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Largest man-made non-nuclear explosion?

W

wirelessenabled

Platinum Member
I was reading this article on Excite News and came across the following near the end:

In the early hours of Oct. 23, 1998, a truck carrying more than 2,000 pounds of explosives sped past a sentry post and exploded in the center of the Marine barracks as many servicemen slept. The blast was the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on Earth.

This seemed so far off to me I looked around a bit and came up with the Halifax explosion of December 1917. In that explosion "2300 tons of wet and dry picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 10
tons of gun cotton, and 35 tons of benzol" exploded.

Among other large explosions are:
Passchendaele, June,1917. The crater from this is now the Pool of Peace.
British Army blew up 6800 tons of German high explosive on an island in the Baltic Sea in 1946.

Now tell me.... what type of huge truck were those guys driving who blew up the Marine Barracks in Beirut? What type of explosive was it? How could it be the largest non-nuclear explosion when the Halifax one devastated the land for 2 Km around while the Beirut one didn't even completely demolish the building?

Or as usual is AP just hyping the news to make it "more interesting"?
 
2000 lbs is definitely NOT the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever. What does that MOAB bomb weigh? Like 30,000 or something?
 
Originally posted by: notfred
2000 lbs is definitely NOT the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever. What does that MOAB bomb weigh? Like 30,000 or something?
Click to expand...

2300 tons and 2300 lpbs are NOT the same thing. and the MOAB might weigh 30,000 lpbs, but not all of that is explosives.
 
By the way,

Do a search for the Port Chicago Incident during WWII.

Windogg

EDIT:

"The E.A. Bryan docked at Port Chicago on July 13th, 1944. At 8:00 a.m. the next day, Naval personnel began their job of loading the ship's hold with ammunition. By July 17th at 10:00 p.m., the ship had been loaded with well over 4000 tons of munitions, almost 2000 tons of which were high explosives. "


"Minutes before 10:30 p.m., the entire pier area erupted. Actually, two explosions, seconds apart, ignited the summer night sky with a column of fire and smoke rising over 2 miles high. The first blast was fairly small and localized. But it triggered a second catastrophic blast that incinerated the entire E.A. Bryan, and lifted the Quinalult Victory completely out of the water, turned it around, and ripped it to pieces. Every man working on the pier and on the two ships was killed instantly. There was literally nothing left of the E.A. Bryan and most of the dead, both the ship and men instantaneously burnt to ashes. "
 
Originally posted by: theNEOone
Originally posted by: notfred
2000 lbs is definitely NOT the biggest non-nuclear explosion ever. What does that MOAB bomb weigh? Like 30,000 or something?
Click to expand...

2300 tons and 2300 lpbs are NOT the same thing. and the MOAB might weigh 30,000 lpbs, but not all of that is explosives.
Click to expand...

WTF is lpbs? I think it's some butchered form of the abbreviation for pounds.

If so, where did 2300lbs or 2300tons come from? Did you not read the original post?

In the early hours of Oct. 23, 1998, a truck carrying more than 2,000 pounds of explosives sped past a sentry post and exploded in the center of the Marine barracks as many servicemen slept. The blast was the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on Earth.
Click to expand...
 
Originally posted by: notfred
WTF is lpbs? I think it's some butchered form of the abbreviation for pounds.

If so, where did 2300lbs or 2300tons come from? Did you not read the original post?
Click to expand...


2300 tons of wet and dry picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 10 tons of gun cotton, and 35 tons of benzol

and yah, i screwed up on the lbs abbrev.

 
The writer has no idea what they are talking about. Halifax was huge, by comparison.

BTW, the largest explosion in the last several million years was at Yellowstone. There were 3 supervolcanic events, each much larger than all the weapons we have ever had.
 
The diarrhea I had last night might have felt like the biggest man-made explosion, but I doubt it...
 
Originally posted by: Windogg
By the way,

Do a search for the Port Chicago Incident during WWII.

Windogg

EDIT:

"The E.A. Bryan docked at Port Chicago on July 13th, 1944. At 8:00 a.m. the next day, Naval personnel began their job of loading the ship's hold with ammunition. By July 17th at 10:00 p.m., the ship had been loaded with well over 4000 tons of munitions, almost 2000 tons of which were high explosives. "


"Minutes before 10:30 p.m., the entire pier area erupted. Actually, two explosions, seconds apart, ignited the summer night sky with a column of fire and smoke rising over 2 miles high. The first blast was fairly small and localized. But it triggered a second catastrophic blast that incinerated the entire E.A. Bryan, and lifted the Quinalult Victory completely out of the water, turned it around, and ripped it to pieces. Every man working on the pier and on the two ships was killed instantly. There was literally nothing left of the E.A. Bryan and most of the dead, both the ship and men instantaneously burnt to ashes. "
Click to expand...

discovery channel had a show about this. yeah it was a pretty bad explosion.
 
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