Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said during a Saturday press conference there are believed to be “no survivors” from Friday’s powerful explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems facility in Tennessee. He did not confirm how many fatalities there were, but he previously said 18 people were missing on Friday.
Accurate Energetic Systems specializes in the “development, manufacture, handling, and storage of a diverse array of energetic products and explosives for military, aerospace, and commercial demolition markets,” according to its website. The Associated Press reported that the company has sold to and had been awarded military contracts with the U.S. Army and Navy.
The powerful explosion at the facility occurred early Friday around 7:45 am local time, and was felt more than 15 miles away.
Do we know the proximate cause yet? Accident? Targeted?
Likely unregulated capitalism
Well, the explosives exploded.
I’d just like to make the point that there are a lot of these explosives factories making explosives around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that explosives aren’t safe.
Were these explosives safe?
Yes. Until they weren’t.
Well, I was thinking more about the other ones.
The ones that are safe?
I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
But why wasn’t this one built so the explosives don’t explode at all?
They are built to very rigorous explosive engineering standards!
That’s not how explosives work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
I’ve seen comparisons to the Black Tom incident in WWI, where the Germans sabotaged an explosives factory in the US that was making shells for the English war effort. Interested to see if Russian sabotage jumped from just Europe.
No they’re still investigating, but there’s not much left to investigate. Also, apparently it’s still very dangerous and volatile bc of all the remaining chemicals
Seems to have been a big badaboom.