On Friday night, November 14th, the Nowgam police station in Srinagar didn’t just experience an explosion — it became the explosion. Nine people died and 29 were injured when nearly 2,900 kilograms of seized explosive materials detonated with such force that people 30 kilometers away heard it. But to understand why this tragedy happened, we need to understand the deadly chemistry of what was being stored and why keeping these materials together in an open area was like assembling a bomb and waiting for it to go off.

Let’s start with the main villain in this story — ammonium nitrate. Over 350 kilograms of it were stored at the police station. This white crystalline chemical looks harmless, almost like fertilizer (which it actually is, in normal use). But ammonium nitrate has a dark side. I

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