NOW IT’S A RUSSIAN PLANT THAT EXPLODED

Remember all those Chinese chemical plants that exploded? at the time of the first explosion, which left a massive and deep crater, I entertained suspicions that the explosion was not accidental,  and like many others on the internet, I thought then and still think now that the depth and shape of that crater was not commensurate to having been made by a chemical explosion. Many - I among them - entertained the idea that perhaps a "rod of God" technology had been used to cause the explosion. And to this day I am not convinced, at least in the case of that first explosion, that the standard explanations suffice.

With that little bit of context in mind, there were a few people who caught this one this week: there's been another explosion at a plant, this time not in China, but in Russia, and it was a munitions plant at that. But before we get to that, and just for the record, I'm 99.99% inclined to view it as an accidental explosion. We'll get back to that.

Here, in any case, are RT's and Zero Hedge's presentations of the story:

Dozens injured as massive blasts hit TNT plant in Russia’s Dzerzhinsk city (VIDEOS)

Massive Explosion Rocks Russian Munitions Plant; Dozens Injured, 200 Buildings Damaged

This is not the first time that accidental explosions have occurred in Russian munitions factories or ammunition dumps. Indeed, former Lt. Col. Tom Bearden has mentioned in many of his books at enormous explosion in the late 1950s Soviet Union, which he believes to have been caused by a "scalar experiment" gone horribly wrong. Then of course we had the Chernobyl incident, a case study of the inefficiency and corruption of the Glories of Socialism.

So it's tempting to view this explosion as just an accident, a horrible event and "another example of Russian inefficiency and the regime's callous disregard for normal safety and human life." You know the routine well: "insert standard western media boilerplate narrative here," and "add the usual mentions of Vladimir Putin's regime here" and so on. Growing up in the Cold War, I was used to such narratives, and they made a lot of sense because the Soviet Union was wicked and corrupt and evil and callous and inefficient &c &c. The problem with the narrative that I always had was a philosophical one: if the Russians were that incompetent, then how in the name of sense did they manage to become a superpower? Oh yea, I forgot, they stole it all from us.

Except that the problem here is that Putin's Russia is not Khrushchev's or Brezhnev's or Andropov's or Gorbachev's Soviet Union.

Which brings me to the two articles and my high octane speculation on that other .01% possibility, for there's something interesting in these two articles, or rather, there's something interesting that's not in these two articles. Consider the final paragraph from the RT article:

This is not the first time explosions had happened at the same explosives-maker. On April 4, a blast brought down one of its one-story structures. It took an hour to put down the fire, and, luckily, no one got hurt that day. A much deadlier explosion occurred in the plant in August, when five of its workers were killed.

Ok... so there were earlier explosions at the same plant, which, incidentally, we're told made explosives for "mining." But nowhere in the article to we get even a hint, not the tiniest suggestion, of what may have led to the explosion. Turning to the Zero Hedge version of the story, one additional tidbit of information is given:

A criminal investigation has been launched into the explosions.

Something, in other words, has made the Russian government sit up and take notice, and to start a criminal investigation. One can only assume that with previous explosions in the same plant, that this might be a normal or regular procedure. I don't know as I'm not at all knowledgeable in Russian law and regulation. One might assume that at least some laws from the Soviet era about criminal incompetence and slacking might still be on the books. That at least would be a "standard narrative" explanation for it.

I suspect, however, that like me, many readers here will be entertaining darker "high octane speculations," namely, that "criminal" in this context may mean something far more sinister: sabotage by terrorists, or, worse, sabotage by "major actors" on the world stage, and if the latter, perhaps another event in an ongoing "covrt war" being fought behind the scenes by people who possess advanced technologies capable of creating such "accidents" and "acts of nature." In a world being sprayed to death with chemicals to increase the electrical conductivity of the atmosphere so that the boys in the Pentagram can play at "full spectrum dominance," then sparking a Russian munitions plant might be a fairly easy thing to do. And I suspect the rather tight-lipped nature of the Russian response to the event tends to confirm this line of more sinister speculation.

Then there's the videos of the event, which I made a point to watch, even though I don't have time for videos (which reminds me, once again folks, please do not clutter up my inbox with videos. Opening such emails only to find videos only slows me down. PLEASE do not send videos). Anyway, watching the explosion, which appears to have been recorded in more or less real time by locals, I was struck by three things: (1) the size of the explosion, yielding an enormous mushroom cloud more evocative of a nuclear explosion rather than a conventional one; (2) the fact that, nonetheless, the explosion was apparently conventional because I saw no signs of continuing combustion of material in the mushroom cloud, a telltale sign of nuclear explosions; and (3) that the explosion therefore had to be more or less the near-simultaneous combustion of all explosives at the plant in order to produce that type of signature. This was not, in other words, the case of an explosive fire traveling through a plant and setting off a number of smaller explosions in a sequence. On one video, one does not hear a sequence of explosions, but one very loud "bang". One yet another video, one hears two very loud bangs (a signature, some will recognize, of a thermobaric or fuel air bomb).

One can only assume that, in any case, the plant would have fire doors and other safety features designed to prevent that, and to confine any accidental explosions to one area, much like on old battleships one had fire doors, bulkheads, and other safety features to prevent a flash fire from erupting into a full magazine explosion. Something appears to have overcome whatever safety features the Russians had at tha plant to isolate and localize accidental fires and explosions, in order to produce the result that we see and hear.

It's the enormous size of that mushroom cloud that indicates a "full up explosion", the near-simultaneous detonation of a lot of conventional explosives, that makes me suspect that something beyond mere accident, or "routine human incompetence" are in play.

And the Russians are not even hinting at why they launched a criminal investigation. As in all things Russian, in this case, time might tell...

Oh, and by the way, in March there was another explosion in a Chinese chemical plant:

"Horrifying" Blast At China Chemical Plant Kills 47, Injures 640

Really, if this is just "incompetence" then it's a marvel that China has any chemical industry at all.

As you might have gathered, I'm not buying that narrative...

See you on the flip side...