The biggest explosions: in the world, in history.

This small explosion with a TNT equivalent capacity of 24 tons (in fact, there were two explosions - the first three tons, the second 21 tons) is already in full swing as the largest non-nuclear explosion in the history of mankind. Which of course is absolute nonsense.

There have been many explosions in history, an order of magnitude, two orders of magnitude, and even three orders of magnitude stronger than what happened at night. Officially, the most powerful, pre-planned non-nuclear explosion is considered to be the British bombing of the fortifications of the German island of Heligoland on April 18, 1947, when 6,700 tons of explosives were used (4,000 torpedo warheads, 9,000 depth charges, 91,000 various artillery shells). The power of the explosion was 3.2 kt TNT

Thus, the power of the Heligoland explosion was four times less than the power of the explosion atomic bomb in Hiroshima. It is clear that no one was injured in the explosion, and the explosion itself was documented in detail. The island was returned to Germany in 1952. Now this is a resort place where, please note, the use of bicycles is prohibited.

However, in 1985-93 in the USA, a series of 5 non- nuclear explosions, two of which, known as Minority Scale and Minority Picture, exceeded the yield of the Heligoland explosion: 4.304 kt on June 27, 1985 and 4.25 kt on May 14, 1987.

But the very “bagaboom”, which had nothing to do with the fission reaction of uranium nuclei, occurred in the USSR, at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on July 3, 1969, during the second launch of the Soviet “lunar” launch vehicle N-1. The launch of the rocket went normally, but at an altitude of 200 meters, the engines of the first stage began to turn off one after another, the last, 18th, turned the rocket 90 degrees and at the 23rd second of the flight it fell flat on the launch pad. As a result of the explosion, the power of which we estimate at 5 kT of TNT equivalent, and in the west (based on the amount of fuel on board the rocket) at 7 kt, the launch pad was destroyed and the neighboring one was severely damaged.

It should be noted that all four N-1 launches ended in accidents, but only in the second case did the explosion of the entire rocket occur directly on the ground.

What’s interesting is that during the four most powerful non-nuclear explosions in human history, not a single person was injured.

The largest "unorganized" explosions in Peaceful time are the explosion of ammonium nitrate cargo on the cargo ship "Grandkamp", which occurred in Texas City on April 16, 1947 (just two days before the explosion in Heligoland), the power of which is estimated at 2.7-3.2 kt TNT, as a result of which and subsequent followed by fires in a city on the Gulf Coast that killed 581 people and injured another 8,451, as well as a series of explosions at the Cypriot naval base of Evangelos Florakis on July 11, 2011, with a total of approximately the same power. In the case of the recent explosion, during which 13 people were killed and another 62 were injured, there was enchanting carelessness - 98 containers of explosives were stored in the bright sun, where they were heated in 40 degree heat for several days.

IN war time The most terrible explosion was the famous explosion in Halifax, Canada on December 6, 1917, when the French transport Mont Blanc, filled to capacity with explosives, collided with the Norwegian ship Imo. The force of the explosion was 2.9 kt TNT. 2,000 people were killed and another 9,000 were injured. For information, the population of the city of Halifax at that time was 50 thousand people.

A column of smoke after an explosion in Halifax.

Interestingly, this city had to experience something similar again when, on July 18, 1945, ammunition detonated at the Bedford Arsenal in the outskirts of the city. However, in this case there were only a few lightly wounded.

However, the Halifax explosion is far from the deadliest of all non-nuclear explosions in history.

If we talk about a separate explosion, then the explosion of the Turkish arsenal in the Rhodes Fortress on April 4, 1856 is certainly one of them. The Turks used orthodox churches, located on the territory of the palace as warehouses for gunpowder. One fine morning, as the church bells rang, the gunpowder detonated. Approximately 4,000 people died.

But the most terrible non-nuclear explosion in terms of consequences was carried out by the British on June 7, 1917 on the hills of Messina, when during the Battle of Passchendaele under German positions 22 charges with a capacity of 9.1 to 43.4 tons of explosives (455 tons in total) were simultaneously detonated. The total German losses amounted to 10 thousand people.

The first truly Big Bang apparently occurred on April 4, 1585 during the Spanish siege of Anteverp. At that time, the Spaniards occupied a large stone bridge at the entrance to the city, which prevented the Dutch (they later became Belgians) from receiving supplies along the Scheldt. Then the besieged equipped four huge fireships, each displacing 800 tons. Three did not reach the target, but the last fourth one swam to the bridge, but did not immediately explode. The Spaniards decided to capture it and at that moment the explosives detonated. Up to 800 Castilians died, a small tsunami went up the Scheldt, and a black cloud covered the city. The earth shook noticeably 35 kilometers from Antwerp, in Ghent.

Explosion in Antwerp. French engraving from 1727.

Just like that, and you are Tianjin, Tianjin...

With the development of technological progress, people have more opportunities, but the results of tragedies and accidents that led to explosions have become much larger. Of course, the biggest explosion that occurred due to the fault of people, in terms of consequences, cannot be compared with natural disasters planetary and even cosmic scale, but the consequences are amazing.

TOP 10 biggest explosions in history

The cause of the death of six hundred people in 1947 was the explosion of the cargo ship “SS Grandcamp”, in the holds of which there were 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate, which is a component of explosives. The tragedy was provoked by a fire on the ship, but the consequences would have become much less tragic if not for the shock wave, which aggravated the situation.

Because of it, two passing planes and another ship with 1000 tons of saltpeter on board exploded. The chain reaction also hit local factories. In addition to those killed by explosions and fires, 3.5 thousand people were injured. Although there have been more large-scale incidents in terms of human casualties in the world, it is the Texas disaster that ranks first on the list of impressive explosions.

The second place in the ranking is occupied by the explosion on a French ship in the Canadian port of Halifax. A ship with weapons and explosives collided with a Belgian ship, so that the cargo simply detonated - an explosion with a force of 3 kilotons of TNT occurred. This happened during the First World War, in 1917.

The shock wave not only raised a dust cloud up to 6.1 km high above the port, but also caused the formation of an 18-meter tornado. After the explosion, there were no survivors at all within a radius of 2 km. The victims of the tragedy were 11 thousand people - 2000 died, 9000 people were injured. This incident is the largest man-made accidental explosion in human history.

Everyone has heard that this tragedy occurred in 1986 in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl. A nuclear explosion in a nuclear power plant reactor caused the largest disaster in terms of consequences.

The force of the explosion blew off the lid of the 2,000-ton reactor. Radioactive particles contaminated 200 thousand square kilometers of land. The cities of Chernobyl, Pripyat and nearby areas became an exclusion zone - residents were evacuated. As for human casualties, 600,000 people were exposed to radiation, and the consequences of this disaster are still felt - videos about all kinds of mutations can be found on the Internet.

Another devastating explosion occurred in the town of Trinity in New Mexico. It was there that the first nuclear explosion, whose force corresponded to 20 kilotons of TNT.

The bomb tests were successful, and residents of the state received a radiation dose thousands of times higher than permissible level. The tests caused numerous illnesses, including in unborn children.

5. Tunguska. The largest meteorite explosion occurred in 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, after which the 20-meter meteorite was named.

Despite its modest size, weight celestial body amounted to 185 thousand tons, and the impact affected an area of ​​2000 square kilometers. According to scientists, the explosion from the collision of a fragment of a comet or asteroid with the earth was 4 megatons in TNT equivalent.

The largest volcanic explosion recorded by mankind occurred in 1815. The explosion at Mount Tambora in Indonesia corresponded to 1000 megatons of TNT. The explosive volcanic eruption caused the release of 140 billion tons of magma, which flooded the islands of Sumba and Lombok.

The death toll was 71,000. The survivors suffered not only from the eruption, but also from climate change, which was provoked by the ash that rose into the air: the next year after the eruption, snow unexpectedly fell in Indonesia and destroyed the crops. The ensuing famine killed hundreds of thousands more people.

The reason for the appearance of this crater is unknown, but the size is simply amazing - natural object, discovered in 1978 on the Yucatan Peninsula, has a diameter of about 180 kilometers.

Scientists suggest that it was the cataclysm on the Gulf Coast that became the final point in the process of climate change on earth and the extinction of dinosaurs. blast wave led to the destruction of half of the living things on the planet 65 million years ago.

As for the largest cataclysm in the universe that humanity has observed, it is the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and the planet Jupiter in 1994.

Explosion of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

The comet, as it approached the planet, was crushed into fragments by a gigantic force of gravity. But since each of the fragments reached 3 km in width, the consequences of this collision are terrifying. The explosion from the comet's impact on the planet left behind a crater 12,000 km wide. This is comparable to the size of the Earth. The force of the explosion corresponded to 6,000 gigatons of TNT.

9. Explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki., which accelerated the surrender of Japan and the end of World War II, became the only cases in history of the use of nuclear weapons. On August 6, 1945, the “Baby” bomb was dropped on Hiroshima - 3.2 meters in length, 0.7 meters in diameter, weighing 4 tons.

The power of the bomb was 13-18 kilotons of TNT. The Fat Man bomb, dropped 3 days later on Nagasaki, had a length of 3.25 meters, a diameter of 1.54 meters, a weight of 4.6 tons and an explosion power of 21 kilotons of TNT. Destroyed cities, 220 thousand dead and contaminated areas where no one lives were the result of the explosion of the most big bombs in the history of mankind.

10. Battle of Messina. The largest non-nuclear explosion was recorded on June 7-14, 1917 in Flanders near the village of Mesen. Preparations for the explosion lasted 15 months - the British dug 20 tunnels under the second level groundwater, going 25-50 meters into the ground. 600 tons of explosives were placed in the tunnels with a total length of 7.3 km.

Since underground mined tunnels were located just under the location of the German troops, the British simply covered this area with artillery fire. The explosion destroyed the lines of the German trenches, creating craters up to 80 meters in diameter and up to 27 meters deep. The operation resulted in the death of 10 thousand German soldiers. 7,200 soldiers were captured - the demoralized troops offered no resistance. The craters still remain and have turned into artificial reservoirs.

Humanity spends enormous amounts of money and enormous efforts to create weapons that are as effective as possible in destroying their own kind. And, as science and history show, it succeeds in this. About what will happen to our planet if suddenly a fire erupts on Earth nuclear war, many films have been made and dozens of books have been written. But the most terrible thing is still the dry description of the weapons tests carried out mass destruction, reports formulated in terse, clerical military language.

A projectile of incredible power was developed under the leadership of Kurchatov himself. As a result of seven years of work, the most powerful explosive device in the history of mankind was created. According to various sources, the bomb had from 57 to 58.6 megatons of TNT equivalent. For comparison, the explosion of the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT. Many people know how much trouble she has caused.

"Tsar Bomba" served as a demonstration of the strength of the USSR to the Western community

As a result of the explosion, fire ball with a radius of about 4.6 kilometers. The light radiation was so powerful that it could cause third-degree burns at a distance of about 100 kilometers from the explosion site. The seismic wave that arose as a result of the tests circled three times Earth. The nuclear mushroom rose to a height of 67 kilometers, and the diameter of its “cap” was 95 kilometers.

Until 2007, American high-explosive aerial bomb, affectionately known as the Mother Of All Bombs by the US military, was considered the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world. The length of the projectile is more than 9 meters, its weight is 9.5 tons. Moreover, most of this weight falls on the explosive. The force of the explosion was 11 tons of TNT. That is, two “Moms” are enough to smash an average metropolis into dust. However, it is encouraging that bombs of this type have not yet been used in military operations. But one of the “Moms” was sent to Iraq just in case. Apparently, in the belief that the peacekeepers cannot do without weighty arguments.

The "Mother of All Bombs" was the most powerful non-nuclear weapon until the "Daddy of All Bombs" appeared.

According to the official description of the munition, “the force of the MOAB explosion is sufficient to destroy tanks and people on the surface within a few hundred meters and demoralize troops in the surrounding area who survived the explosion.”

This is our answer to the Americans - the development of aviation vacuum bomb increased power, unofficially called the “Daddy of all bombs”. The ammunition was created in 2007 and now this particular bomb is considered the most powerful non-nuclear projectile in the world.

Bomb test reports indicate that the Papa's kill area is so large that it can reduce the cost of producing the ammunition by reducing precision requirements. Indeed, what's the point of a targeted hit if it will destroy everything around within a radius of 200 meters. And even at a distance of more than two kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, a person will be knocked off his feet by the shock wave. After all, the power of “Papa” is four times greater than that of “Mom” - the force of the explosion of a vacuum bomb is 44 tons of TNT. As a separate achievement, the testers argue that the projectile is environmentally friendly. “The test results of the created aviation munition showed that its effectiveness and capabilities are comparable to nuclear munitions, at the same time, I want to especially emphasize this, the effect of this munition does not pollute at all environment compared to nuclear weapons,” the acting report said. boss General Staff Russian Armed Forces Alexander Rukshin.

"Daddy of all bombs" is about four times more powerful than "Mom"

The names of these two Japanese cities have long become synonymous with a large-scale disaster. The US military actually tested atomic bombs on humans, dropping shells on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Most of the victims of the explosions were not military personnel at all, but civilians. Children, women, old people - their bodies instantly turned into coal. Only silhouettes remained on the walls - this is how light radiation acted. Birds flying nearby burned in the air.

"Mushrooms" of nuclear explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The number of victims has not yet been accurately determined: many did not die immediately, but later, as a result of developing radiation sickness. "Little" with an estimated yield of 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT, dropped on Hiroshima, killed between 90 and 166 thousand people. In Nagasaki, “Fat Man” with a capacity of 21 kilotons of TNT ended the lives of 60 to 90 thousand people.

"Fat Man" and "Little Boy" are on display at the museum - as a reminder of the destructive power of nuclear weapons

This was the first and so far only time that nuclear weapons were used in military action.

The Podkamennaya Tunguska River was of no interest to anyone until June 17, 1908. On this day, at about seven o'clock in the morning, a huge fireball flashed over the territory of the Yenisei basin and exploded over the taiga near Tunguska. Now everyone knows about this river, and versions of what exploded over the taiga have since been published to suit every taste: from an alien invasion to a manifestation of the power of angry gods. However, the main and generally accepted cause of the explosion is still the fall of a meteorite.

The explosion was so strong that trees were knocked down over an area of ​​more than two thousand square kilometers. Windows were broken in houses located hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. A few more days after the explosion in the area from the Atlantic to central Siberia

Seventy years ago, on July 16, 1945, the United States conducted the first nuclear weapons tests in human history. Since that time we have made a lot of progress: this moment More than two thousand tests of this incredibly destructive means of destruction have been officially recorded on Earth. Here are ten of the largest explosions nuclear bombs, each of which shook the entire planet.

Soviet tests No. 158 and No. 168
On August 25 and September 19, 1962, with a break of just a month, the USSR conducted nuclear tests over the archipelago New Earth. Naturally, no video or photography was taken. It is now known that both bombs had a TNT equivalent of 10 megatons. The explosion of one charge would destroy all life within four square kilometers.


Castle Bravo
The world's largest nuclear weapon was tested at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954. The explosion was three times stronger than the scientists themselves expected. Cloud radioactive waste carried towards inhabited atolls, numerous cases of radiation sickness were subsequently recorded among the population.


Evie Mike
This was the world's first test of a thermonuclear explosive device. The United States decided to test a hydrogen bomb near the Marshall Islands. Eevee Mike's detonation was so powerful that it simply vaporized the island of Elugelab, where the tests took place.


Castle Romero
They decided to take Romero out to the open sea on a barge and blow him up there. Not for the sake of any new discoveries, the United States simply no longer had free islands where it could safely test nuclear weapon. The explosion of Castle Romero amounted to 11 megatons of TNT. If a detonation had occurred on land, a scorched wasteland would have spread around within a radius of three kilometers.

Test No. 123
On October 23, 1961, the Soviet Union conducted a nuclear test code number 123. A poisonous flower of a 12.5 megaton radioactive explosion bloomed over Novaya Zemlya. Such an explosion could cause third-degree burns to people over an area of ​​2,700 square kilometers.


Castle Yankee
The second launch of the Castle series nuclear device occurred on May 4, 1954. The TNT equivalent of the bomb was 13.5 megatons, and four days later the consequences of the explosion hit Mexico City - the city was 15 thousand kilometers from the test site.


Tsar bomb
Engineers and physicists Soviet Union managed to create the most powerful ever tested nuclear devices. The explosion energy of the Tsar Bomb was 58.6 megatons of TNT. On October 30, 1961, the nuclear mushroom rose to a height of 67 kilometers, and the fireball from the explosion reached a radius of 4.7 kilometers.


Soviet tests No. 173, No. 174 and No. 147
From September 5 to September 27, 1962, a series of nuclear tests on Novaya Zemlya. Tests No. 173, No. 174 and No. 147 are in fifth, fourth and third places on the list of the strongest nuclear explosions in history. All three devices were equal to 200 megatons of TNT.


Test No. 219
Another test with serial number No. 219 took place there, on Novaya Zemlya. The bomb had a yield of 24.2 megatons. An explosion of such force would have burned everything within 8 square kilometers.


The Big One
One of America's biggest military failures occurred during testing hydrogen bomb The Big One. The force of the explosion exceeded the power expected by scientists by five times. Radioactive contamination was observed across large parts of the United States. The diameter of the crater from the explosion was 75 meters deep and two kilometers in diameter. If such a thing fell on Manhattan, all that would be left of all of New York would be memories.

Incredible facts

Explosions, both natural and man-made, have terrified everyone for centuries. Below are the 10 most powerful explosions in history.

Texas disaster

A fire aboard the freighter SS Grandcamp docked in Texas in 1947 caused an explosion of 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate (a compound used in explosives) it was carrying. Shock wave Two flying planes exploded in the sky, and the chain reaction that followed destroyed nearby factories, as well as a neighboring ship that was carrying another 1,000 tons of ammonium nitrate. Overall, the explosion is considered the worst industrial accident in the United States, killing 600 people and leaving 3,500 injured.

Halifax explosion

In 1917, a French ship fully loaded with weapons and explosives intended for use during the First World War accidentally collided with a Belgian ship in the port of Halifax, Canada.

The explosion occurred with enormous force - 3 kilotons of TNT. As a result of the explosion, the city was shrouded in a cloud of immense size, which spread to 6,100 meters in height, and it also provoked a tsunami up to 18 meters high. Within a radius of 2 km from the center of the explosion, everything was destroyed, about 2,000 people died, and more than 9,000 were injured. This explosion remains the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.

Accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

In 1986, one of the nuclear reactors nuclear power plant. It was the worst nuclear disaster in history. The explosion, which instantly blew off the 2,000-ton reactor lid, left behind 400 times more radioactive fallout than the Hiroshima bombs, thus contaminating more than 200 thousand square kilometers of European land. More than 600,000 people were exposed to high doses of radiation, and more than 350,000 people were evacuated from contaminated areas.

Trinity explosion

The first atomic bomb in history was tested in 1945 at Trinity Site, New Mexico. The explosion occurred with a force equal to approximately 20 kilotons of TNT. Scientist Robert Oppenheimer later said that as he watched the test of the atomic bomb, his thoughts focused on one phrase from the ancient Hindu scripture: “I become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Later, Second World War ended, but the fear of nuclear destruction remained for many decades. Scientists recently discovered that citizens living in New Mexico at the time were exposed to radiation doses that were thousands of times higher than the maximum permissible level.

Tunguska

A mysterious explosion that occurred in 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, located in the Siberian forests, affected an area of ​​2,000 square kilometers (an area slightly smaller than the area of ​​the city of Tokyo). Scientists believe that the explosion was caused by the cosmic influence of an asteroid or comet (which had a diameter of perhaps 20 meters and a mass of 185 thousand tons, which is 7 times more than the mass of the Titanic). There was a huge explosion - four megatons of TNT, it was 250 times more powerful than the force of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Mount Tambora

In 1815, the largest volcanic eruption in human history occurred. Mount Tambora exploded in Indonesia with a force of about 1,000 megatons of TNT. As a result of the explosion, about 140 billion tons of magma were released, 71,000 people were killed, and these were not only residents of the island of Sumbawa, but also the neighboring island of Lombok. The ash that was everywhere after the eruption even provoked the development of anomalies in global climate conditions.

The following year, 1816, became known as the year without a summer, with snow falling in June, and with hundreds of thousands of people dying of starvation around the world.

Impact of dinosaur extinction

The Age of Dinosaurs ended approximately 65 million years ago in a cataclysmic event that wiped out nearly half of all existing species on the planet.

Research shows that the planet was already on the verge of an ecological crisis before the extinction of the dinosaurs. However, the final straw in what made the dinosaurs a thing of the past was the cosmic impact of a 10 km wide asteroid or comet that exploded with a force of 10,000 gigatons of TNT (1000 times the force of the world's nuclear arsenal).

The explosion covered the whole world with dust, every now and then fires flared up in different places on the planet and powerful tsunamis were formed. A huge crater, 180 km wide, appeared on the Gulf Coast of Chicxulub, which was probably the result of an explosion.

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

This comet spectacularly collided with Jupiter in 1994. The giant gravitational force of the planet tore the comet into fragments, each of which was approximately 3 km wide. They moved at a speed of 60 km per second towards the ground, resulting in 21 visible effects. It was a powerful collision that created a fireball that rose more than 3,000 km above the clouds of Jupiter.

This explosion also provoked the appearance of a giant dark spot, stretching over 12,000 km (almost the diameter of the Earth). The explosion had a force of 6,000 gigatons of TNT.

Supernova Shadow

Supernovae are exploding stars that often outshine entire galaxies with their brightness for a short period of time. The brightest Supernova explosion in history was recorded in the spring of 1006 in the constellation Lupus. Known today as SN 1006, the explosion occurred approximately 7,100 light-years ago in the nearby galaxy and was bright enough to remain visible during daylight hours for several months.

Gamma ray explosion

The explosions and bursts of gamma rays are the most powerful explosions known in the Universe. The light from the explosion of the most distant gamma rays (GRB 090423) is clearly visible on our planet today, located at a distance of 13 billion light years. This explosion, which lasted just over a second, released 100 times more energy than our Sun would produce in its 10 billion year lifetime.

This explosion probably occurred as a result of the collapse dying star, the size of which is 30-100 times larger than the Sun.

Big universal bang

Theorists argue that the emergence of our universe is the result Big Bang. Although it is often perceived as such (perhaps because of the name), there was in fact no explosion. At the very beginning of its existence, our universe was very heat, and it was extremely dense. A common misconception is that the universe exploded from a single, central point in space. The reality, it seems, is not so simple - instead of an explosion, space, apparently, began to stretch, “pulling” several galaxies with it.