I'm going to withhold a lot of my thoughts until I get some more information/photos/video. But Occam's razor points to this being some kind of mobile drug lab gone up bigly. My more speculative side says this was a test VBIED by a political faction and probably not a glowie op.
Plausible I suppose but Occam's razor is a bit out of touch here since the circumstances leading up to the boom were bizarre for a terror attack.
No loss of life, minimal injuries.
The individual behind this seemed to want to draw as much attention to get people the fuck out of the area as possible. (Gun shots fired at no-one just to be heard, warning message an hour+ out from the boom)
Keep in mind I made that post a few hours after learning of the attack, hence the disclaimer about my opinion.
As of now, I'm convinced this was an attack given the probable primary target of a telecommunications hub by method of car bomb with a secondary target of first responders.
This was probably not a false-flag as these lockdowns have shown that you don't need something of this scale for government to do whatever you want so why expend the effort? As someone pointed out in another thread, this was probably not a foreign power as there are other, easier, and less messy methods to achieve the same goal. This was also probably not international terror linked. Speaking generally, when they do attack infrastructure it's things like oil refineries, ports, airports, etc so while not entirely out of the question, I find it unlikely. Finally, this was probably not a domestic right-aligned terror plot. All you have to do is look at the hubub around the plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer; all the right wing cells have been infiltrated by feds at this point.
That leaves two more probable options. One is a domestic left wing cell who were either using this as a test for refinement, or a show of force. Two is a lone wolf or very small cell.
Several factors lead me to this. The first is the claimed recording coming from the VBIED to evacuate and the countdown. The planner must have known with both covid and Christmas Day, the odds of collateral casualties was very low, so the recordings were probably to both clear the area, draw attention, and draw the secondary target of first responders. This would also mean that the intention was to send a message or damage US telecoms and infrastructure rather than raw destruction.
The second is in actual execution which to me appeared a bit amateurish or sloppy. The placement of the VBIED to the probable target could have been better, and while I am not an explosives expert, the size and after effects of the explosive used are not necessarily conducive to hard target destruction. What I mean by that is whatever explosive was used generated a large fireball, and generally, things like gasoline, which are very flammable, are not very explosive. Timothy McVeigh destroyed the entire side of the building his truck was on by turning it into a rolling shaped charge and the RV used in this attack had the potential for the same, but they didn't. To me this says they used easily obtainable and simple explosives rather than more complex chemistry, engineering and material to create a more powerful device. And most importantly they missed; they didn't actually destroy they building, though they have caused a bit of chaos with the outages.
I'm going to withhold a lot of my thoughts until I get some more information/photos/video. But Occam's razor points to this being some kind of mobile drug lab gone up bigly. My more speculative side says this was a test VBIED by a political faction and probably not a glowie op.
Plausible I suppose but Occam's razor is a bit out of touch here since the circumstances leading up to the boom were bizarre for a terror attack.
It's very strange.
Keep in mind I made that post a few hours after learning of the attack, hence the disclaimer about my opinion.
As of now, I'm convinced this was an attack given the probable primary target of a telecommunications hub by method of car bomb with a secondary target of first responders.
This was probably not a false-flag as these lockdowns have shown that you don't need something of this scale for government to do whatever you want so why expend the effort? As someone pointed out in another thread, this was probably not a foreign power as there are other, easier, and less messy methods to achieve the same goal. This was also probably not international terror linked. Speaking generally, when they do attack infrastructure it's things like oil refineries, ports, airports, etc so while not entirely out of the question, I find it unlikely. Finally, this was probably not a domestic right-aligned terror plot. All you have to do is look at the hubub around the plot to kidnap Gov. Whitmer; all the right wing cells have been infiltrated by feds at this point.
That leaves two more probable options. One is a domestic left wing cell who were either using this as a test for refinement, or a show of force. Two is a lone wolf or very small cell.
Several factors lead me to this. The first is the claimed recording coming from the VBIED to evacuate and the countdown. The planner must have known with both covid and Christmas Day, the odds of collateral casualties was very low, so the recordings were probably to both clear the area, draw attention, and draw the secondary target of first responders. This would also mean that the intention was to send a message or damage US telecoms and infrastructure rather than raw destruction.
The second is in actual execution which to me appeared a bit amateurish or sloppy. The placement of the VBIED to the probable target could have been better, and while I am not an explosives expert, the size and after effects of the explosive used are not necessarily conducive to hard target destruction. What I mean by that is whatever explosive was used generated a large fireball, and generally, things like gasoline, which are very flammable, are not very explosive. Timothy McVeigh destroyed the entire side of the building his truck was on by turning it into a rolling shaped charge and the RV used in this attack had the potential for the same, but they didn't. To me this says they used easily obtainable and simple explosives rather than more complex chemistry, engineering and material to create a more powerful device. And most importantly they missed; they didn't actually destroy they building, though they have caused a bit of chaos with the outages.