>And the edge of the main pipe is gradually curved outwards
No, look at 2 o'clock on the pipe, it is curved inward. Regardless. The point is that.. there is a huge section of missing pipe.
To blow up a pipe from the inside you'd need to use a shaped charge (because explosive force prefers to follow a path of least resistance, being expanding gas.... oh, in a gas pipe by the way
) which would
not lead to 50 metres of missing pipe. It would just have blasted a hole in it. As soon as the hole occurs in the pipe, the explosive force goes out of the hole instead of applying force to the pipe.
Note also that the footage shows a "trench" in the seabed leading up to the end of the pipe.
I think that it's fairly obvious that an explosive was placed underneath the pipe, as then you have the seabed as a lever point. The pipe is "weaker" than the seabed, and gets levered away due to the explosive force. The missing bit of pipe could not have been obliterated and so I am certain it has been found, possibly retrieved.
> It would be far more difficult to blast from the outside in
Because...?
> and the residue would be more intact..
Based on...?
>only a fantasist could conclude otherwise.
You, the fantastist, has decided that the Russians can send a pig 1200km down a pipeline without displacing any gas into germany.
You the fantastist also theorises that there are some kind of amazingly powerful explosives that behave, inside a pipe, the same way as an explosive placed externally underneath the pipe.
Even if the Russians did this, and I think Russians are the least likely to have done this based on all factors, it wasn't done via an explosive pig.
