Unlike a lot of explosives, ammonium nitrate doesn't go off in anything goes wrong; it requires a few things to go wrong at the same time. Thus, storing huge amounts of it is safe enough for lots of people to do it, and consequently for those large storage amounts to litter the list of largest explosions.

Another common feature of ammonium nitrate explosions is how the procedures they were following didn't cause any problems the last several times they followed it. The Oppau explosion, for example, found that dynamiting their ammonium nitrate/ammonium sulfate mixture to loosen it caused a massive explosion that didn't occur the previous 30,000 times they did it.