posted on Feb, 27 2017 @ 05:41 AM
a reply to:
seasonal
When nuclear weapons are designed and tested, their tonnage, their power rating, is established. It is measured in kilotonnes or megatonnes depending
on its power range. This measurement, as you likely know, is a measure of how many tonnes of mundane munitions, TNT to be precise, would be required
to produce the same explosive power, as the nuclear weapon concerned.
There is a reason for this. Previous to the advent of nuclear weapons development, the largest man made explosions were created with TNT in the main.
Storage of this explosive was fraught with danger, especially storage of the stuff in large quantities. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917, an
ammunition ship exploded, causing one thousand, eight hundred deaths, nine thousand injuries, and totally ruined an eight square mile portion of the
city, with twelve thousand buildings destroyed. The blast scattered debris as far as four miles away.
It is for this reason that military personnel used "Halifaxes" as an unofficial measure of explosive power after the event, such an enormous calamity
etching itself into common parlance with understandable ease. The Hiroshima bomb, for example, would have been rated at "seven Halifaxes" in strength.
The explosion at Halifax, would have been rated as a 2.9KT explosion in the post nuclear age, because it was a detonation of two thousand, nine
hundred tonnes of TNT.
It is not at all unfeasible therefore, that the Port Chicago explosion was a result of poor storage protocols and accidental detonation of a large
quantity of mundane explosives, rather than as a result of a clandestine nuclear test on civilian occupied territory.
edit on 27-2-2017 by
TrueBrit because: grammatical error corrected.