I've got a good friend who is working about 50 miles downwind of the incident and they've all been evacuated to shanghai. Apparently the Chinese government is assuring everyone that everything is safe despite there being major rainstorms entering an area that was just carpeted with cyanide crystals. It's a pretty awful situation overall.

I hope he ends up being okay. Tianjin is facing what could easily seem like the end times and it's heart-breaking.

He said that he's not in any immediate danger, but the problem is that the gov't is trying to hurry people back to the area in order to minimize the news coverage and nobody is really sure if it's safe. There's definitely cyanide in the groundwater and likely some in the air too, and they're trying to get people back in the area? Seems messed up.

How could you possible minimize news coverage no something this catastrophic? Especially considering the fact that the news is already widespread.

china has blatantly been lying about the body count too

China will try to cover it up no matter the cause, there's been a lot of disasters where China just cut down the body count by like half.

Any insight of what's going on there?
A factory exploded?
A bomb exploded?
A bomb factory exploded?

It was a dangerous chemical warehouse I think.

Gas station > tanker trucks > fire spreading > chemical warehouse I believe.

And yeah, I think it's blatantly obvious China has been covering up the death toll. I've read "only 50 dead". You mean to tell me that such a densely populated area where there are literally dozens of complexes right next to this entire explosion radius only coming out to 50 deaths? What about the 140+ firefighters who showed up before even the biggest of explosions? 50 my ass.

It's so sad that all these people had to die, but to cover it up and expect people to not piece things together is even worse. Definitely the worst way to crowd control. I just hope the best for everyone immediately affected by this.

Sodium cyanide was the primary chemical spread but apparently there were a bunch more.

a warehouse full of chemicals exploded, causing a huge explosion that even had a mushroom cloud, houses 1km away still can feel the explosion, Toxic gas was spread and even the ground water has been polluted.

this is pretty bad, damn

there was no mushroom cloud and an explosion of this size causes windows to burst in a 3-5km radius

the sad thing is that the chinese government cares the least about this incident. for decades they've been lousy handling chemicals (lots of mixtures of substances, not even pure substances are labelled, processed or stored correctly)

did they figure out what sparked the reaction? This was really scary to watch

"The first explosion was huge, and the second was even more powerful: the equivalent of 21 metric tons of TNT or a magnitude-2.9 earthquake, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center."

that explosion was so fuckin huge even though it was about a thousand times weaker than the atomic bomb dropped on nagasaki. correct me if im wrong.

.

I would recommend you go see an optician or actually watch footage to begin with.

It is very unsettling to think that a complex like this is allowed to be built with a residential area so close by, but what I find equally worrying is how people keep derpily filming something which is clearly capable of ending your life in a heartbeat without apparently feeling any sense of immediate urgency or danger. Even if you're not very intelligent, you should have a basic instinct to get under cover as much as you can when you see something like this.

So this is what the apocalypse looks like.

this gyf is from a live stream that went dead from the explosion.

Also typical China, America destroys an entire river with 3 million gallons of toxic waste and China out does it by blowing up an entire city. That is just insult to injury lose Doto and then lose a city on top of that.

Seriously though, the explosion took place at an empty warehouse in the cities shipping district at night while no one was working there. Not to say 50+ people is not a lot but it was not as if the explosion took place in a massive residential area. The low body count therefore kind of makes sense. Though the number will rise as more people succumb to injuries and the true devastation of the environmental disaster unfolds.

There was a mushroom cloud in the second explosion, you can see it more clearly in videos taken further away from the explosion.

https://youtu.be/tuDNoHgejCw

definition of a mushroom cloud: "Mushroom clouds result from the sudden formation of a large volume of lower-density gases at any altitude". what you're seeing is the smoke and dust followed up by the second explosion. there's no way an explosion with this low energy is able to shape a mushroom cloud

I give up; I see this turning into a public nerd-off with no satisfactory conclusion and I have better things to do.

The best footage yet is from a guy 1KM away from the blast who inevitably livestreamed his own death.

video vers.

and quintosh is actually correct, tianjin explosion does not follow the actual definition of a mushroom cloud, nor does it resembles it. it's a very large explosion, the dust and smoke formed by it will sometimes confuse people into thinking that's a mushroom cloud. if you compare that explosion to nuclear test videos though, you'll see the difference

also osiris, never forget that you started making unprecedented claims without actually knowing if you were right or not...

I can't even imagine seeing this with my own eyes... poor people that died because of the explosion, and their families hearing about the disaster.

there's a moving inscription of a whatsapp chat supposedly between a firefighter going for assistance and his friend.

thanks to /r/DrSalted on Reddit, it roughly translates to this:

1:48 am
Fireman:
Are you here bro?
Friend:
Here, Here

What happened?
1:52 a.m.
Fireman:
My phone can’t get any calls out

Gangzi just passed away

He died, He died
1:53 a.m.
Friend:
Are kidding me?

Where are you?
Fireman:
I’m in the car to Tanku… Tangu
Friend:
Please call me right now
Fireman:
I’m wearing all my gear, I’m the only person with a phone
Friend:
Then please call immediately me tomorrow when you get home
Fireman:
If I don’t come back, My father is your father

Remember to visit my mother’s grave
Friend:
OK, your dad is my dad

Please take care

------------------------------------------------------------------

at this point, it rests no doubt in my mind that the chinese government is covering the actual death toll, as it has been reported that over a hundred firefighters went in the place when it was just catching fire, before the huge explosions we've witnessed, and only 4 came out. 50 is too much of a low estimate for this horrible catastrophe.

Apparently the firefighters who went in were going to fight what appeared to be a normal fire at first, unaware of the chemicals that were stored in the warehouses. When they started trying to put it out with water, some of the chemicals reacted very violently and turned the area into literal hell. Though my relatives in China don't live near Tianjin, it's still incredibly scary knowing that something this catastrophic occurred there and that the government is being suspiciously secretive.

you can die at any time for any reason :(

This is so fucking depressing holy shit.

One of the reasons why the Chinese government is trying to cover the whole thing up is because its illegal to build a chemical facility in such a high risk residential area. I also heard that the chemical facility was making mainly poison and other harmful chemicals.

The videos taken of this are so terrible... you see the explosion and it looks bad enough, and then the shockwave hits miles away and shatters everything... It's scary knowing people would've died on the spot, and even worse that some are probably still unaccounted for or might not make it out of the hospital.

My relatives are in southern China so it's not anywhere close by, but it's still so scary to think about...

looks like a low yield nuke