In the latest chapter, I mentioned that the Qingpao guest who spared the life of the sergeant was Xu Xuzheng, the Jinyi guard of the Ming Xizong period, and he encountered such a strange thing when he was in Beijing to check the Donglin party!

Not only did the sturdy house turn into broken bricks and rubbles in front of him, but the originally neatly worn bullfighting robe on his body was also 'picked' clean in an instant, leaving only a lone official boot......

However, even more strange things are still to come, not only is the maid Sujuan rescued by Xu Xuzheng from the rubble also lacking an inch, but dozens of men and women are naked, covering their chests with their hands, and rushing through the street outside the wall.

Wow, this kind of scene where both men and women are naked can only be seen in the special effects book movie on the east side.

It's an exaggeration, but I'm not making it up!

Because this incident is clearly recorded in the historical books of the Ming Dynasty's Apocalypse 'Wang Gongchang explosion', or the Apocalypse explosion, Wang Gongchang disaster, and India's "Dead Hill" incident, Russia's Siberian Tunguska explosion and called the world's three natural disasters.

On May 30, 1626 (the sixth day of the fifth month of the sixth year of the Ming Dynasty's Apocalypse), at 9 a.m. the day after the Dragon Boat Festival, a bizarre 'explosion' occurred in the area near the gunpowder depot of Wang Gongchang in the southwest corner of Beijing.

In addition to leaving behind a huge crater with a radius of more than 750 meters, the disaster also caused the complete collapse of thousands of buildings in an area of 2.25 square kilometers and the huge loss of more than 20,000 people.

However, according to later estimates, if the 'Wang Gong Factory explosion' is really an explosion, then the explosive equivalent required to achieve such a scale of destruction is at least 10,000 tons of TNT, and if it is converted into black powder, the total mass will have to be increased dozens of times!

This is very incredible, even if Wang Gong Factory was the largest gunpowder factory in the capital at that time, there was no need to accumulate hundreds of thousands of tons of black powder in the factory...... This is clearly more than reasonable!

In addition, there is another strange place in the 'Wang Gongchang explosion', that is, the phenomenon that the affected people, regardless of gender, old and young, will be stripped of their hakares and skirts!

"The injured men and women are naked, not a single inch, somehow" ("Heavenly Change of Mansion").

"All the dead and wounded are naked, and the woman in the sedan chair on Yuanhongsi Street is naked and unharmed" ("Guoyu").

"Wood and stone rain down from the sky, thousands of houses, hundreds of injuries...... The dead are all naked" ("Imperial Scenery and Things")

"Clothes hung in the treetops of the West Mountain, silver coins and utensils floated to the Changping Parade Martial Arts Field" ("Suikou Jiluo")

……

It is precisely because there are too many strange scenes in the 'Wang Gongchang explosion' that the ancients could not recognize, and the outbreak of the 'Seven Gentlemen' incident next to Wei Zhongxian's search for the Donglin Party, which makes the meaning of the heavens descending from the sky to punish the traitors and eliminate the evil even stronger.

This made Zhu Youxiao, the emperor of Ming Xizong, not only come forward to stop the Donglin Party case, but also pinched his nose and issued an edict against himself, and these historical materials were recorded by the historians one by one in the "Ming Shilu Xizong Shilu".

（…… The ministers and ministers should do their best to do things, reflect on their pain, and order to send the government treasury 10,000 taels of gold for disaster relief...... ）

In short, most of the accounts about the 'Wang Gongchang explosion' are relatively detailed and credible, and it is impossible to make up this hat on our heads.

Okay, now that feudal superstition is over, the following should be the long-awaited scientific interpretation link.

Due to the fact that there are too many ancient books describing the Wang Gongchang incident, the following is only an official and equivalent to the official nature of the government news bulletin, that is, the account in the "Heavenly Change of the Di Copy".

First attach the original text:

On the sixth day of the fifth month of the Apocalypse, the sky was bright and clean, and suddenly there was a roar, gradually from the northeast to the southwest corner of the capital, the gray gas surged, and the houses were turbulent. There was a loud earthquake, the sky collapsed, it was as dark as night, and the room was flat. East from Shuncheng (should be "Cheng") Gate Street, north to the Criminal Street (now West Chang'an Street), three or four miles long, thirteen miles around is full of powder, tens of thousands of houses, tens of thousands of people. In the area of Wang Gongchang, the erosion is particularly serious, the zombies are stacked, the filth is smoking, the rubble is empty, and there is no way to distinguish the street portal. Sad and miserable, it is difficult to describe in writing. The earthquake sound is from Hexi in the south, Tongzhou in the east, Miyun and Changping in the north, and it is the same in the city. That is, those who are not killed, the houses are all shaken, and the whole country is like a madman. The elephant house collapsed, and the elephant escaped. Looking at the clouds from afar, there are those who are like messy silk, those who are five-colored, and those who are like the black ones of Ganoderma lucidum, rising to the sky and scattering over time. The Heke Daoyi Gunpowder Bureau caught fire, and the spy was arrested and reported, and there were many injuries, and this real day became terrible.

Through this narrative, it is not difficult to see that the so-called 'Wang Gongchang explosion' actually has two times, the first one is just accompanied by a 'loud roar' accompanied by a surging gray gas, followed by a big earthquake, the sky collapsed, and the catastrophe of ten thousand rooms sinking flat.

In addition, the description of the affected area is also noteworthy, 'three or four miles long, thirteen miles wide' is full of powder...... It is a rectangular area 6.5 km long and 1.5 km wide.

From this point, the two dominant factors (which may occur with the explosion, but must not be the dominant cause) can be ruled out from this point: the crater formed by the explosion is a radial shape that radiates to the surrounding area, not a rectangle with a specific orientation; As for the earthquake, although it will leave a ribbon-like fracture zone along the direction of the epicenter, the epicenter, this kind of fragmentation will stretch for tens or hundreds of kilometers, otherwise it is impossible to have the intensity of 'all the powder' of the house.

Note that the explosion point is coming, and according to the comprehensive judgment of various known factors, the author believes that the so-called 'Wang Gongchang explosion' is actually a very rare directional strong airflow disaster.

It seems that the forced grid has dropped several feet all at once......

Don't worry, the actual power of this kind of directional strong air flow disaster can be tens of thousands of times more than the bull breaking on the surface.

Here's a real-life case that has been recorded by scientists.

Lake Nyos, a small lake located in the northern hills of Cameroon, a small African country, with an average altitude of 1,091 meters, a length of about 2.5 kilometers and a width of about 1.5 kilometers, is a nearly rectangular small and medium-sized freshwater lake.

However, such an inconspicuous small lake suddenly turned into a hideous night death around the early morning of August 21, 1986, destroying nine tribal villages near the lake within half an hour, killing nearly 2,000 people on the spot!

It must be emphasized that these nine tribal villages have suffered a cleansing 'massacre' that leaves no room alive! Not only did all the tribesmen die, but even the tens of thousands of poultry and livestock raised by the villagers did not leave a single one dead, not even a single one who could breathe!!

If it weren't for Cameroon's relatively low population density, the damage from this disaster would likely have multiplied!

According to the investigation and research of scientists after the incident, the culprit behind this tragedy was a gas that rushed out of the bottom of the lake - carbon dioxide!

It turns out that this Lake Nyos is geologically divided into an ancient volcanic crater filled with rainwater...... Although the crater is no longer erupting violently, there are still several cracks near the crater that are constantly spewing carbon dioxide gas outward.

Under the huge water pressure (20 MPa) brought by the water at a depth of nearly 200 meters, the carbon dioxide spewed out from the cracks in the crater turned into a solid like ice crystals and lay quietly on the bottom of Lake Nyos.

Have you ever shaken a Coke in a plastic bottle? Have you ever twisted the cap off immediately after shaking violently?

Well, this is a small, directional strong air flow disaster.

For some reason, the water in the depths of Lake Nyos was violently stirred, causing millions of tons of carbon dioxide to gush out of the lake.

And the huge amount of carbon dioxide that spilled out of the madness suffocated and strangled all the living beings in the nine tribal villages in an instant......

Now looking back at the Wang Gongchang incident, you will find such a factor: this incident happened at noon on the sixth day of the fifth month of the sixth year of the Apocalypse, and it is precisely because of the high temperature that people's daily clothing will be relatively loose, at least not wrapped in three layers inside and outside.

Do you remember that the so-called quicksand river is actually just a solid fluidization phenomenon caused by gas passing through the cracks of the gravel at high speed?

This phenomenon of being suddenly stripped of his clothes by a 'person' is actually evidence that there is gas passing around this person's body at high speed at this moment!

The human body and the clothes worn outside happen to be the two particles that produce fluidization, but the mass of one of the particles (the human body) is too large.

Therefore, the fluidization of the two particles that should be separated from each other at the same time becomes a lighter particle (clothing) that is extracted from the heavier particle (human body) at a high speed in an instant...... Well, it's that silky.

I once watched a surveillance video online of a ruffian holding a grudge against a truck driver who was denied blackmail, and stabbed the tires of the large truck with a dagger while the driver was stopping for a meal.

As a result, this ruffian, who did not know the height of the earth, was swept into the air and turned upside down by the rapid gushing gas from the high-pressure tires.

By the time he got up from the ground again, his T-shirt was gone, and the skinny jeans he was wearing had been brushed down to his ankles...... The whole person was wearing only a blue brief, holding a dagger and standing in front of the monitoring probe in a daze.

What do you think? It's not like the victims who were stripped of their skirts and pants in the Wang Gongchang incident...... In ancient China, there was no tights in the modern sense, and the so-called belly pocket panties were actually cloth tied to the body by a few silk threads.

If the silk silk that binds the shirt is loosened due to fluidization, the shirt does not need to be taken off, and it will slide off the body.

I almost forgot to mention that the parts of the ancient buildings built by the mortise and tenon joint structure are actually equivalent to disconnected gravel.

Once there is a rapid flow of air through the middle, the joint parts that have undergone fluidization will automatically loosen, and then collapse under the action of their own gravity...... the building 'three or four miles long, thirteen miles wide' is all powder, like the river of quicksand that keeps rolling and flowing with gravel?

Well, this phenomenon of "both men and women are naked, and the undead are all shaken off their clothes" has been explained, but where did the huge amount of gas that gushed out from the ground come from, the culprit behind the fluidization phenomenon? You must know that there are no volcanoes under Kyoshi.

The root of the problem has to go back to the gunpowder factory of Wang Gongchang.

Anyone who has a certain chemical background knows that the main ingredients of traditional black powder are charcoal, sulfur and nitrate powder.

This charcoal and sulfur are easy to say, the key is where the nitrate powder comes from.

The general method is to grind and filter minerals containing nitrate, and the nitrate powder prepared by this method is called mineral nitrate, although the nitrate powder obtained in this way is of average quality, but it is cheaper and convenient for large-scale preparation of gunpowder.

In fact, there is also a method for preparing nitrate powder, which is to extract high-purity ammonium nitrate directly from human and animal urine.

The site is generally to dig a large pool, fill it with urine and use sunlight to dry, and finally scrape the white powder condensed on the pool wall with a knife, which is ammonium nitrate with high purity.

This method of making nitrate, also known as the 'composting method', is expensive to prepare nitrate powder, but it is also extremely resistant to moisture and flammability, and is commonly used to make gun twists for various types of firearms.

Therefore, there must be a large pool dedicated to composting nitrate in Wang Gong's gunpowder factory.

Can urinate in large pools...... Generally, a large amount of gas does not gush out.

But have you thought about it, in the past, there was no garbage classification, and naturally there was no possibility of collecting urine, so the large pool of composting and nitrate in Wang Gong's gunpowder factory was filled with night incense collected by coolies and husbands from door to door.

And the night incense thing must be mixed with solid and liquid, and there are even stinking and rotten leftovers from the family's back kitchen.

Therefore, the bottom of the compost pond must be covered with a thick layer of extremely sticky black biogas residue, which makes the compost pond have an additional gas that should not exist in the first place - biogas, or methane.

The extremely viscous black digestate has the effect of water pressure sealing in Lake Nyos, sealing a certain amount of biogas at the bottom of the pond, forming a huge biogas bubble!

Now there is only one trigger for the bursting of the methane bubbles.

Do you know how modern gunpowder was invented?

In 1845, the German chemist C. C. F. Schönbay accidentally knocked over a bottle of dilute nitric acid on the table, so he wiped the acid on the table with a cotton cloth, then washed the cloth with water and weed, and baked it by the stove.

So there was a 'boom', and the stove of the Schoenbai family exploded into the sky......

The explosives are nitrocellulose, or 'nitrocellulose', which is the ancestor of modern smokeless explosives.

What would happen if a guy who specializes in scraping powder and nitrate from the wall of the compost pond accidentally knocks a spark out of the bluestone wall with a knife, and the spark happens to splash on the old cotton robe that the man is wearing, which has been heavily contaminated by the old urine stains on the edge of the pool?

Although ammonium nitrate is far less corrosive than nitric acid, everything is afraid of a long time...... This kind of little guy who kneels on the edge of the compost pond with his nose covered and scrapes powder to make nitrate is a little eunuch who made a mistake in the palace and came here to be punished, and it is already a great grace not to cut off his head, who will reward them with money to replace their cotton robes?

Over time, this explosive nitrocellulose has accumulated little by little in the cotton robe.

So, with a 'boom', the compost pond of Wang Gong's gunpowder factory flew into the sky, and this is the "loud roar" described in the "Heavenly Change Mansion Copy".

The accidental nitrocellulose explosion suddenly became a direct factor that induced the bursting of the swamp bubble.

The large biogas bubble that had formed over time was shattered by the vibration generated by the nitrocellulose explosion, causing the residual biogas liquid in the compost pond to mix with the biogas into a large number of bubbles, which rushed towards the nitrocellulose explosion point.

You've all shook off Coke, right? This process of spraying foam is much the same.

However, the disaster was far from over, and a large amount of biogas spewed from the bottom of the pond was mixed with the air and then encountered an open flame that had not yet been completely extinguished during the explosion of nitrocellulose.

And so the second violent explosion occurred...... There was a big earthquake, the sky collapsed, and the ten thousand rooms sank.

It is important to know that the combustion value of methane is very high, and 1g of methane can release J heat after complete combustion (1g of coal is only 2.92kJ), and these heat will make the volume of methane combustion products (carbon dioxide and water vapor) instantly expand by more than 1,000 times.

In this way, the gas that causes the large-scale fluidization of solids also has a source.

Now there is only one problem that needs to be solved, that is, the gas formed during the biogas explosion should be diffused in all directions, even if the surrounding diffusion is uneven due to the existence of the detonation point, it is difficult to form a directional strong air flow three or four miles wide.

What if the compost pond where the explosion occurred was not an open compost pond?

After all, Wang Gong's gunpowder factory is less than 3 kilometers away from the Ming Emperor's Palace, and no one dares to guarantee that the stench produced by the composting pond will not be blown into the palace by the wind...... If this is smoked to the nobles in the palace, the official in charge of Wang Gong's gunpowder factory will definitely lose his head.

Therefore, the compost pond of the Wang Gong Gunpowder Factory should be a semi-enclosed cellar with a 'cover', as long as a few skylights are opened in advance on the cellar lid to pour night incense or scrape nitrate...... When the daily work is over, you can use a pottery urn that is one size larger than the diameter of the skylight to turn it over and buckle it on the cellar mouth, and then use thick wet mud to paste the gaps, you can make a temporary mud seal that will not leak odors.

This semi-enclosed cellar, covered with several skylights, forms a passage for the directional flow of air.

A small explosion occurred at one of the skylights, and some of the hot gases from the explosion poured into the cellar through the open skylight.

These gases successfully stirred the viscous biogas residue at the bottom of the compost pond, causing the giant biogas bubbles under the biogas residue to burst.

The bubble bursts to produce a large amount of biogas, which is ignited by the high-temperature gas entering the cellar;

As a result, the huge amount of gas produced after these secondary explosions rushed to the skylight where the initial explosion occurred farthest, and finally passed through the skylight, forming a negative pressure cavity at the skylight.

Of course, all of this is just something that happens in a matter of milliseconds...... Next, the lid of the cellar will be completely lifted into the sky because it cannot expel the gas that has rapidly expanded after the explosion.

After that, a large amount of gas is attracted by the negative pressure cavity that was previously formed, resulting in a strong directional air current, which is called the 'air pressure effect'.

I know that the above principle is a bit of a trick to understand, so I'll give you an example from everyday life...... This book friend, have you ever seen the kind of earthen kang with the stove open at the bottom and the chimney outside?

This kind of clay kang is a device that absorbs the heat of the smoke produced by the combustion of firewood and grass through a coiled flue in the stove.

Do you know the consequences of throwing a cannon into a used clay kang stove?

Believe me, once you do this, if your parents don't break your leg on the spot, it's all for the sake of their own flesh and blood.

This is because a large amount of grass and wood ash is attached to the inner wall of the clay kang flue, and the air flow vibration generated by the explosion of the firecracker will peel off the attached ash from the inner wall, forming a cloud of ultra-fine dust that is highly explosive.

The dust is ignited by the scattered sparks of the firecracker explosion, and a secondary flash explosion occurs in the stove and flue.

Then you can see a dark smoke rushing out of the chimney, far into the sky, and then black smoke begins to rise from the flue of the stove and from every crevice of the bricks of the earthen kang...... Further down is the red-eyed parents who lift the rattan and make 'stir-fried meat with bamboo shoots'.

The reason is not complicated, is it? That's science.

Don't give some uncommon natural phenomena a supernatural gimmick at every turn, in fact, the scientific truth behind these supernatural phenomena is not difficult to decipher, but no one wants to sink down to analyze and discern.

Now looking back at the account of the explosion at Wang Gongchang's factory in the "Transcript of the Heavenly Change", the ash gas that rose at first with a 'loud roar' was obviously the explosion smoke mixed with black biogas residue.

After the second explosion, the zombie-ridden streets were filled with a smoky smell...... At this time, it was less than half an hour before the time of death, how could there be the filth produced by the decomposition of the corpse?

You say, where does this stench come from?

Isn't it just biogas coming out of the compost pond?

Hehe, I feel like I've ruined an incredible legend again, so happy.