this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
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What is this thing?

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There was a huge explosion yesterday in Tennessee at plant that made explosive material for the military and industrial projects. https://www.newsweek.com/tennessee-explosion-update-no-survivors-found-at-volatile-scene-10865405

Video from a news chopper on the scene right after the explosion shows what looks like green almost glowing debris on the ground https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPooHZbDiee/

Any idea what it is?

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[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 46 points 2 months ago
[–] sudo@programming.dev 29 points 2 months ago

Neon green plastic. Probably for some important safety color coding.

[–] SPRUNT@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My guess is a bunch of reflective safety tape/decals that got blown to shit. Impossible to say without knowing what was in the place before the explosion.

[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago

Apparently, lots of explosives and not enough safety.

[–] ilinamorato@lemmy.world 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's such a highly processed video, it honestly might be nothing. Just signal noise digitally amplified over multiple successive image enlargement loops.

If not, it also could be some kind of hi-vis material. The explosion appears to have been far more concussive than combustive, so it doesn't seem to have burned stuff so much as it broke everything apart and flung it around.

I don't think it's due to being highly processed. It was just footage from their chopper.

You can see something similar in these images, and these were some of the earliest reports that the explosion had happened: https://www.facebook.com/ChrisDavisReports/posts/just-horrific-images-coming-out-of-the-mcewenbucksnort-tennessee-area-where-accu/1192854099330048/

[–] Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

4Loco Sour Apple

[–] Ghyste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Interesting that several of the pieces appear to be glowing...

I'm not at all suggesting radioactivity, but some of those bits appear to be radiating light. It could be reflected as much as anything. It's hard to tell from video screenshot resolution.

It's a not quite as blurry in the video https://www.instagram.com/reel/DPooHZbDiee/

But yeah definitely weird. It's apparently on a big campus in the middle of nowhere where they develop, manufacture, test, and store explosives for the military and private contractors. Oddly, it's also less than 3 hours away from the tiny town in TN that was created as a production site for the Manhattan Project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_Ridge,_Tennessee

This building was supposed to just be where they manufacture, but some people have suggested that if it wasn't an intentional attack, they may have been storing things in the same building they were manufacturing for some reason.

Apparently an explosion happened a few years ago that killed 1 person and injured 4, but nothing like this.

[–] bobo1900@startrek.website 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As far as I know it's common pratice to include chemical markers in explosives unique to the factory, so if the explosive get stolen/used in an unauthorized manner the investigators can trace back were they were trafugated.

Maybe they also include high visibility pieces of plastic as a visual markers. If so on them there would be printed some identifying information like lot number, manufacturing date and factory address.

Yeah I think it came out after the fact those were some kind of neon plastic casing

[–] HowAbt2day@futurology.today 2 points 2 months ago

Aliens, bro. This obviously involved aliens.