@Zhasper: Excellent pointer, ta! That Halifax explosion and all the other big bangs do make for sobering reading. It’s also interesting to read what really happens when an oil terminal catches fire, as opposed to what Bruce Schneier calls movie-plot terrorist scares.

There’s two others I found particularly interesting:

• The Minor Scale tests, essentially “let’s pile up a lot of explosives and see what happens”.
• The wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, which has been sitting in the Thames Estuary since 1944 with 1500 tons of explosives on board. “Got a light, buddy?”

@jason: I get the feeling that many of the less-sophisticated critics of foreign and military strategy have no understanding of how the Pax Americana of the last half-century has contributed to their luxurious Western lifestyle.

Oh, such rich veins of thought to mine fo this weekend’s essay(s)…

But… “‘us’ greenies”?

Without big ships like that marshalling the world, we’d probably be in trouble from various fronts.

Without big ships like that causing trouble, we’d probably have less trouble on various fronts.

But, it’s probably more of the former. Yes, yes, America is bad and Bush is Satan. But we could do a whole lot worse. Lets wait to see how bored China gets after its Olympic party is over. All us greenies might be shouting “quick, get those big ships over there!”