Nukes in 1626? Beijing explosion created mushroom cloud, stripped everyone naked

Originally posted by generik
just because there is a "mushroom cloud", does not mean a nuclear explosion.

it just means a really big explosion.

the tsar bomb for example

Except... the tsar bomba is a nuclear bomb.
en.wikipedia.org...

I'm interested in the Battle of Ningyuan aspect of this theory. Can you somehow use uranium in cannon shots so it'll explode on impact? Any more details on the battle anywhere? I already read the wiki page for it and it's quite small. Googling didn't produce any good sources either.

reply to post by diqiushiwojia

If I had more time before classes today, I'd be happy to show you where grain explosions have done FAR MORE than hurt or kill one person in past incidents. In fact, there are recorded incidents going back in history of granary explosions back before people really understood why or how to prevent the next one.

As far as Non-Nuclear explosions having unthinkable results though...one of the largest accidental explosions in history happened right here in the United States and it's similar (given differences in construction of buildings and such) to what you describe.

TEXAS CITY DISASTER. One of the worst disasters in Texas history occurred on April 16, 1947, when the ship SS Grandcamp exploded at 9:12 A.M. at the docks in Texas City. The French-owned vessel, carrying explosive ammonium nitrate produced during wartime for explosives and later recycled as fertilizer, caught fire early in the morning, and while attempts were being made to extinguish the fire, the ship exploded. The entire dock area was destroyed, along with the nearby Monsanto Chemical Company, other smaller companies, grain warehouses, and numerous oil and chemical storage tanks. Smaller explosions and fires were ignited by flying debris, not only along theindustrial area, but throughout the city. Fragments of iron, parts of the ship's cargo, and dock equipment were hurled into businesses, houses, and public buildings. A fifteen-foot tidal wave caused by the force swept the dock area. The concussion of the explosion, felt as far away as Port Arthur, damaged or destroyed at least 1,000 residences and buildings throughout Texas City.

Probably the exact number of people killed will never be known, although the ship's anchor monument records 576 persons known dead, 398 of whom were identified, and 178 listed as missing. All records of personnel and payrolls of the Monsanto Company were destroyed, and many of the dock workers were itinerants and thus difficult to identify. Almost all persons in the dock area-firemen, ships' crews, and spectators-were killed, and most of the bodies were never recovered; sixty-three bodies were buried unidentified. The number of injured ranged in the thousands, and loss of property totaled about $67 million.

Source

That isn't dust in the air like gunpowder would be...but it is a non-nuclear industrial accident that leveled a city. I'd love to know just what DID cause the China incident but at the same time, I'd note it couldn't have been nuclear. Aside from the time machine issues.....Nuclear leaves physical signs of the event. Things at Trinity in New Mexico will be in a condition for people 1,000 years from now to know, with precision, what happened at that spot and why we made it so special during this period of history.

The same would be in China and able to be located and verified. The extreme temps of detonation, if nothing else, physically changes materials in ways nothing else we could consider here, really does, IMO.

Wrabbit, are you saying glass?
The remains of a nuke are fused silica....should be some evident?
Plasma explosions can be produced by explosive and dust combinations.....
They are hundreds of times stronger than explosives alone, and can be created with proper timing of explosions or perhaps and explosive event in a dusty atmosphere as Wraqb has said...
You need ony to pile lots of sawdust or other fine matter, flour, etc
on top of a small explosion, then set off another to blow the created plasma.....
multiplying the explosiveness by many times....maybe even get clothers ripped off and a mushroom too.....
depends on the sources of the boom....
Some explsions may not produce the kind of shockwave thatll blow your socks off too....

reply to post by diqiushiwojia


It was a mix of the two.

China at one point was probably 200 years ahead of anybody else in terms of tech.

A gunpowder factory explodes and now it's a nuke? The people who had their clothes torn off are the proof that it wasn't a nuke. The clothes would have been burned off their bodies not torn off. Where the heat, the radiation?

Sorry, throwing this one in the myth and legend pile.

Black powder is pretty nifty stuff. In large quantities it can pack quite a punch, even with low grade powder.

In 1917 a french vessel mont-blanc carrying explosives, and other flammable materials exploded. The plume rose 11, 800 feet in the air. Every building with in a 26km radius was destroyed. It was felt as far away as 360km. Enormous fires broke out, and as a result fire whirls were formed creating further damage and spreading more chaos. It was said the bottom of the harbor could be seen after the explosion, and immense waves washed over the harbor. The detonation was the equivalent of 2989 tons of TNT(2.989 almost 3kt.)

Firefighter Billy Wells, who was thrown away from the explosion and had his clothes torn from his body, described the devastation survivors faced:

Now, back to the black powder of the time. It's not of the quality found today, or even in this french vessel of 1917. So the resulting explosion may not have been as fantastic as the previously mentioned, because the powder burned slower. That being said, during the blast it's very likely unburnt powder would have been carried upwards in the blast burning as it goes, further expanding the top of the plume.

The heated air both from the blast and resulting fires(sparks, burning powder, the initial flash from the explosion.) would super heat the surrounding air with the potential to cause fire whirls which would cause more damage and fires in the area. This could explain some of the widespread damage. In the 1917 french cargo ship explosion, those watching the fire from their homes were blinded when the vessel exploded. So black powder is quite capable of creating a blinding flash.

Lots of fire ( heat and light)

The more powder you have together the hotter and brighter it burns. So if This plant had it's yearly production on hand it could quite easily produce a bright hot flash.

On January 12th 1807 a vessel carrying 369 kegs of black powder exploded, it destroyed homes within 185yards, damaging others out to 530yards, breaking windows as far away as 1700 yards. A keg differs in weight with year, and nation, but they could have been anywhere from 50-100lbs each. If 100 pounds, that 36,900 pounds. A ton is 2000 pounds. So this explosion was only 18.5ish tons of black powder. If that factory had a yearly production of 700tons, that's a lot of freaking black powder. That is assuming they had that much on hand, or assuming they didn't stock pile it at the factory or near by. I'm not convinced this is an example of an "ancient" nuclear explosion. Nor is this time period something I'd consider Ancient.

Verneshot? Or natural gas explosion? Both are theories of the Tunguska event...why not this one too?

nice post very interesting thread

Looking at the evidence from this lovely thread and well done OP.

Rumbling = low level Earthquake.

Earthquake releases large quantity of natural gas.

Gas fills buildings in and around the gunpowder factory.

Everything explodes!

I am reminded of the medium gas cylinder explosion in Spain a few decades ago. It was in a tourist trailer park. Leveled an area with a radius of 1 kilometer.

I do not think we have to go to Atomic weapons to find the source of the explosion.

This may also account for deaths over time since inhaling gas is deadly.

As for the war and the cannons used, you may be looking at the first use of shrapnel in cannons. Against close packed infantry approaching with shields raised to protect from archers, what you describe is exactly what I would expect.

Just another rational explanation that fits the facts. Any large explosion can cause a mushroom shaped cloud.

P

I'm going to say meteor. Something from the sky.

I don't think they would have had the tech to produce a nuke. In saying that, we don't have the tech to create replicas of the ancient puma punku (SP?) walls etc. idk.
I did read about an ancient nuclear war in India and the remains are still radioactive!
Something happened though! Thanks for this thread

Makes you wonder!

Wow! Comprehensive thread, dude. Great job. I have never heard about this incident and look forward to reading the rest of it when I get home from work.

If uranium was involved in the explosion wouldn't there be some reports of radistion sickness in the aftermath?

Hi wrabbit druscilla

I would rule neither out but would say this

Underground storage (liken medieval times) powder and silo combined.

Somehow ignition hapend (much like all chambers blowing off in a percussion revolver)
And the mushroom shape is easily attributed to this,you only have to look at old flintlocks,
as the projectile exits the muzzle a round cloud of grey/white phos powder follows.
Imagine that on a huge scale.

I only say because as a teenager i had access to stuff and one thing i stupidly done was grind up match heads.
I got carried away (alcohol) and a spark jumped into my small pile of powder...it went of with a boom 1 ft away from my face and it gave me bells in my ears because of the gas rushing past but there was no heat
I did not even get a hair singed

Drus and wrabbit i think its possible of both, but i lean more to the gunpowder theory
cheers

possibly a meteor that never impacted but instead exploded above the effected area

Originally posted by diqiushiwojia
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

This incident resulted in 10000 houses destroyed and 20000 dead. Your source says one person was hurt...

(To be fair, that one was about grains, though.)

Nothing in the incident matches what would have happened with Ming gunpowder. Ming gunpowder wasn't very powerful (though it was powerful at the time). The energy released cannot exceed 3000m/s and produces lots of black smoke (not a mushroom cloud). Ming gunpowder clearly couldn't take off the clothes of its victims, either, at that potency. (According to rough estimates, you need 20000-30000 tonnes of gunpowder in the factory to achieve the same amount of destruction, but the factory produced 700 tonnes per year, so that's impossible.) Moreover, strange phenomena like the rumbling earth and the fireball can't be explained away by gunpowder.

edit on 6/3/13 by diqiushiwojia because: (no reason given)

edit on 6/3/13 by diqiushiwojia because: (no reason given)

How do we know there wasn´t enoough gunpowder? I say obviously there was, they might have stated a lower yearly quota to the government due too taxes, but sold alot on the blackmarket instead, since they migh have produced 5000 tonnes each year and had a lot of stock outside unsold.

That would seem like the most reasonable explanation to me.

Interesting thread, however, I don't know enough about nuclear physics to offer any ideas of exactly how uranium reacts when mixed into standard gunpowder (or gunpowder of the day) devices.

Can anyone offer any info on that?

reply to post by boncho


the had no way of refining the uranium and there is absolutely no way that a gunpowder explosion could create fission or fusion (and thats ignoring timing)

if it was as simple as tossing some uranium ore and gunpowder in a big bomb pretty much every country on earth would have nuclear weapons

At the time, there was a strange kind of stones called 'leishi' (thunderstones), now identified to be uranium. A few soldiers found uranium near the Sino-Mongolian border, in Datong. Thinking it was gold ore, they melted it, causing an explosion (called an earthquake in some historical records). In 1580, a strange 'plague' plagued Datong, and for every ten households, nine were affected. This may have been caused by the radiation left over from the explosion.

Natural uranium is not very fissile. Melting uranium does not in any way make it more fissile, nor can it cause a nuclear explosion. You'd just get molten, natural uranium.

Before we get to the science, let's look at Tianqi again. This excellent engineer died at the age of 23. He couldn't have contracted any STDs - he preferred making contraptions to, uh, let's skip this part. The symptoms before his death seem to result from radiation...

The other problem is that uranium, even when it's enriched, is just not that radioactive. You could sleep on a solid uranium bed every night and never know it, radiologically. Uranium has a really long half-life and a very low specific activity. You could handle it all you like, and you won't glow, nor die of radiation poisoning.

These shock waves are eerily similar to those of neutron bombs.

Absolutely not. Neutron bombs are much less destructive because they expend more of their energy on emitting fast neutrons instead of using them to fission U238. You still get a 'bang' when the primary goes off, but you don't get much from the secondary in terms of explosive power. A neutron bomb's shock wave is that of a smallish fission weapon.

The ancient nuke theory is also supported by historical evidence. As for which theory is correct, that's yours to decide!

It's not supported by physics, though.

Originally posted by sirhumperdink
reply to post by boncho

 

the had no way of refining the uranium and there is absolutely no way that a gunpowder explosion could create fission or fusion (and thats ignoring timing)

if it was as simple as tossing some uranium ore and gunpowder in a big bomb pretty much every country on earth would have nuclear weapons

Good point.

Seems a logical conclusion.