BOOJUM!: A Big Bang Theory

Please Note I Use The Indefinite Article Here

Because if I put "The Big Bang Theory" the Facebook twod mods would swoop in like a wolf on the told - as in "I told you them wolves would swoop down on them sheep" - and claim I was traducing you because this blog wasn't about either cosmological theory or that television show, which I have caught quite often and have a sneaking regard for. After all, what television show could make a bunch of nerdy geeks into an appealing comedy? Art!

DOG BUNS!! Please excuse the Continental levels of screaming hysteria conveyed by a whole TWO exclamation marks, but the internet is telling me that this series ended 14 years ago. Someone lying somewhere?

ANYWAY I wanted to go over a few Big Bangs in history, which will serve as preamble for a certain recent event you cannot fail to have been made aware of. Or perhaps you haven't, in which case you will thank me. Art!

These things jump the shark when they turn into mere drama

Let me warn you that there will be a whole lot of banging going on here today.

Messines Ridge

Dateline June 1917. I did check the blog and there is only a single reference to it from years ago.

As a preface to the Battle of Messines, the British Army dug 21 mines under Messines ridge, which were not the dinner-plate sized things you're imagining. These were mineshafts dug down, then horizontally as galleries, ending in huge chambers of HE under the Teuton positions. Art!

This crater is one of those created when 454 tons of TNT in 19 mines were detonated, and those dots on the rim are puny humans for scale. 2 mines were not detonated because changes in position on the ground made them obsolete.

Scarily, their positions were subsequently lost, until one blew up in 1955 when hit by lightning. The remaining one was discovered over a decade ago under a farmhouse and successfully disassembled. Phew!

Heligoland

Dateline April 1947. Post-Second Unpleasantness, the Royal Navy had accumulated 82,000 tons of naval ordnance from the defeated Teutons, and decided that the heavily-fortified Teuton island of Heligoland was going to be both an experiment and revenge. In Operation Big Bang, the RN placed 6,700 tons of ordnance on Heligoland and detonated it. Art!

Heligoland go boom

Surprisingly the island did not sink and the locals were allowed back in 1955. Awwww!

Beirut

Dateline August 2020. An abandoned warehouse containing 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the Port of Beirut after catching fire. Messines Ridge had been part of the countryside, and Heligoland had been evacuated, but this explosion, rated at 1.1 kilotons, took place in a densely-populated port city. It killed hundreds, injured thousands and caused $15 billion in property damage. Art!

There was a lot of noise and fury at the time, which seems to have settled back into the normal Lebanese political sloth. Er - until the past few days, which good taste forbids us to draw upon for content.

And, you knew this was coming -

Toropets

Dateline September 2024. I've pulled together information from several sources for this. Let's go with some of the apocalyptic images that have cropped up on Ruffian local social media accounts. Art!

These are still from video clips taken from several kilometres away, because anyone doing this close up wouldn't be able to do this close up. Incidentally, the people who took and posted isuch mages on social media are now being harassed by the FSB, because it makes Ruffia look bad. National news has completely ignored it, of course. The Regional Manager gave a news conference claiming that fires had been started by 'drone debris', all the while explosions were going off in the background, and Ooops! half the population of Toropets had been evacuated. Powerful stuff, this 'drone debris'!

Let's have a look at the site before all the explodey stuff took place. Art!

It was - past tense obligatory - an enormous site 5 kilometres from end-to-end, being the primary European storage site for Ruffian artillery rockets, of which it stored 10,000; S-300 and S-400 SAMs; Tochka-U missiles; Iskander missiles; Nork KN-23 missiles, FAB bombs plus mortar rounds and artillery shells. The site supplied - past tense obligatory - Ruffian forces in both Kursk and Kharkhiv regions

Rather than 'drone debris', from NASA FIRMS data, Conrad guessed that five drones had hit the site, and reports are that six actually hit. At the time there was speculation that Ukrainian drones simply lacked either the velocity or explosive yield to destroy hardened bunkers with underground storage - of which more anon. For hours into daylight smoke and general conflagrations concealed the site from satellite footage, as commiserated by 'Suchomimus' on Youtube.

However - oh hello favourite word! - 'Special Kherson Cat' on Twitter appears to have gotten hold of a satellite company called 'Sentinelhub' who have access to infra-red cameras, which eliminates smoke or cloud cover. Art!

Why are people, including Conrad, making a big noise about this? Well, because Toropets was rated for 30,000 tons storage at maximum capacity. However, the Ruffian milblogger 'Fighterbomber', whom is something of an informational loose cannon (and whom has gotten into trouble with the FSB before) stated 'since the start of the war <more trouble from the FSB there, matey> no-one has paid any attention to safety rules.' He alleges that ammunition was being dumped above-ground, whether through laziness or because bunker limits had been reached is unclear, but if the latter then the site may well have gone over the 30,000 limit. 32,500 tons? 35,00 tons? 40,000 tons? I doubt the Ruffians know or will ever know because there won't be any surviving garrison or records to provide clarity. Art!

This is the interior of NORSAR, the Norwegian scientific institute that tracks seismic data. They recorded 13 'incidents' of 2.0 to 2.8 on the Richter Scale, all originating on Toropets. Once again, that 'drone debris' is mighty stuff indeed.

The 'Ruffian Disease'

Which is to say, Corruption. This is a feature of Modern-day Mordor, not a bug, and it affects everything.

Why bring this into an item about Big Bangs? Well, this is where there is A Big Bang Theory. You see, the Toropets facility was modernised - which ought to be put into quotation marks as "modernised" - over the 2018 to 2020 period. Art!

"Strange - I can hear explosions ..."

This is Vice Defence Minister Bulgakov, who was in charge of the <ahem> modernisation, which he loudly and brashly boasted about rendering Toropets as being so advanced and sturdy that it could survive a nuclear strike.

Yes, well, about that - Fighterbomber, absolutely frothing at the mouth with rage, speculated that the bunkers were made " - out of <rude word for excrement> and sticks", which is quite possible. Perhaps even papier maché? After all, these bunkers were built before the Special Idiotic Operation was even a thing, so Bulgakov might have felt perfectly safe in embezzling millions, because the site is 500 kilometres from Ukraine. What could possibly go wrong?

He is currently in prison on corruption charges, surprise surprise, and Toropets will doubtless be blamed on him, because the assertion is that 30% of the construction budget was embezzled, to a total of $5 millions.

I hope his luxury dacha and Rolls Royce Corniche were worth it, as the cost of the munitions lost in the largest non-nuclear explosion to date - though not all at once - came to $217 million. Imagine being the hapless minion tasked with passing this news on to Putinpot! Art?