scottimus said:
The part I am not understanding is if all of that Ammonium Nitrate was spread out like that in a warehouse, would it all go at the same time and create that concentrated of a pressure wave?
Texas city was in a ship right? West was in a silo? It seems like those conditions would be far more "condensed" than just having it spread across the floor like that...
As long as it all in close proximity and in an enclosed space, yes, it can explode like that. Even if it's palletized and spread across the floor like some of the pictures indicate. Texas City was bagged ammonium nitrate in the hold (think bags of fertilizer on pallets). It wasn't just dumped in en masse like coal on barge.
If you want an example of "laid out" explosives, check out explosive welding. What's being welded (large plates of metal) is stacked in two layers. A thin layer of explosives is put on top. When the explosive is detonated (in a corner IIRC), the explosion spreads across the surface, accelerating the top material into the bottom at high speed. This forces the materials to join together, even if you can't typically join them through traditional welding techniques, because they're plasticized into each other (think mashing two layers of play-doh together with a sledgehammer) instead of being melted together. The process was discovered when pieces of shrapnel were found to be welded to the hulls of tanks in WWI and WWII. Stacked pallets of AN across a warehouse floor would be the same thing but on a way bigger scale.