naraburns nihil supernum
7mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #2
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. whatever amalgamation of actors here are opposing Israel have demonstrated that they are willing to strike their own people.
Hamas etc. gain a lot from this (politically).
The narrative around this is already forming and I suspect that we will never be free of knowing that Israel for sure bombed a hospital (maybe they did).
This will be a major inflection point in this war. Causalities are approaching 1000 people (started at 500, now at 800)
Edit: here’s also why I’m so suspicious of this. If it’s true that Israel bombed this hospital, it basically evaporates any amount of good will I had for them. The 10/7 Hamas attacks were terrible. This is just as bad. Pull our aircraft carriers back, no aid, nothing. Still send in some bad hombres to get our citizens out, but other than that Israel is on its own, and I don’t want to hear any ridiculous moralizing from any us politician ever again.
Edit2: There are allegedly demonstrations happening in several countries now. Extremely dynamic news environment. Nobody knows wtf is going on. Israel is starting to get their narrative together about the cause of this, but it's way too late for them to get ahold of it.
This matches up with the very first video of the rocket hitting the hospital, and answers why the guy filming was filming (because there were a bunch of rockets going overhead)
This doesn’t seem to correspond to the claimed body-count nor the explosion videos, which seemed massive. So Hamas was lying about the deaths, that makes sense, but the videos seemed real enough - so what gives? I’m honestly confused now.
The larger munitions (MK84s have 2000 lbs warheads) do have a certain cinematic sense to them in real-time. They're not really bright in the way movie explosions, are, though, and to the extent that there are flashes at all they're vastly outweighed by the dust kicked up. A number of videos with slow-motion cameras (MK82s have 500-pound warheads) from test fires do look more cinematic, but it's important to keep in mind that those blasts are over in tenths of a second, and at real-time unless they drop at a shallow angle you're going to catch them primarily by the dust clouds.
((I'll skip over some weirder configurations, like inert bombs or naval mines.))
The trick's that the fire and heat, barring some very specialized cases like explosions in an enclosed area or secondary explosives, are generally not the main source of damage for detonations. What kills and destroys is the pressure wave. The fire and heat is usually remnants of remaining explosive material that didn't burn off before the pressure wave overtook them.
FEMA has a good document (cw: probably will get you Put On a List) on this from a Blue Team perspective trying to reduce harm, and also what sort of buildings are more or less vulnerable to explosives. Chart 4-11 gives a (very approximate) point for where concrete columns fail. Unfortunately, it's harder to predict for buildings as a class; most modern buildings are designed to require near-complete failure of all main supports to collapse rather than merely being unsafe, but sometimes you'll find a dumb decision come in that lets sections peal off from relatively minor hits. Older US residential buildings are often more vulnerable due to the frame structure leaving the building vulnerable to hits on one or two major supports, while contrast Australia, where cinderblock and concrete everything means buildings often will stay up. I dunno Israeli architecture but I'd expect it tends to the latter side.
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Notes -
A Gazan hospital has been hit, allegedly by a missile, allegedly by an Israeli missile: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/least-500-victims-israeli-air-strike-hospital-gaza-health-ministry-2023-10-17/
Here is why this seems incredibly unlikely to me:
Israel gains nothing from this.
Israel loses a lot from this.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. whatever amalgamation of actors here are opposing Israel have demonstrated that they are willing to strike their own people.
Hamas etc. gain a lot from this (politically).
The narrative around this is already forming and I suspect that we will never be free of knowing that Israel for sure bombed a hospital (maybe they did).
This will be a major inflection point in this war. Causalities are approaching 1000 people (started at 500, now at 800)
Edit: here’s also why I’m so suspicious of this. If it’s true that Israel bombed this hospital, it basically evaporates any amount of good will I had for them. The 10/7 Hamas attacks were terrible. This is just as bad. Pull our aircraft carriers back, no aid, nothing. Still send in some bad hombres to get our citizens out, but other than that Israel is on its own, and I don’t want to hear any ridiculous moralizing from any us politician ever again.
Edit2: There are allegedly demonstrations happening in several countries now. Extremely dynamic news environment. Nobody knows wtf is going on. Israel is starting to get their narrative together about the cause of this, but it's way too late for them to get ahold of it.
Edit3: allegedly a video of both the initial rocket launch, as well as the explosion: https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1714379242983846126
This matches up with the very first video of the rocket hitting the hospital, and answers why the guy filming was filming (because there were a bunch of rockets going overhead)
https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1714525590873575600
Photograph of the aftermath in the daytime.
This doesn’t seem to correspond to the claimed body-count nor the explosion videos, which seemed massive. So Hamas was lying about the deaths, that makes sense, but the videos seemed real enough - so what gives? I’m honestly confused now.
Real explosions don't look like movie explosions. The layman perception of what big explosions look like comes largely from fuel fires for special effects.
Oh, wow. That’s very informative, thank you.
But then, there were other videos which supposedly showed JDAM explosions that looked quite cinematic.
(It’s also my understanding that JDAM is a conversion kit rather than an actual weapon’s name, so I’m taking it with a huge dose of skepticism)
The larger munitions (MK84s have 2000 lbs warheads) do have a certain cinematic sense to them in real-time. They're not really bright in the way movie explosions, are, though, and to the extent that there are flashes at all they're vastly outweighed by the dust kicked up. A number of videos with slow-motion cameras (MK82s have 500-pound warheads) from test fires do look more cinematic, but it's important to keep in mind that those blasts are over in tenths of a second, and at real-time unless they drop at a shallow angle you're going to catch them primarily by the dust clouds.
((I'll skip over some weirder configurations, like inert bombs or naval mines.))
The trick's that the fire and heat, barring some very specialized cases like explosions in an enclosed area or secondary explosives, are generally not the main source of damage for detonations. What kills and destroys is the pressure wave. The fire and heat is usually remnants of remaining explosive material that didn't burn off before the pressure wave overtook them.
FEMA has a good document (cw: probably will get you Put On a List) on this from a Blue Team perspective trying to reduce harm, and also what sort of buildings are more or less vulnerable to explosives. Chart 4-11 gives a (very approximate) point for where concrete columns fail. Unfortunately, it's harder to predict for buildings as a class; most modern buildings are designed to require near-complete failure of all main supports to collapse rather than merely being unsafe, but sometimes you'll find a dumb decision come in that lets sections peal off from relatively minor hits. Older US residential buildings are often more vulnerable due to the frame structure leaving the building vulnerable to hits on one or two major supports, while contrast Australia, where cinderblock and concrete everything means buildings often will stay up. I dunno Israeli architecture but I'd expect it tends to the latter side.
Thank you so much for this! I’ve been around guns for a while, but never had any experience with anything explody.
So now it does make sense to me that most of the spectacle in the videos was fuel being dispersed and lit up.
By the way, Israeli and Arab architecture really is much more heavy on the cinderblocks and concrete- wood isn’t used that often at all.
Well, their area is fairly short on wood and forests.
Though Europe is also using wood on much lower scale for home construction than USA, as far as I know. Mostly for different reasons.
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