Then there’s this little snippet:
About 30 tons — or 60,000 pounds — of ammonium nitrate went missing from a rail car during transit.
Well now: either a couple of farmers have adopted a DIY attitude towards beating the rising costs of fertilizer, or else someone’s planning a party, Timothy McVeigh-style.
The way I feel about our beloved government right now, I find myself feeling curiously… how can I put this? — neutral? uncaring? apathetic?
That kinda thing. Anyway:
The company was shipping the ammonium nitrate in pellet form and believes it may have begun falling out of the rail car at some point during the trip, a Dyno Nobel spokesman told KQED.
“The railcar was sealed when it left the Cheyenne facility, and the seals were still intact when it arrived in Saltdale [Calif.]. The initial assessment is that a leak through the bottom gate on the railcar may have developed in transit,” the spokesperson told the station.
Why, it’s quite the Agatha Christie “locked room” mystery.
And let’s never rule out plain old incompetence, where someone just forgot to lock the delivery spigot underneath the car.
If it’s the same type of railcar we use, there are 4 loading hatches on top and 4 outlets on bottom. We hang EIGHT fucking seals on the car to ensure every opening is checked and closed before shipping. So if the seals are “intact” then there’s no fucking way it leaked out. Unless they’re lying.
I can see incompetence. When we get railcars, the tops and bottoms are full open, we wash with a industrial spray nozzle inserted in the top and water runs out the bottom. Then blow hot air in top until dry. Then inspect and close bottom outlets, sealing them. Some asshat didn’t close and seal the outlet. So stop telling us “seals are still intact”.
….. or it never was really loaded in the first place and some automated system that intended to check failed. Another vote for incompetence.
I’m with Don on this. Worked in the rail industry 7 years, that car left the factory sealed and EMPTY. No way a sealed car “leaks”, besides, it would not be bone dry empty if one dump hatch was “leaking”, there would still be product in the 3 other discharge chutes.
I call BS on part of the manufacturer. So, the mystery then becomes:
Determine if the car ever loaded, if not loaded, put someone in jail for fraud.
If loaded, then it was somehow unloaded in route and new seals placed correctly (near zero chance, but hey, we live in a new world, eh?)
If loaded and somehow did leak out one warped dump door – find the stuff along the route, even if it rained the chemical would be detectable (near zero chance)
So, the locked room points to it never having been loaded. Shenanigans or graft anyone?
Anyone ever watch Breaking Bad?
Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Some speculation at InstaPundit that it’s a set-up for a False Flag operation, probably intended to implicate the mythical “White Supremacist Threat”. I’d like to dismiss that speculation as paranoid conspiracy-mongering, but I’ve lived through the past few years, so that’s not as easy to do anymore.
Yep, and the speculation on that ‘false flag’ is that it’s supposed to provide an excuse for banning or heavily restricting nitrate fertilizers, like some countries in Europe are trying to do.
When and if the food crisis reaches the levels feared by so many,
I suggest that we start eating the politicians. Bar B Q, roasted, fried
in butter, whatever, it will all taste about the same – rancid, but it
will, so to speak, accomplish a ‘2 birds, one stone’ effect !!
We have to find them first. They’re such cowards that might be very hard, considering we don’t generally know even where they live, so finding them after the balloon goes up and we know what specific acts of treason they’ve committed will be harder than finding Whitey Bulger.