The videos and story surrounding the latest industrial calamity in China, forever known now as the Tainjin Port Explosion verge on the unbelievable. The footage of the mammoth fireball and the effects from the pressure wave are among the most compelling things we have ever seen. There is a death toll that has continued to rise in recent days and it has now crested 100 people and is likely not done and won’t be done changing for some time. The area is a massive, chemically tainted wasteland now with cyanide being detected all over the place. This ranks as one of the worst industrial disasters in the the history of the modern world by a long shot. Shortly thereafter, chatter erupted on the internet about the fact that nitromethane supplies would, could, or already have been decimated by this explosion but to this point in the evolving story not one, not ONE media source form the USA, China, anywhere has breathed a word about nitromethane. Not one syllable.

So where did the rumors start? It seems to have started the way all rumors start, rooted in logic. See you can search the internet and find lots of listings for nitrmethane for sale in China and most of them are listed as having a shipping port of Tianjin. There was a massive explosion, and this is the place where the nitro lives? Well let’s do some math, and bingo, there we are. The world’s nitro supply has been smoked! Nooooo! Like every good conspiracy theory the pieces all fit nicely into place and it becomes hard to refute.

Here’s how it starts to fall apart. Being that virtually every news agency worth its weight in salt from around the world has been pouring their all into this story for a week and the word nitromethane has not been mentioned it is either an amazing coincidence or there has been no reason to mention it. We tend to believe the latter. While the area that was devastated by this catastrophe is immense, it is a small section of the world’s 10th largest shipping port. The port itself continues to function at near full capacity each day even as the horrible aftermath of the explosions play out. While one could think that all the “bad stuff” would be housed together in a single area, there is an excellent chance that nitromethane was outside of the blast zone. It is also important to remember that this is a warehousing facility not a plant or factory. If the contents of the warehouse held nitromethane and it got smoked, more will be made.

It is very difficult to get information on the company who owned the building that this all stemmed from but we do know that  Tianjin Dongjiang Port Rui Hai International Logistics Co. Ltd. was formed and began operating in 2011 and that three of the major chemicals they deal in are sodium cyanide, toluene diisocyanate, and calcium carbide. While the company may also deal in nitro, we have no idea if they do or not for sure because there is no way to currently verify it.

One thing we do know through the various reports and what little has come from investigations that this point is that when firemen arrived on the scene and they started throwing water on the blaze, they did the exact wrong thing. We are not blaming the brave men who died in the explosion but what we are saying is that if you have a building that is on fire and there is calcium carbide in there, spraying it with water is your death sentence. Why? Because when the water hits it in that state you start to create immense amounts of acetylene instantly. There’s a better than average chance what you see in the videos below and the hundreds of others that have come out is the world’s largest acetylene bomb. Anyone who has worked in a shop or horsed around in one may have seen what happens when a small amount of acetylene is captured in a plastic bag and then sparked. Loud, stupid, and dangerous you should never try such a thing but if you have seen it, you won’t forget it. Now take that practical joking and multiple it by a few million times and the potential exists for what happened in Tianjin.

At the end of the day though, this is China. They control information like no other modern power on Earth. We only currently know what they want us to know and not a drop more. Maybe the nitromethane thing will come up over the next couple of days. We have been nosing around some of the fuel companies for inside info but have thusly got nothing worth a damn.

One thing is for sure. The scope of the disaster versus the size of the place it happened in has not really been visualized by most people. If the nitro warehouse also went up, it would be the equivalent of a sniper shot in a massive crowd of people. We’re going to be keeping a close eye on this story and you can expect more information when we get it.

HERE ARE SOME INCREDIBLE VANTAGE POINTS OF THE EXPLOSION –