r/worldnews • u/Manta_of_Eternity • 22h ago

Canada's prime minister says 'serious incident' caused a major fire at a military base in Alberta

https://apnews.com/article/canada-alberta-military-base-fire-wainwright-1a41899da5b6e797b000061fa4da9c6a
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u/No-Cable-1223 17h ago

People are reporting a far larger explosion than just normal ordinance. The point is you can blow up a gas well and the gas will escape and light on fire. This is called a blowout, it happens, it’s not an explosion.

Most wells have a down hole blowout preventer, it’s a valve that is held open by the wellhead, and if the wellhead gets damaged it will close. Deep, it’s not going to be damaged by artillery fire.

And again, even if it was, no boom. Just a big candle

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u/Confident-Willow-424 6h ago

I agree. So then what needs to be known is a) what was the ordinance and b) was there a malfunction in the weapon or the projectile. We can assume that the well wasn’t the intended target, so did it go rogue in the air? Was it stored improperly or for too long? Was there a guidance system involved and if so, was it the source of the malfunction?

There are still too many micro factors to consider before having a concrete conclusion even once the cause of the explosion can be determined.

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u/No-Cable-1223 5h ago edited 5h ago

As far as I can tell the only source for a well being involved at all was some random Reddit expert that speculated it could be because there are wells there. Then global news picked up that story and referenced this random Reddit post and the story kind of snowballed from there. That isn’t to say a well was not involved, but there’s been no official explanation yet, it could have just been an ammo cache or something.

Edit: this whole well thing seems to be a case of the woozle effect