouse in order to create a similar blast as pre-Trinity 29/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
To whatever minimal extent Beirut's fireball impacted the surface in the first 170 ms, it is clear that by at least t = 400 ms (before the Wilson cloud obscures the base) that the fireball is clear of the surface: 200 ms (ul), 300 ms (ur), 400 ms (ll), 500 ms (lr) 30/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Further confirming that Beirut's fireball did NOT blast a crater is the lack of any visual evidence of ejecta in the first 500 ms. In every HE hemispherical surface explosion video I've seen, there is always plenty of evidence of earth being ejected by fireball by 500 ms. 31/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
That video is of "Minor Scale", claimed to be "the largest ever man-made non-nuclear explosion," detonating 4744 US tons ANFO poured in bulk into 44-ft radius fiberglass hemisphere, reported as equivalent to 4000 tons TNT, detonated 27 June 1985 at White Sands Missile Range. 32/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
BTW, relevant to what I've just said about spherical fireballs, I believe that photo claimed by Wikipedia to be the "Minor Scale fireball immediately after detonation" is a FABRICATION. The official report has the photo you would expect from a hemispherical charge. 33/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In many ways the #BeirutBlast looks more like an ANFO (ammonium nitrate/fuel oil) explosion than TNT. Like Sailor Hat there's a bright flash (ul) followed by whitish hemisphere (ur) @ 33 ms. But like Beirut from 66 ms (ll) to 100 ms (lr) fireball disappears behind cloud/dust 34/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
But whereas w/Minor Scale ANFO explosion you clearly see upward & outward ejection of earth as early as 66 ms (ul) - indeed Minor Scale looks like an underground nuclear explosion @ 300 ms (ur) & 500 ms (ll) - you see nothing like that by 500 ms w/the #BeirutBlast (lr) 35/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed you don't see any sign of upward & outward ejection of earth until 2566 ms (i.e., 2.566 seconds after initial flash) (ul) as the Wilson cloud begins to lift, revealing a distinctly grayish ejecta below the reddish "cloud" 36/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Contrary to a typical "cloud stem" like that we've seen for Sailor Hat Bravo (left) where there the stem gets narrower as the "mushroom cloud" rises, in the #BeirutBlast (right) the "stem" actually gets WIDER over time 37/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Indeed the grayish ejecta seems to be coming NOT from any aboveground explosion but rather a very powerful UNDERGROUND explosion akin to (albeit much smaller than) Storax Sedan, the largest underground nuke (100 kt) ever detonated (July 1962) by US, 635 ft below the surface 38/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
If the #BeirutBlast was too small to be a Storax Sedan, the height & mass of the grayish ejecta certainly makes this underground blast appear much more powerful than, say, Teapot ESS, a 1.2-kt device detonated 67 feet below the surface on 23 March 1955 39/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
In addition to blasting out a huge crater, this #BeirutBlast underground explosion also generated a powerful air blast directed more vertically upward than horizontally, pushing up the earlier formed reddish "mushroom cloud" much higher in the sky 40/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The combination of the aboveground and belowground explosions - that were probably detonated almost simultaneously - ended up creating the Frankenstein's monster with which we began this thread, the likes of which the world had never seen before 41/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So what kind of explosive devices were these? How big were they? How deep and/or high were they detonated? Were they NUCLEAR or not? To start to answer these questions, I turn first to where I started back in Aug 2020 - the massive #BeirutBlast crater. 42/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
No official report has been released on #BeirutBlast crater. As I discuss in more detail on my website, Wikipedia claims diameter of 124 m reported by CNN (NYTimes said 140 m) & depth of 43 m reported by AFP. Those dimensions are generally accepted. 43/ https://www.drbairdonline.com/nuked/the-telltale-crater-and-nuclear-smoking-gun/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Few have a sense of HOW DEEP a 43-m deep crater actually is since it filled with seawater so quickly. It's the height of a 13-story building! #BeirutBlast crater is 3rd only to 100-m deep Storax Sedan (ur) & Soviet Chagan (lr) craters in terms of craters ever blasted my man! 44/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So could 500 tons TNT stacked on the floor of a warehouse in Beirut have blasted such a monstrous crater? NO WAAY! For example, 500 tons TNT sitting on Canadian prairie in Operation Snowball in 1964 blasted a crater 85 m diameter but ONLY 4 m deep (ignoring the upthrust)! 45/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The Snowball test wasn't an outlier. 1974 US Army compendium listed all crater data for surface hemisherical charges over sandy silty clay and came up with a correlation that shows 500 tons TNT would be expected to blast a crater 81.4 m in diameter but only 3.8 m deep. 46/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
The official Minor Scale report stated on this largest of all manmade non-nuclear explosions (equivalent to 4 kt TNT): "The crater size was 345 feet in diameter (including the crater lip) and 80 feet in depth. The depth was about twice as deep as the predictions." 47/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Minor Scale authors were likely trying to inflate crater size b/c the standard for explosive cratering is to measure apparent crater dimensions from original ground surface, NOT top of the lip. Even so at 105 m wide & 24.5 m deep, Minor Scale much smaller than Beirut crater. 48/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Last we have the mysterious tale of the Sailor Hat Bravo crater. Today on Kahoʻolawe there is still a crater but this same exact spot was used by both Charlie & Delta, filled with sand before Delta & never officially measured as part of Operation Sailor Hat 49/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
There is quite impressive film footage of what is likely the Sailor Hat Bravo crater blasted out of basalt but official dimensions were only 48 m diameter & 12 m deep, less than a third as deep as #BeirutBlast crater. The crater was reportedly filled in leaving no sign of it! 50/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Some might question whether the particular earth ejected by #BeirutBlast could've made a difference. NOT that much difference. The only info I've found is study of the grain silo construction that state there was ~16 m alluvial sand on top of chalk. 51/ http://hiddenarchitecture.net/beirut-grain-silos/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
So if even the largest non-nuclear explosive charge on the Warehouse 12 floor could NOT have blasted the #BeirutBlast crater, what could? It is clear from ALL the tomes on explosive cratering from 1600s thru WWI that ONLY an UNDERGROUND explosive could have done this. 52/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
After WWII the US military engaged in numerous studies of aboveground, surface & underground explosive cratering although unfortunately many were classified and, as I've found in a study I'm working on now, published studies are increasingly suspect after circa 1980 53/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Fortunately some studies from 1950s & 1960s started becoming declassified (sometimes heavily redacted) beginning late 1970s. One study I've recently discovered & found most useful for forensic crater analysis is Capabilities of Atomic Weapons (1957 ed., declassified 1997). 54/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Figures 2-20 and 2-21 from Capabilities of Atomic Weapons (1957 ed) give quite clear-cut directions for how to calculate crater radius & depth based on burst height/depth & explosive yield in dry soil or soft rock. 55/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Although one could through trial & error use known crater radius & depth to backcalculate burst height/depth & yield, a far simpler approach is to simply come up w/polynomial equations for the Fig. 2-20 (l) & 2-21 (r) curves & use a graphing calculator to solve the equations. 56/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Interestingly solving the equations shows that the MINIMUM crater diameter is 141 m. The NYTimes 140 m wide crater has a MAXIMUM crater depth of 42.7 m while CNN's 124 m crater has a MAXIMUM crater depth of 39.0 m, both a bit shallower than "official" crater depth of 43 m. 57/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Solving the equations for the NYTimes 140 m wide crater at max crater depth 42.7 m comes up w/yield 5.40 kt TNT equivalent @ DOB 51.4 m (l). Solving for CNN 124 m wide crater at max crater depth 39.0 m comes up w/yield 3.81 kt @ DOB 46.6 m (r). 58/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Some "experts" - undoubtedly finding it hard to explain away 43-m deep crater - have proposed crater could NOT have been that deep. One study said crater MUST HAVE BEEN only 13.7 m deep while another claimed 4 m depth based on secret hydrographic survey done by Lebanese Navy! 59/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Actually, the table below (based on Figs. 2-20 & 2-21 assuming crater diameter 120 m) show shallower craters can require GREATER yields than deeper craters b/c charges would have to be at smaller depth of burst (DOB). A 15 m deep crater requires 47 kt @ 4 m ABOVE the surface! 60/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
If even the smallest yield we can come up (3.08 kt) at all consistent with "official" dimensions (120 m crater diameter by 35 m depth) would still require DOB 28.7 m we are OBVIOUSLY talking about an underground NUKE rather than high explosives like Minor Scale. 61/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
To give you an idea of what size nuclear device we are talking about, here's some images of W80 Intermediate Yield Strategic Cruise Missile Warhead manufactured by US in 1980s 11.8" wide x 31.4" long weighing 290 lbs that came in a 5 kt yield mod. 62/ http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/W80.html
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As to how the perps placed that size nuke deep under Warehouse 12, they likely used a mobile drill rig that could easily drill the correct diameter borehole down required 30-60 m through 16 m alluvial sand into the chalk bedrock so that the nuke could be lowered to the bottom 63/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Of course, as I said in the 3rd tweet of this thread, I believe the perps used a Minimum Residual Radiation (MRR) nuke. A non-MRR nuke (like W80) would have left easily identifiable residual radioactivity all over Beirut & Mediterranean area wherever the dust settled. 64/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
If you are NOT one of those who thinks the whole idea of an Minimum Residual Radiation nuke is a complete oxymoron (like "military intelligence"), take a look at what I've posted about them in numerous tweets, e.g., this thread. 65/ https://t.co/n5dNO8xhB0
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
If solid evidence screams the explosion HAS to be nuclear but there's NO radioactivity then I conclude the perps know how to HIDE the radioactivity. Furthermore I believe 5 nuclear states (US, USSR, Israel, France, China) have learned to do just that! 66/ https://t.co/Yj6ayh5bjQ
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
A 5.6 kt MRR nuke detonated 53 m below Warehouse 12 can explain the crater, grayish dust spewed out, rapid rise of reddish cloud & seismic activity, but what about the aboveground explosion that produced the reddish cloud & shock wave/air blast that devastated much of Beirut? 67/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Numerous "experts" have argued the reddish cloud is PROOF of ammonium nitrate explosion but I believe this claim is totally FALSE. In my research on "ammonium nitrate" explosions going back to 1921 Oppau, I have yet to come across a single one that produced a reddish cloud. 68/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Many "experts" have argued the "reddish" color of the #BeirutBlast cloud comes from the production of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) as a result of explosive decomposition of NH4NO3 but to me the orange-brownish color of NO2 (l) looks NOTHING like the "reddish" color of the cloud (r) 69/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Frankly in all my examination of nuclear & HE videos I've never seen anything like the palette of colors in the #BeirutBlast cloud. Indeed, I don't see how any HE could have created such a cloud. Which makes me suspect the aboveground bomb might be another 3rd-gen MRR nuke! 70/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Los Alamos physicist Ted Taylor asserted back in 1972 the amazing thing abt 3rd-gen nukes is they could be tailored to produce whatever combination of effects you want, even spew out "nothing but green paint"! If green paint, why not a palette of REDDISH colors?! 71/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
For the #BeirutBlast, the perps obviously wanted a shockwave but did not want much in the way of initial or residual radiation, basically an MRR nuke which is essentially a "blast bomb." 72/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
I have suggested one thing the perps definitely needed to avoid was interference w/videos of the explosion that they WANTED people to take, e.g. radiation/charged particles that physicist Heinz Pommer says interfered w/camera pixels in videos of nuclear strike in Yemen 2015 73/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
There are other possibly better reasons to suggest the aboveground bomb might have been a 3rd-gen MRR nuke. Although I've never seen what the flash of a nuke detonated inside a building looks like, I find it curious the entire exterior of the warehouse lights up in the flash. 74/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
There are indications (e.g., spherical fireball) the center of aboveground blast was well off the ground. I don't think the perps could've or would've wanted to stack enough HE atop a high platform to achieve this when they could simply hang an MRR nuke from the roof beams. 75/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
As to the explosive yield & HOB of this aboveground nuke, I have no good correlations so I'll throw a bone to the "experts" and go with their range of 100-1100 tons TNT equiv (based on blast wave time of arrival, fireball, etc.) but with HOB the ceiling of Warehouse 12. 76/
@drbairdonline - Bruce Baird
Curiously, this range of 100-1100 tons TNT equivalent is EXACTLY the variable yield of the W-79 Mod 0 artillery shell, 8" wide, 44" long, & weighing 200 lbs that was also manufactured by the US in the 1980s! 77/ https://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Allbombs.html End of thread
