MEGATON!!

Edward Muller's Homepage


Seymour Narrows, British Columbia 1958. 1,375 tons of chemical explosives.
1.375 kilotons

Little Boy, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945.
13 kilotons.

Fat man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.
20 kilotons.

The Tanguska Event, suspected comet impact in Tanguska, Russia on June 30, 1908.
10 megatons

The Bravo test, one of the Bikini Atoll bomb tests. February 1954, was, at 15 megatons, the most powerful bomb ever detonated by the United States--far bigger than expected.
15 megatons

One pound of antimatter
19.5 megatons

Mount St. Helen May 18, 1980.
24 megatons

Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated 11:32 AM 30 October 1961 (Moscow Time) Such a device could be souped up to deliver a 100 megaton blast.
50 megatons

The third 1883 eruption of Krakatoa
150 megatons

Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast. At full power, a hurricane like Katrina releases 10 megatons every 20 minutes.
300 megatons

World War III, computed as the simultaneous explosion of all known nuclear devices (about 15,000 today).
10,000 megatons

"Dinosaur Killer" Impact of 10-15 km asteroid traveling at 20 kilometers per second.
100,000,000 megatons or 10^8 megatons

A supernova, an explosion powerful enough to destroy a solar system.
10 billion billion billion megatons or 10^27 megatons