Devastation

April 30, 2004 1:45 AM

Pre- and post- explosion satellite images of the Ryongchon train station in North Korea.
posted by PenDevil (37 comments total)

Didn't seem to work with my IE 6.0, but worked fine in mozilla.

Unfortunately, The more I flipped between the two, the more I couldn't tell which one was which. Guess its too early for me.
posted by Decypher at 4:16 AM on April 30, 2004

Bad user interface of the day. Why not one button that toggles between the two?
Interesting pictures, but from that angle and distance the difference is not that dramatic. A picture at ground level of one building there and then not there would have more impact.
posted by Outlawyr at 4:40 AM on April 30, 2004

What? That's what I'm looking at, isn't it? I see buildings in one photo, not in the other! That's horrific. Dramatic enough for me...
posted by klaatu at 4:52 AM on April 30, 2004

bbc photos here
posted by andrew cooke at 5:01 AM on April 30, 2004

A picture (or two) is worth a thousand words. Lousy interface, but once you get beyond that you realize why North Korea was willing to accept outside aid.
posted by tommasz at 5:25 AM on April 30, 2004

Direct links: before and after.

The "difference is not that dramatic", Outlawyr? Those white patches in the after shot are the concrete slabs left from all the buildings in the before! I'm with klaatu...
posted by rory at 6:00 AM on April 30, 2004

(Actually, maybe they're not, but still looks pretty hellish.)
posted by rory at 6:02 AM on April 30, 2004

And the series of small white rectangles in the upper right hand corner which weren't there "before" are probably the temporary morgues (or, more hopefully, the tents to house the homeless survivors).
posted by MattD at 6:04 AM on April 30, 2004

Those white patches in the after shot are the concrete slabs left from all the buildings in the before!
I guess if that needs to be explained (with an exclamation point), then yes, the picture is not very dramatic. Which is not to say that the actual event these pictures document was anything less than tragic, dramatic, etc. Why I need to point that out is beyond me.
posted by Outlawyr at 6:04 AM on April 30, 2004

Wow. And MattD, good observation.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:14 AM on April 30, 2004

There's a largish building towards the right side of the image, about halfway down, which looks like it was completely blown off its foundations. I'm wondering if this is the nearby elementary school that was mentioned in some news reports.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:23 AM on April 30, 2004

Yeah, it took me a while to see because I was focusing on the train area. Then I noticed the buildings...
posted by Krrrlson at 6:29 AM on April 30, 2004

doesn't anybody here know how to surf and read anymore? the white buildings, one of which is missing large chunks and the other completely flattened in the "after" shot, are the school. for those whose www skills have never been developed, there is a link at the top of the page that reads Ryongchon Imagery. this leads to narrative and numerous other images identifying the remains of various structures. even george jetson had to push a button now and then. sheesh.
posted by quonsar at 7:03 AM on April 30, 2004

I made a 3 sec. animated GIF. (Cropped and resized a bit for filesize limit considerations, sorry. Email me for the full size fading GIF.) Monster difference.
posted by brownpau at 7:50 AM on April 30, 2004

Quonsar, some of us weren't talking about the school -- I know I wasn't. I was talking about all the small white circular objects/structures that litter the blast site. There are dozens of them scattered about -- the consistancy of them make me think man-made, and I don't think they're concrete foundations. Most of the buildings have a rectangular footprint, and the sizes are not consistant with the original buildings.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:55 AM on April 30, 2004

Also, they all appear to be casting a shadow, which would indicate that they are above-ground structures. I can't find any of them in the shots taken from the ground, though. They could be tarps that are covering what's left of people's personal belongings that are reflecting the sun.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 8:01 AM on April 30, 2004

The second image seems to have been taken when the sun is directly reflecting off debris into the lens of thte satelllite. The white patches could be anything reflective: concrete, glass, steel, white canvas and so on.
posted by PenDevil at 8:05 AM on April 30, 2004

Wow, the devastation is pretty unreal.

Truly awful.
posted by fenriq at 8:14 AM on April 30, 2004

Thanks for the animation brownpau.
posted by jsonic at 8:25 AM on April 30, 2004

What I find most interesting is we don't really know what the hell happened. The NYT has variously reported dynamite or fertilizer. The coincidence with Kim Jong Il's passing through the station is certainly interesting. The NYT even darkly notes that no one has heard from the Dear Leader since the blast.

We must have seismic measurement data from the global monitoring network, be interesting to know if it tells us anything.
posted by Nelson at 8:35 AM on April 30, 2004

Interesting about Kim Jong Il. I wonder if the sudden leadership vacuum (assuming there is one) is behind NK's willingness to have outside help.
posted by tommasz at 9:09 AM on April 30, 2004

So do you think the CIA is behind this?
instead of an exploding cigar, they just went for a giant exploding train.
posted by Iax at 10:18 AM on April 30, 2004

Did you hear the reports of people dying as they attempted to save the portraits of the Dear Leader?

Utter bullshit, I hope. But the NK people might be so brainwashed as to do that sort of thing.

I like that SK is offering assistance. Kill your enemies with kindness, for through kindness they will no longer be your enemy.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:26 AM on April 30, 2004

wow. good link. dang!!!

Then I noticed the buildings...,

priceless.
posted by specialk420 at 10:34 AM on April 30, 2004

About 500 of the 1,300 people wounded were blinded; scores of them were children......Some analysts have speculated that the children were lined up to wave at the train of a passing dignitary.


Woah.
posted by CunningLinguist at 12:08 PM on April 30, 2004

that the children were lined up to wave at the train of a passing dignitary.
Hoping the incident was not a planned action: have doubts now, depressing.
posted by thomcatspike at 12:39 PM on April 30, 2004

It is very tempting to speculate about whether Kim Jong Il was killed, but let's not jump to conclusions just yet. Maybe the authorities suspect it is the result of an assassination attempt, and so he's kept a low profile to be on the safe side? If those kids were lined up to wave his train as it passed, surely given the strength of the explosion they would have been killed rather than merely blinded? Who would consider an explosion of this magnitude the best way to kill a single person? Who would have the resources to pull off an assassination in this way, and be willing to take the risk?
Questions questions questions.
posted by chill at 12:45 PM on April 30, 2004

Surely given the strength of the explosion they would have been killed rather than merely blinded?

Given the pix in the FPP, you have a good point.
posted by CunningLinguist at 12:50 PM on April 30, 2004

I looked at the first picture, saw the big black mark around the train tracks, and thought "Guess that's ground zero; I wonder what it looked like before." Then I switched to the second picture and noticed that not only was the black mark gone, but so were most of the buildings in the picture.

Thanks for the link. Stunning.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 1:55 PM on April 30, 2004

Same with me DrJohn. I had to flip back and forth between the two a couple times to figure out which was which. Hitting the eureka moment was, for me, far more """dramatic""" than the BBC photos. That was an incredibly huge bomb ro explosion.
posted by kavasa at 2:54 PM on April 30, 2004

What chill said. Apparently Kim Jong Il passed through some hours before and the station adjusted its schedule to accommodate him, so the accident is as likely to have been caused by some error in the station's schedule. So, if you look at it that way, it was partly the President's fault, I suppose.

And I agree about the children -- if they'd been at the station they'd be dead. The analysts don't seem to be very good at their job/hobby. I imagine a lot of the blindings are from flying glass -- and classrooms tend to have a lot of windows.
posted by tracicle at 3:41 PM on April 30, 2004

wow.

Just. wow.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 5:32 PM on April 30, 2004

The second image seems to have been taken when the sun is directly reflecting

I'm not sure what this is, but these two photos don't appear to be calibrated with respect to colors/exposure/whatever. Or are you telling me that every bit of the dark roadway in the "before" shot has been covered with white dust in the "after"?
posted by Zurishaddai at 9:26 PM on April 30, 2004

Zurishaddai -

The pictures were taken from slightly different angles. The bottom picture was taken when the satellite was north and west of the city and during a time of day or season when the sun was coming in from the south and east. Most preplanned planned imagery is done in a similar fashion; this way, the shadows of buildings can give a general idea of how tall the building is.

When an intelligence organization needs to take an image of an area Right Now(tm), they usually can't set up the shot as nicely as they'd like due to orbital mechanics ... they need to make a tradeoff between need and satellite location and the time of day.

The second photo was taken at a later time of day -- when the sun was even with the buildings. You only get a one sided shadow on most of them rather than a good two-sided shadow. It was taken when the satellite was directly overhead, so you don't get the imact of the height (or greatly reduced height) of the buildings. The harsher light also washes out what green is left under the dust/debris from the explosion... hmn, the first photo was also 'pumped' color-wise, to my eye at least... may have been atmospheric conditions, though some of the bright colors bleed too much to be natural.

That being said... the trains that collided were on the easternmost assembly track (closest to the top of the picture), if you look at the first photo. The blackness seems to be leaked soot/fuel/coal... or possibly evidence of previous fires. *shrug* The reason you don't see it in the second picture is that the whole area's been effectively roto-tilled by the explosion. (See the BBC photos.) Directly north of the explosion location seems to be the school that's in the #2 BBC photo.

I would say that the white squares in the pictures are tents (or tarps over holes in roofs) set up for families by aid workers. They do seem to match the location of homes, and... this is depressing, but you may also notice that they get rarer the closer you get to the locus of the explosion. This would seem to indicate that fewer families survived the closer they were to the explosion. (Tell me another one, sherlock...)

One thing that's noteable about the explosion is how buildings that were broadside to it were completely and utterly destroyed, while buildings that were edgewise to it seemed to survive partially intact.
posted by SpecialK at 1:53 PM on May 1, 2004

I also notice that the explosion didn't seem to significantly damage the water tower or silo to the northwest of the presumed crater, which struck me as a bit odd. I guess those structures are sturdier than I thought.
posted by moonbiter at 3:25 PM on May 1, 2004

Moon- The silo was actually outside of the worst of the explosion radius. If you draw a circle using the damage at top as a guide you'll see where the epicentre of the explosion is and you'll also see that the tower, whatever it is, is outside of the circle.

Of course, it's also a skinny building... and the charachtaristic of this blast seems to be that anything skinny did not fare badly and anything that was broadside was destroyed.
posted by SpecialK at 7:02 PM on May 1, 2004

SpecialK: The silo was actually outside of the worst of the explosion radius. If you draw a circle using the damage at top as a guide you'll see where the epicentre of the explosion is and you'll also see that the tower, whatever it is, is outside of the circle.

Hmm. From this photo I'm not sure that's true, although it looks like the whatever-it-is is near the edge of the 700-meter radius of worst destruction. At first glance I thought that the blast was tamped towards the east somehow, but that is probably an artifact of there being very few structures to the west.

You're probably right about the width of the structure facing the blast minimizing the damage though. Also, on reflection I suppose a welded sheetmetal structure would survive the concussion of an explosion better than wooden and brick-and-mortar dwellings.
posted by moonbiter at 7:19 PM on May 1, 2004