world's largest non-nuclear explosion?

[THErAPIST]

sooo what is it? does anyone know what the worlds largest non nuclear explosion was? what exploded? what caused it? when was it? where was it?

The biggest one that I Know of is the ammonium perchlorate factory in texas that blew up. i saw it on Real TV because there were people on a far away cliff video recording the plant because it was on fire, and then it blew up...

i think there was a bigger one at some point but i dun know.

[kbk]

I would say that ANFO explosion that wiped out Texas City, Texas. I will have to find a link...but it took out the whole city!

[THErAPIST]

That's got the ammonium perchlorate factory beat then!

[kbk]

Here is the link to it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster

[C.R. Ripshit]

That is FUCKING INSANE!

[kbk]

Yup, the dangers of ANFO...Some dude that wrote the ACB prolly read this and that's why they are always like "OMGz THIS SHIT WILL LIEK BL0W UP Y0UR CITY!"

[~D-Boy~]

There was Something about that on Discovery a few weeks ago, I seen some pictures and Stuff, Man that thing was fooked up, they Found bodies like a few weeks after the incident Burned to a crisp like a mile away and stuff, Pieces of the ship aswell, Must have been some Force,


Kelly

[THErAPIST]

shit... imma see if i can find soem pics from it and such.. cause DAMN. thats gotta be one hell of a bang

[duiker]

Hm. I read something like that in a novel and wondered if it was easily possible. Good link.

http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/images/coverpic.jpg
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/images/dev/picd.jpg
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/images/dev/pica.jpg
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/images/exp/picb.jpg
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/images/exp/pica.jpg
from-
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/txcity/

http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster1.JPG
http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster18.jpg
http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster3.JPG
http://www.local1259iaff.org/disasterpic15.JPG
http://www.local1259iaff.org/disasterpic24.JPG
from-
http://www.local1259iaff.org/disaster.html

Also look at
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sca/collections/faids/html/txcity.html

[kbk]

I'm gonna talk to my history teacher and see if I can do a little extra credit project on this, we are going over the 20's and stuff so it should be alright...Prolly won't get many points for it but who cares this is something no one has ever heard of...Especially in my school.

[THErAPIST]

That's some scary lookin shit lol. I found some other pics but the ones here are a bit better. What the hell would be going through your head when you see the city disintegrating in a wave that's coming right at you?

"oh shit... bye fred"
"yeah, b......................"

[~D-Boy~]

I remember hearing on discovery that there was a cannon on one of the ships, and when the explosion occured the cannon was Blown in half, One half was found over 2 miles away, Can you imagine seeing a Cannon Hurtling towards you at watever many miles an hour, Fuck, My whole idea of Dying while having sex would be out the window!!!


Kelly

[torcher]

i thought it was moab...http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm

[THErAPIST]

na, thats just the largest non nuclear bomb (which hasnt even been used yet, just tested ONCE). im looking for the biggest explosion thats ever happened that doesnt have to do with nuclear energy. i believe the above explosion takes the cake, but i'm up to hear about one that's bigger if there is one! :wink:

[madscientist]

Anyone have that video?

[THErAPIST]

video of the MOAB? I have it

[madscientist]

"The biggest one that I Know of is the ammonium perchlorate factory in texas that blew up. i saw it on Real TV because there were people on a far away cliff video recording the plant because it was on fire, and then it blew up..." That one.

[kbk]

But we already established that it wasn't the biggest...Texas City ANFO disaster pwned it.

[THErAPIST]

ah, nope. dun have that video. i dont think it'd be too hard to find though... i DID have it at one point but i shredded it...

[Douchermann]

This one isn't the biggest, its just kind of cool:
I forgot the link to this story, but around the time Mr. Noble, the guy that invented dynamite by mixing Nitro with kieslegur, there was a crate of nitro labeled "Nobles blasting oil". It had a tiny leak in it so two men carried it to this area with a well and commensed prying it open. The Nitro detonated at like 1:00 in the afternoon and shattered windows in a 1/2 mile radius of ground zero. A human brain semi-intact was found 3 blocks from the blasting site, a human arm was hanging out of a window and various organs were scattered about the place. So in other words, stand in the area where the nitro was and point in some random direction, then point in another, then another, then another. Thats where the guys that opened it ended up :twisted:

[THErAPIST]

shit, link or not I'll believe it! There are reports of lots and lots of accidents involving nitroglycerin, its manufacture, its handling, and it's storage. I've read quite a few of em and some of em just make me go "oh shit... shat sucks ass..." and im not one to be suprised by much when it comes to explosives.

That ammonium perchlorate factory was one of thse things that makes me go "OH SHIT!" though. Im gonna find a link to that video and post it here just so everyone can see it if they havent already.

EDIT: right click on the link and hit "save target as". it's a quicktime video. it shows the plant explode, and then it shows the bigger explosion again at 20% speed

http://halhope.com//video/plant.mov

[Douchermann]

That is crazy
man, it woulda been cool to be there with the people to hear how loud it really was.

[Armalite]

The Tunguska event in Siberia. No one really knows what caused it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

[THErAPIST]

That's some fuckin wacked out shit...

Imagine walking around and then suddenly seeing the world, the air and the ground, erupt in flame and chaos as an immense shockwave flattens you and everything around... Then you get up because you were fortunate enough to be on the outskirts of the concussive range...

Infront of you you see nothing but a vast wasteland of a hellish nature with everything suddenly flat and smoking accompanied by a bright eerie glow that's coming from the sky itself...Only after the fact do you ask yourself if you heard a bang or just the sudden imminent pproach of a sourceless forcewhich might as well be the sneeze of God

Sucks for anyone cought in the bad area of the blast, but damn would it be cool to watch!

[Armalite]

Sneeze of God is right...Far as I know its the largest explosion in human history. Its just not well known since it happened in Siberia. It was estimated at around 10-15 megatons. If it had happened in a heavily populated area, like London perhaps, it would be the single largest event of death and destruction in history.

[Adrian_Faythe]

Biggest one I've ever heard of...well done there.

[THErAPIST]

Actually now that I think about it there was a show on the discoery channel a few years ago where they had something about a meteor exploding above the ground and flattening trees. I don't know if it was telling about that incident in sieria, but it was telling about an incident way back in the day with the same effects and read personal accounts about it, so it was probably the same one. They were talking about how they thought the same sort of event may have happened in south america or something way back in the day of the dinosour. They said that that might be why the donosours were extinct because the same thing might have happened, but the rock would have been much much larger..

But yeah, I do remember seeing something about it. I was sitting here reading what you linked to and I was like "wait a minute... this seems familiar, but why?"

damn good find

[Armalite]

May have been on discovery channel... But the meteor theory has little weight in the Tunguska case as no meteoric debris or a crater has ever been found. Space rocks don't usually airburst. By usually I mean never. A body burning on entry to the atmosphere is more than common, but how many times have you seen a shooting star spontaneously explode? Comets have been proposed as well, as they contain structures that are easier to imagin exploding, but still, no evidence has ever surfaced in favor of this idea. It must have been the ghost of Elvis. :)



BTW. You watch Discovery Channel often? Have they aired anything about strippers in the last couple of weeks? A friend of mine is supposed to be on that show.

[Stone]

Are you sure there was no crater? I remember reading about Tunguska when I was a kid and from what I remember it said that at first it looked like there was no crater, but afterwards they realised that it was so big that they had actually besn inside it (it was miles big in radius). I might be after confusing it with something else though.

[THErAPIST]

i do watch the discovery channel often, that the scifi channel, and the history channel. I haven't seen anything abotu strippers though.

@stone, i believe we're thinking about the same thing, because i remember the crater being so big from what i saw that they didnt know it was even there at first

[Armalite]

I dunno... It could have been anything. There are a lot of places on Earth where massive meteors have struck and left huge craters. Anyone ever thought about why the Gulf of Mexico is round?

[THErAPIST]

that's true lol

[Douchermann]

yeah, scientists are finding evidence that the gulf of mexico is the crater that was formed from the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and the flinstones lol.

[Stone]

^^^ Heard that one before.

I bought a science magazine yesterday (focus) and it just happened to have four pages about Tunguska. It said that the end of June each year (aswell as the end of August) the earth passes through two (different) asteroid fields that have been left by disintegrating comets. Seeing as the Tunguska event happened on June 30th, they seem to believe the meteor theory. They said that is exploded at 10km from ground level, and that (judged from the devestation) it was roughly 100m in in size (they didn't give any more specific dimensions) and the explosion was 10 megatonnes. They don't have any explanation about why it exploded though. They did say that there was another similar incident happened in the Amazon in 1930 though.

[THErAPIST]

the shit just keeps getting more and more interesting lol

[lacrima97]

Halifax was the largest Non-Nuclear explosion in history.

4.6million lbs of Picric acid
4.7million lbs of TriNitroToluene

December 6, 1917, The halifax explosion occured.

[duiker]

Is it official?

I was watching discovery a few months ago and they were talking about the biggest explosions in history. Halifax was one of them. And there was the Mont Blanc one, and others..