Bhopal Disaster (Bhopal Gas Tradedy)

[Jim Eshelman]

"World's worst industrial disaster." Gas-leak incident. Occurred sometime overnight December 2-3, 1984, so the best estimate of time is December 3, 1984, 0:00, Bhopal, India. At least 3,787 deaths, but claims quadruple that number. Over half a million more were injured. (I'd like to have the time of the emergency venting.) - Sun in Scorpio, Moon in Pisces.

It's basically the Chernobyl of toxic fume disasters.

(I wrote about this twice, in different threads. Here is the lead-in from the other thread.)

On the night of December 2-3, 1984. between 11:00 and 11:30 PM, in Bhopal, India (specifically at 23N16'51", 77W23'38"), poisonous gas escaped from a Union Carbide India plant, exposing half a million people. It is still considered India's worst industrial disaster.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

Government reports list the death toll as 3,787 and over half a million injuries. Other estimates rise as high as 8,000 deaths in the first two weeks and another 8,000 since then (16,000 total).

The time above is for when first symptoms of gas leakage were experienced by workers inside the plant. By 12:40 AM on the 3rd, conditions reached a critical state. Sometime then or soon after, atmospheric venting occurred. Alarms were sounded at 12:50 AM. I think this should be used as the critical moment when an emergency was officially in play.

Having looked at the charts below, I am not impressed.

Year: Capsolar (Dormant.) Moon-Uranus op. (1°03' in mundo).
Year: Cansolar (Dormant.) Moon-Uranus sq. (1°56')

Bridge
t. Uranus on Cansolar angles 10/25-3/10
t. Jupiter on Capsolar angles 9/30-11/7, 11/29-12/17
t. Uranus op. Capsolar Moon 11/5-12/9
Event windows: Nov 5-7, and Nov 29-Dec 9

Quarter: Libsolar
Mars-Jupiter conj. (1°24' in RA)
-- Jupiter on WP (0°44')
-- Mars on WP (1°40')
Moon-Sun sq. (1°52')
Moon on Asc (4°54')

Month: Caplunar
Mercury on IC (2°22')
Neptune on IC (6°17')
-- Mercury-Neptune conj. (3°55')

Day: Capsolar Quotidian & Transits
p. MC sq. t. Saturn (1°53')
--------------------------------
t. Uranus op. s. Moon (0°33')
t. Jupiter op. s. Asc (1°13')

Day: Cansolar Quotidian & Transits
p. Asc conj. s. Pluto (0°12')
------------------------------------
t. Uranus sq. s. MC (0°13')


SUMMARY
Year (Capsolar): (Dormant.) Moon-Uranus.
Year (Cansolar): (Dormant.) Moon-Uranus.
Bridge: Jupiter Uranus (Cap). Uranus (Can).
-- Quarter: Mars Jupiter (Moon). Moon-Sun Mars-Jupiter.
Month: Mercury (Neptune). Mercury-Neptune.
Day (Capsolar): Saturn (CapQ). Jupiter Moon-Uranus (transits).
Day (Cansolar): Pluto (CanQ). Uranus (transit).

[Jim Eshelman]

What I feel most missing - prior to the day-of-event indicators - is something linking a significant event to the location. The abundant Uranus is on target, but not locally linked.

One key, I think, is that much of the damage to people occurred beginning a few days later, and especially over the following week. The December 4 Arilunar has Mars 3°43' below Ascendant, Saturn 1°05' from MC.

[Jim Eshelman]

One further thing to check is how this shows for the national capital, since the government was intimately connected to the event and it was a national level disaster. Now we get some Neptune at least!

Half-year: Cansolar
Neptune on Dsc (1°44')
Moon on MC (3°44'), Jupiter on Dsc (7°32')
Moon squares Uranus (1°56').

Quarter: Libsolar
Mars squares MC (0°15'). Jupiter on Westpoint (0°32'). Moon on Asc (1°57'). Moon square Sun (1°52').
Mars-Jupiter conjunction (1°04' in mundo)

Month: Caplunar
Mercury on IC (2°33')
Neptune on IC (6°30')

Day: Capsolar Quotidian & Transits
t. Sun on CapQ Dsc (0°52')
t. Saturn sq. CapQ MC (1°39')
--------------------------------
t. Uranus op. Capsolar Moon (0°36')

Day: Cansolar Quotidian & Transits
CanQ MC sq. s. Pluto (0°13')
t. Uranus sq. s. Moon (1°02')

The showing, overall, is better.

[Jim Eshelman]

According to the chronology in the linked document, workers smelled leaking MIC (methyl isocyanate) at about 11:30 PM. I took the key event as the safety valve popping.

From the report:

about 12.30 am .Control room operator notices that needle on pressure indicator for Tank E610 is pinned to the maximum reading of 55 psi. Control room operator goes out to tank area to check gauges on tank. While in tank area he hears a safety valve pop, hears rumbling in tank, and feels heat emanating from it. Returns to control room to engage the gas vent scrubber. Caustic soda does not flow as it should. A cloud of gas escapes from the scrubber stack.

by 12.40 am Plant supervisor suspends operation of the MIC plant, turns on the in-plant and external toxic gas sirens. External sirens audible in nearby neighborhoods are turned off after about five minutes. Operators turn on the fire water sprayers but water cannot reach the gas cloud forming at the top of the scrubber stack. Efforts to cool Tank E610 with the refrigeration system fail because the Freon had been drained. Gas escapes for about 2 hours.

-Derek

[Jim Eshelman]

Jim wrote:

One further thing to check is how this shows for the national capital, since the government was intimately connected to the event and it was a national level disaster. Now we get some Neptune at least!

Exactly! Also there was an exact Mercury-Neptune conjunction on the day of the event partile cnj non-dormant New Delhi Cansolar Neptune. IMO, the CanQ crossing of s. Pluto to CanQ Asc offers excellent DAY timing for this stunning/shocking event. Although Fagan frowned on turning planets into ‘thingish’ thinking—if we allow Neptune here to symbolize gas—then we have par-excellent symbolism for this Gas Fume disaster. But even without Neptune symbolizing gas fumes, we still have excellent psychological symbolism with a Neptune event.

[Jim Eshelman]

Those charts don't make sense. There's something missing or that we don't know here. How do the charts before the accident look? Could there have been a coverup before this was announced, and these are the charts for stopping the leak?

Great questions, I don't have any answer. They so (as you put it) don't make sense that I thought I'd calculated them for the wrong year. (If so, then I calculated them for the wrong year twice in a row.) Not sure what kind of cover up, since the whole city was alerted with alarms as it was happening, etc.

If we didn't have thousands - thousands! - of example charts under our belts for many hundreds of events, I'd be very nervous posting these charts. But, as it is... they're either the worst dud in history, or there is something unknown about the event that makes it take a different turn.

But it rally does look so like a non-event to make me think I calculated the charts for wrong data, calculated them in a perverse and mistaken way (like Tropical on by mistake, or forgot to set the location from Los Angeles to Bhopal, etc.), or some such thing.

[Jim Eshelman]

Were you looking at charts for Bhopal or New Delhi, (capital of India).
Does the fact the base event for that tank was it lost all the nitrogen gas that allowed the toxic gas to be pumped out back in October 1984 make any difference?

It seems the crisis was in December - that's when half a dozen people were exposed, right?

But you make a good point about checking for New Delhi. It's hardly the first time that a national capital would have shown better than the location. Let's see how much difference there is:

Bhopal 23N16, 77E24
New Delhi 26N36. 77E12

The longitude difference is negligible. I'm not optimistic. But I'll check when I get the time. (Heading out the door now.)

[Jim Eshelman]

OK, I had a few minutes and did a quick check. The capital is essentially the same. The biggest change, though (due to latitude changing) is that transiting Jupiter is no longer on the Capsolar Descendant. This is a non-trivial improvement. However, overall, there just isn't much in the lead-up.

Even if we trace the event back to October, the Libsolar still is the only solar ingress with anything to say, and it has that Mars-Jupiter conjunction angular as its main feature. The November 27 Caplunar remains nondescript.

The quotidians were good all along - one has Saturn, one has Pluto (but not enough by themselves IMHO). Lifting that Jupiter transit, while keeping the Uranus transit, helps the picture. It becomes... acceptable. I'll write it all up later.

[Jim Eshelman]

I keep looking at that 12' Mars-Pluto conjunction sextile the wider Jupiter-Neptune conjunction and thinking there's something we don't know yet. The vertex is too far away from the midpoints of that stuff, right?

Well, first, I'm pretty sure there IS a lot that we don't know. Every few editions of SMA, another layer gets scraped off the top.

Most of these particular points for the 1984 Bhopal Capsolar would be very surprising, though. I also saw that tight Mars-Pluto conjunction, but it's quite middleground - what is to distinguish it for Bhopal from anywhere else? (Early on, in seeing how pivotal Moon aspects were even when not foreground, I contrasted those to Sun aspects and couldn't make anything like the same case for non-foreground Sun aspects. It would be hard to justify non-luminary aspects though, of course, conjunctions this close would be one of the first places to look.)

Vertex stuff - I did a study (still on here somewhere) of Vertex hits in ingress charts, and they were so bad - so really bad - that it was easier to make the case that suppressed a planet than that they gave credit. (I think IIRC that Jupiter was highly dominant for the disasters studied.) The simpler explanation is that it just isn't operative.

Sextiles in these charts would be a serious surprise, too, if for no other reason than that they almost always involve at least one planet that isn't foreground. (In this case it would be four such planets.)

The Vertex (26°16' Libra) is a long way from the midpoints and is too far from Saturn. Just for the heck of it, I flipped the orientation from dividing the prime vertical to dividing the horizon, thinking it might even bring Saturn into the (what passes for) foreground; but even then, it's too wide.

One thing the Capsolar and Cansolar do both have is a strong Moon-Uranus aspect. That's something, at least.

Now, this is all responding based on what it seems we know. "What it seems we know" is always subject to change, though it would also be irresponsible for me to disregard accumulated study and experience because of one strikingly bad example. (That's more or less how Tropical astrology got into one kind of mess: If one thing doesn't work, try something else!)

Want something experimental? If you add Ceres, which is only 100-200 miles different in size than Pluto and is much closer, the Moon=Uranus opposition becomes, in the mundoscope, a Moon-Ceres-Uranus T.

OK, that set me on a roll. About other verified actual planet-like bodies out there. Do they have anything to say in these charts?

The trans-Plutonian body Eris is 20°19' for the Capsolar, sq. Asc (1°18'). Ditto in the Libsolar (1°17'). The Cansolar has a Moon-Chiron square (1°17').

[Jim Eshelman]

Here is the promised redo for the capital, New Delhi. There are definite improvements, i.e., it's no longer alternating between pathetic and wrong.

I think JSAD nailed this when he suggested checking the capital. This is not bad at all. (Not brilliant, but perfectly acceptable with satisfactory charts at the solar ingress, lunar ingress, and daily levels.)

Year: Capsolar (Dormant.) Moon-Uranus op. (1°00' in mundo).

Year: Cansolar
Neptune on Dsc (1°44')
Moon-Uranus sq. (1°56')
Moon on MC (3°33')
Jupiter on Dsc (7°32')

Bridge
t. Uranus on Cansolar angles 10/20-2/26
t. Uranus op. Capsolar Moon 11/5-12/9
Event window: Nov 5 to December 9

Quarter: Libsolar
Moon on Asc (1°57')
Mars-Jupiter conj. (1°24' in RA)
-- Jupiter on WP (0°32')
-- Mars on WP (1°52')
Moon-Sun sq. (1°52')

Month: Caplunar
Mercury on IC (2°33')
Neptune on IC (6°30')
-- Mercury-Neptune conj. (3°55')

Day: Capsolar Quotidian & Transits
t. Sun on Dsc (0°52')
p. MC sq. t. Saturn (0°56')
--------------------------------
t. Uranus op. s. Moon (0°33')

Day: Cansolar Quotidian & Transits
p. MC sq. s. Pluto (0°42')
------------------------------------
t. Uranus sq. s. MC (0°23')


SUMMARY
Year (Capsolar): (Dormant.) Moon-Uranus.
Year (Cansolar): Neptune (Moon Jupiter). Moon-Uranus.
Bridge: Uranus (Cap). Uranus (Can).
-- Quarter: Moon Mars Jupiter. Moon-Sun Mars-Jupiter.
Month: Mercury (Neptune). Mercury-Neptune.
Day (Capsolar): Sun Saturn (CapQ). Moon-Uranus (transit).
Day (Cansolar): Pluto (CanQ). Uranus (transit).

[Jim Eshelman]

Those charts don't make sense. There's something missing or that we don't know here.

Your statement above kept popping into my head over the week, JSAD, and probably was part of what tipped me over to taking up the Vertex mundane revisitation I've been looking at. You probably meant it about details of the event, but it landed in my head as a reminder that, for all we do know, there are obviously more things we don't know. (The last three or four years of the SMA trek have been one small unveiling after another, often with some things not viewable or understandable until something else gets solved ahead of it.)

So, I decided I should at least look at this particular possible "something... that we don't know" and see if it gives any insights. (I haven't looked as I type this. I have the charts calculated, and I'm about to open them and see if the Vertex sheds any light - viewed as I've been viewing it the last week or so.)

THE CANSOLAR is quite interesting. I'm still (subject to change) persuaded that Vertex contacts don't overcome dormancy, so I almost didn't look at this one. But I'm glad I did, because, in longitude, Saturn conjoins Vertex 0°08'. But I'm as sure as I can be that ecliptical contacts with Vertex aren't the way to look at it. But, as a quick check, I see that in azimuth Saturn is 2°19' from due west. It's a solitary, in a dormant ingress, making no mundane aspects to anything on any spatial plane, so I probably shouldn't give it any attention. But I mention it.

THE CAPLUNAR is an unusual chart - similar to the horizon in Antarctic areas - so we end up with the Vertex on the Midheaven! The Caplunar already is marked by Mercury closely on IC, Neptune nearby. But maybe there's more? Uranus (near the IC, but not close enough to be foreground) is at 87°33', i.e., 2°27' from due east (even though it's low in the 3rd house!). For comparison, Ascendant is 87°23' azimuth!! It all has to do with the low latitude. Checking PV amplitude, there are more surprises: Uranus, Neptune, and Sun are all less than a degree off the PV, and Jupiter and Mercury are near it on the other side.

To make a potentially very long story south, adding this dimension gives one striking, rupturing aspect within 3° of the "mundane Antivertex" (with several other planets only a few degrees further away). Sun and Uranus are both within only half a degree of the Antivertex in azimuth, and only 0°04' from a conjunction. This is surely startling and rupturing.

This is... interesting. (It's certainly better than "Mercury and a little Neptune." We would only see it with these more tedious calculations. Sun is 10°14' Scorpio, Uranus 18°43' Scorpio, Antivertex 28°38' Scorpio (with MC 29°25' Taurus).

Moving on to the daily timing, we would expect these contacts to be formed ecliptically, not mundanely. We should use a 2° orb, I think (or, for testing, less!), since that's what we use for other such contacts). In transits to the Capsolar, I notice transiting Saturn conjunct Capsolar Vertex 0°49'. (There is a reverse message in the Cansolar - t. Jupiter op. CanQ Vx 0°34', but we could argue that the Capsolar outranks the Cansolar.)

Anyway... there's what it shows. For your consideration.

[Jim Eshelman]

It's like the charts are saying "Nothing to see here. Move along."