5 Biggest Explosions of All Time

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The 5 Biggest Explosions of All Time

The biggest explosions of all time are life-changing events. From a volcano eruption that could be heard 1,600 miles away to the one that killed off 80% of the world’s species, big explosions are almost unbelievable in their scale and ferocious power. Let's count down the 5 biggest explosion you're glad you've never seen.

5. The eruption of Mount Tambora.

200 years ago, Indonesia's Mount Tambora erupted. It was the largest observed eruption on earth. It was so big that the sound travelled 1,600 miles away - that’s like hearing an eruption in New York City...from Cuba. It’s said that the whole island burst into liquid fire with the force of 1,000 megatons of TNT. The craziest part isn’t even just that the whole island burst into flames; in the next year, global temperatures dropped by up to 0.7 degrees celcius. That was enough to ruin crops harvests across the world, from North America to Europe and make 1816 ‘The Year Without Summer’. Slightly worrying since temperatures are predicted to rise by at least 2 degrees celcius by 2050 due to climate change.

4. Yellowstone super-volcano eruption.

Yellowstone National Park is one of the oldest and most beautiful natural parks in the world, but beneath it lies a super-volcano. Around 640 thousand years ago, the Yellowstone super-volcano erupted and transformed the landscape around it. Scientists have estimated that a super-volcano eruption like this would have the equivalent force of 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding every second. How do you actually imagine that? Some scientists think that the next explosion could happen any time now.

3. The most powerful man-made bomb ever.

The AN602 hydrogen bomb is nicknamed the Tsar Bomba because it was created by the Soviet Union in 1961 and became the largest artificial explosion ever. It was around 1,500 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When dropped, it created a fireball 5 miles wide that could be seen 600 miles away, and its shockwaves broke windows over 500 miles away. Bad neighbours to have, right? An even more scary thought is that they restrained Tsar Bomba to half of its full potential power, because they realised it would be too dangerous to unleash its full power, even at testing stage. Thanks, guys!

2. The dinosaur extinctor.

66 million years ago, 80% of the world’s species became extinct - including, most famously, dinosaurs. It can’t be entirely proven how dinosaurs disappeared, but it probably wasn't from smoking. One of the more valid theories is that the world’s most recent mass extinction was caused by the thrillingly titled cretaceous-palogene extinction event. A huge asteroid hit the world and essentially wiped it out. Some estimates put the power of the impact at 1.7 million Tsar Bombas. The extent of the damage that would have created is almost unthinkable. The 112 mile-wide Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico provides evidence for the debris impact.

1. Big Bang.

Lastly, the biggest explosion of all time is the one that created our universe. While technically an expansion that occured 13.7 billions years ago, this single millisecond expansion created the basic matter from which everything was formed. This definitely takes the prize for the biggest and most powerful explosion of all time, considering that no other explosions - or humans to witness them - would have come into existence without it.

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