The Grim Measure of Force.

Yesterday, tragedy struck Beirut, Lebanon, a city that's had more than its fair share of misery.



As has been reported, the explosion was caused by a fire that spread and detonated a very large quantity of nitrate fertilizer stored at a warehouse on the docks.  The explosion was of a gigantic magnitude.  So large, in fact, that some Lebanese authorities at first wondered if they'd been hit by an atomic device.  That speculation, ironically enough, was strangely timely, as today is the 75th anniversary of the American use of an atomic device on Hiroshima.

So how does this historic event compare to other such blasts?

Should we even make that comparison for that matter? Well, we will, simply because perhaps such things are important to know.

As big as the blast was, and it was really huge, it still doesn't replace the accidental blast that's oddly analogous that occured at Halifax on December 6, 1917.  We marked the centennial of that tragedy here:

Roads to the Great War: Halifax: A Tragedy with a Unique Dimension

Roads to the Great War: Halifax: A Tragedy with a Unique Dimension: By most measures, the greatest non-nuclear explosion in history occurred in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in December 1917. The approximate casual...

Halifax was a 2.9 kiloton explosion.  Absolutely massive, and actually now larger than the lowest low yield atomic weapons in terms of their potential, but thankfully unexploited, yields. 

In contrast, the Beirut blast seems to be about 2.04 kt.  Massive, but still 1/3d less than the huge Halifax detonation.  Still, that yield is below the lowest, low yield nuclear weapons, although weapons in that class could legitimately be regarded as extremely low yield, in context.

Indeed, that's what makes them dangerous.  As big as the Beirut explosion was, it so far below Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which we'll mention below, that there's no comparison. That fact is what might tempt the use of a very low yield nuclear weapon. . .which might provoke use of higher yield ones.

Hiroshima's mushroom cloud taken some minutes later and from a distance of six miles.

Hiroshima, whose 75th anniversary is today, was a 15kt atomic bomb.

Imagine that.  It was seven times as powerful as the blast in Beirut earlier this week.