Prior to creating weapons resources out of thin air. Urine was collected to turn into explosives. It is the main reason why Captian Cook was sent off to explore. To find phosphate to power the English guns & canons.
The English population could not drink any more ale to produce more urine to in turn produce gun powder. The average citizen was at their drinking limit, including every child.
The English "gentleman" did not have to pride their urine to the State.
Being a resident of Greater Newcastle I'm more concerned about the virus being sent up here from Sydney than I am about the Nitrate that we have been safely producing on Kooragang Island for at least 50 years. I believe the explosion in Beirut happened in a warehouse were the amonium had been dumped and not stored or maintained correctly but dont let a good story get in the way of the facts. By the way we are not Newcastle north of Sydney we are Newcastle the 2nd oldest city in Australia and we have been manufacturing and exporting things like coal, wool, wheat, steel, ships, aluminium, amonium nitrate etc. since the 1790s - I dont actually know where Stocton is BC but I guess you might mean Stockton which along with Carringtom was built on ballast dumped by sailing ships when they loaded their cargos in the 1800s.
3 decades ago an irritated employee of an aluminium supplier in Sydney was going to throw a bottle of water into an aluminium recycling furnace. Water, sodium hydroxide & molten aluminium makes a terrific bomb.
To make matters worse right next door was the fuel depo, further more the aviation fuel was the closest. They closed Sydney's M4 & cleared half of Granville as best as possible.
Luckily it was brought under control. But the simplest of things can cause a catastrophe.
Sims scrap metal building was totally raised to the ground from a bit of water in an aluminium can, back in the 80s from memory.
Not to forget the Boral explosion in southern Sydney, one of the largest non-atomic explosions ever experienced in Australia residents within a 3 km radius were evaluated.
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Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!
50L custom fuel rack 6x20W 100/20mppt 4x26Ah gel 28L super insulated fridge TPMS 3 ARB compressors heatsink fan cooled 4L tank aftercooler Air/water OCD cleaning 4 stage car acoustic insulation.
I worked in the Aluminium smelting industry for the last 40 years and since I retired from the Tomago Aluminium Smelter here in Newcastle I've worked as a consultant in smelters around the world. I am well aware of the risks of reactions that can occur with molten aluminium and the controls that are needed to ensure that they dont. I heard that the explosion in Sims was a result of a foreign object being in the load when a furnace was charged but I could be wrong. There are hazards involved in every industry especially in heavy manufacturing industries all we can do is assess them and put in place the controls required to reduce them to ALARP (as low as reasonably practicle). I probably have as much concern about an RAAF jet from Williamtown crashing into the city as I do with either the nitrate plant or the aluminium smelter blowing up - one of those 3 has already happened - guess which one it was.
Just this month I had a chance to locate event which happen back in August 1972. That month I was driving a new semi out of Sydney.
After 10 days on the road from Melbourne I reached Brisbane at the Interstate Haulage Terminal the drivers were a buzz with a serious incident out North of Taroom Qld, the Driver and 2 Farming Brothers were killed when a load, 20 tons of Ammonia Nitrate going to a coal mine in Central Queensland caught fire and resulting exploded.
I did return from Ingham the following week via the inland route returning to Sydney but did not observe where this explosion happen, the talk by truckdrivers was the impact hole was 6 feet deep x 80 feet long destroying the road spreading the truck and trailer for serval miles. It always been a mystery to me where it happen. It was on a little used road, a dirt track called the Fitzroy Development Road. Not a route used much by general carriers.
There is a monument to the young people who gave there lives to trying to help someone in trouble at the site.
The second event was 2014 south of Charleville Qld, this time it was a multi trailed semi with 54 tonnes of ammonia nitro caught fire and resulting explosion.
Driver, Rescue People, Police and unfortunate bystanders were caught when this exploded takening out a road bridge and the railway bridge.
What makes this scary to me is before the 1972 incident I had loaded about 200 tons to Central NSW from Newcastle without any training.
When I worked in a blue metal quarry before going driving interstate for a couple of years on Saturday I would assist the Powdermonkey load the quarry face to blow it up. Now he would remind us to be careful of what we did and no mucking about. So I really knew the damage this stuff could and would do. After those early years I never seemed to cart it again, I think I did but it was called fertilisers.
There is a web site called Australian Memorials which has some information about these 2 incidents.
April 1971 to March 2013 driving semis, a lot of nights away from home.
-- Edited by Radar on Sunday 8th of August 2021 08:05:04 PM
It doesnt go off on its own ! It needs a heap of other fuel to set it off . We used to play with it years ago ! A machine would pop it off to keep birds away !! But we would blow other things up !! Old farm machinery etc !
