Thermobaric Weapon

en.wikipedia.org

20 points·hsnewman··9 comments

Scary stuff. I feel bad for anyone in Ukraine getting shot at by these.

Russia has TOS-1 in convoys

The Russian military has already used at least one in Ukraine in recent days. I submitted a link to a video the other day, but it got flagged. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30494506

there were a bunch of blown up refineries, fuel and oil storage facilities, some fertilizer factories. Most likely this is what it was

> "has already used"

This is assumptive language accompanied by a random video that has not been confirmed (as far as anyone reading this board would know). With all the disinfo/misinfo that's been flowing through social networks, I don't think we can say that this is a thermobaric blast with any sort of confidence.

So it's fake news? Ok, Donald.

Genuinely curious, I feel sorry for everyone involved in military conflict, but: how is dying from this worse than dying from a normal explosion? Does it hurt more? Or does it injure more?

AFAIK (which probably isn't that far) it's not any worse if you die from the explosion, but, unlike with a regular bomb, with these if you survived the blast you have to then immediately find air to breathe (probably while injured) because they're designed such that they consume all the oxygen in the immediate vicinity. So even if you're already outside, unless there's a stiff breeze you might not be able to crawl to where there's breathable air before you die.

FTA: Another Defense Intelligence Agency document speculates that, because the "shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue ... it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate".

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