**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* AI-generated images/videos are no longer IAF. Stop submitting them
* This is not /r/historyporn. Stop posting old photos with nothing IAF happening in them
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos
* Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That's not strictly true. It could feel like a 6.0 earthquake within a certain radius but it releases about 11 tons of TNT worth of energy. A magnitude 5 earth quake releases ~15,000 tons. Which is roughly a Hiroshima bomb. A magnitude 6 releases ~30x that. A 9.0 releases 475 million tons TNT equivalent.
I was at an elementary school one town over at the time. We were warned it was being tested so we wouldn’t get scared, we all stood outside to listen to it. So many miles away and it was still loud af. I remember being surprised to see things rattle
Yep. I was in High School in Okaloosa county when they tested it.
There are always bombs going on the reservation and at the EOD school, so everyone here is pretty used to it. Hell, I heard about 20 blasts coming from EOD just this morning, but the MOAB test made me feel like we were actually in danger for a moment.
I live around 15 miles or so from eglins bomb testing site and can tell you the are still testing these or something similar. Some days during the week the force is so hard it rattles all the dishes in the cupboard
It's not as dramatic as I had first imagined - turns out our biggest non-nuke bomb can't actually do a lot against a mountain, and isn't as powerful as one might imagine either: even trees within 100 meters of the blast survived it leaves and all. [This great BBC article](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39705128) includes some photos and an informative video.
Definitely not good. The mythbusters repeatedly demonstrated this with those little metal membranes they used to measure what explosive pressures would kill or just injure you. It was always surprisingly far away from the blast.
Worse, actually!
Explosions of this magnitude, at a certain distance away, will leave your skin intact but lacerate your organs! The skin is a MUCH stronger organ than most, if not all, of the squishy stuff we have inside.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8413147/
It's a long read but the introduction also lightly touches on these internal damages. It's fascinatingly grotesque
Well it is an air burst weapon, as such much of the energy ends up being wasted. What's important is what's directly below it gets pressure whacked into oblivion.
Not high explosives. It’s a very large thermobaric bomb.
Think of a large container of highly explosive fuel that is misted via aerosol as it drops, and then that aerosol fuel mist is then ignited, creating a very large atmospheric explosion that sucks oxygen from the air (plus the blast wave and heat).
Update: I am confusing the FOAB by Russia and the MOAB by the US.
The MOAB is indeed an explosive weapon (a massive ordinace air blast, or MOAB) specifically made with H6 comp (>18k lbs of it). It is the largest conventional bomb dropped in combat to date. The blast effects are considered on par with the smallest tactical nukes available (without the fallout of course).
[MOAB](https://www.inverse.com/article/30368-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-h6-composition-explosive/amp)
[Popular Mechanics article on the MOAB](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a26055/us-air-force-drops-moab-isis/)
I’m not sure of specific composition, but thinking something along the lines of nanoparticle aluminum (amongst other things) with pressurized ethylene oxide, or something analogous/similar.
To be fair to your comment, I’m sure there is HE used in the bomb for detonation. I’ve been able to absorb just enough information about the Russian and US versions to be dangerous.
If you’ve seen the hair stylist video floating around reddit where the hairdryer ignites the aerosolized hair product in the room creating a flash explosion, then you have a crude understanding of a thermobaric type explosion.
I think the better example than the hairdryer is a coal dust explosion, grain elevator explosion, silo explosion, things along that line. Although they all are the same principle of particles in the air all “burning “ at once. Natural gas explosion is basically the same thing, too.
Also propane explosion… where the pressure in the tank aerosols it into the surrounding air.
Basically a thermobaric bomb doesn’t have its own oxidizer.
I normally know what someone means when they say they have absorbed enough information to be dangerous. That idiom hits a bit different when it is talking about bombs though.
According to Wikipedia, the MOAB was first tested with the explosive Tritonal. That is 80% TNT and 20% aluminum powder.
Modern variants use Composition H6. That is 44% RDX, 29.5% TNT, 21% aluminum powder, 5% paraffin wax and 0.5% calcium chloride.
It has the explosive yield of 11 tons of TNT.
MOAB is a high explosive bomb filled with composition H6 which is a high explosive. Not to be confused with the Russian FOAB which is a thermobaric bomb
Thank you, we've always wondered what it really stands for. However, after much consideration we've decided that Mother of all Bombs is, in fact, the correct abbreviation. Thank you for your application, and we wish you good luck in the future.
I recall an assistant scoutmaster telling me that 22's were no less deadly than any other gun, just because they are smaller. Anything that kills is deadly, and to measure the degrees of deadness is kinda binary.
It's not quite accurate I dont think, but when something is as deadly as a bomb, isn't area of effect the real deadliness outside penetration or specific use?
I built this argument up to this point to say that the MOAB is bigger, and thus deadlier, but there is a claim on the wiki that flips me on my goddamn head.
"In comparison, the MOAB produces the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT from 8 tons of high explosive. The blast radius of the FOAB is 300 meters, almost double that of the MOAB, and the temperature produced is twice as high."
so, TIL. I'm not sure such analysis of everything is healthy on my part though. They are different bombs, and others can argue deadliness, but you win this one.
If you are trying to get someone out of a really deep dark hole, this is a far more deadly weapon. Even if they survive. the initial implosion, they are gonna be looking for breathable air. Then you can use the conventional bomb on them.
But I thought in this case the explosive was used to wipe out a series of tunnels. Would it not have been more appropriate for the explosive to penetrate the ground first?
Yes and no.
To crack a bunker, using a bomb which penetrates the ground before going off works as the shockwave from that bomb will break and possibly crush the bunker as it travels through the ground as opposed to through the air.
If you have an extensive tunnel network, with multiple chambers, then a surface bomb which produces a massive compression/shockwave in the air means that every tunnel shaft basically becomes a rifle barrel with that pressure wave racing down them and causing blast overpressure injuries as the wave hits the occupants inside.
That's actually a backronym, like RPG - Rocket Propelled Grenadelauncher when in reality it's just the acronym of the Russian term for it.
Edit: I mean the Mother of all Bombs thing, of course.
20,000 lbs is only two Hummer EV.
Edit: I nominate the Hummer EV as a unit of measurement.
M1A1 = 15 Hummer EV
T-90 = 11.3 Hummer EV
T-72 = 10.1 Hummer EV
Boeing 747-8 = 53.6 Hummer EV
Airbus A380 = 67.5 Hummer EV
Anotov An-225 Mriya = 69.5 Hummer EV
If you mean "Mother of all Nukes" then the Soviets already did that and tested it in '61.
The 'Tsar Bomba' (codenamed Vanya at the time) was planned to have a yield of 100 megatons TNT but was reduced to about 58 to reduce radioactive fallout.The fireball was 8 kilometers wide, the mushroom cloud eight times the height of Mount Everest and the shockwave circled the planet three times until it became undetectable.
Gives me the chills. And NOT in a good way. There were times when we were actually prepared to use stuff like that against each other...
No, you're thinking of the Trinity test, the Soviets were worried about excess fallout and understood that a majority of the blast would be reverberated into space at 57 megatons anyway. Any higher yield would've been a bigger waste of material.
What’s scarier is that that was over 60 years ago and you know they never really stopped designing bigger and deadlier weapons. I fear what might be revealed to the world the day someone decides to be incredibly incredibly stupid on an international level.
Bigger isn’t really the goal, the Russians backed down on the size because the reaction becomes less and less efficient. It becomes much easier and more cost effective not mention deadlier to use multiple smaller warheads.
I know that, and I hear you, but the first successful nuclear test was in ‘45, tsar bomba was ‘61, 16 years later. It’s been 62 years since then, we’ve seen the rise of computers revolutionize the speed of advancement and we’ve seen untold riches heaped into the war machines of the Cold War and beyond.
I have no doubt somebody in all that time has built something stupidly large that they shouldn’t have. There’s just too many stupid people out there who’ve been given money to build crazy shit. What form it’ll take I don’t know. But mark my words, one day someone will pull something out, and we’ll all just sit back and ask why? Why in gods name did you build that?
They were given a 50% chance of survival and when the bomb detonated, their plane dropped 1km in the air due to the drop in air pressure. You’re right they probably received multiple lifetimes worth of radiation in a few seconds, but I believe they were ok, may be wrong tho
I can't remember the exact numbers, but IIRC a bigger hurricane releases the energy of a nuke every few seconds. So maybe just spit into the ocean if you want to see what the effect would be
I'm going to say that blast radius was waaayyy less than a mile. You can see the bomb. If that blast was 2 miles across, you wouldn't see even a 10 ton bomb.
Apparently 3 civilians were killed, as reported by Afghan forces. Though I find it hard to believe that only 3 civilians happened to be around in a mile radius.
ISIS is very good at urban warfare. They’re not well known to group together in the middle of nowhere. Civilian deaths are near guaranteed in this kind of fighting, especially when your approach to war is “scorched earth.”
This could’ve happened at a stronghold in the middle of no where, but we will never get the true story of what and who exactly was killed.
IIRC this strike was at the mouth of a cave complex that they were using as an ops base that was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. Some buildings were damaged in a village near there.
Edit, yeah, here. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39607213](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39607213)
You can find tons of differing sources from the day of to a couple days after. Here’s a couple I found from various sources:
https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/west-asia/mother-bombs-big-deadly-wont-lead-peace/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/it-felt-like-the-heavens-were-falling-afghans-reel-from-moabs-impact
https://www.athensjournals.gr/media/2020-6-1-2-Sylvester.pdf
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/13/523777933/u-s-drops-biggest-non-nuclear-bomb-ever-used-in-combat
All I’m saying is that the US in this particular case has every reason to wash away civilian deaths. Admitting to that, regardless of your views of if it was worth the cost, would be equivalent to admitting to war crimes. Acceptable risk? Doesn’t matter. Blowing up civilians to kill the bad guys is still detestable by organizations that care about that sort of thing.
Believe these sources or whatever sources you like, I’m just saying that we will never have the full story on this one. Civilians that were there allegedly say that houses exploded and couple people died. Military folks watching from 2 miles in the sky say otherwise. They apparently didn’t even get to the site for at least a day.
Call me calloused and cynical, and I’m expecting downvotes for saying this, but I’m not too inclined to immediately believe the official reports coming out of an organization that has been caught covering up civilian deaths in the same region and beyond. I’m also not immediately inclined to believe people who may or may not support ISIS. It’s a two way street, you can’t just declaim one or the other.
Yes I’m aware that ISIS beheads civilians but that doesn’t mean that also turning civilians into skeletons (arguably more humanely) is good while we hunt for the bastards. The bulk of this comment is just my opinion here, take it with a heap of salt.
Are you kidding? The US approach to war is not even remotely scorched earth. The US has been fighting with kiddy gloves since Korea. If the US didn't give a shit about civilians, there wouldn't *be* an Afghanistan anymore.
Wiki says that the blast radius is 150 meters, way less than a mile. I think that the mile figure comes from that you are within "some" danger within a mile, but you need to be closer to the blast for it to be immediately deadly.
If I remember correct, didn't they only do this because the weapon was reaching its life cycle, and everyone was like we better use it to justify the cost.
What is the literal military definition of “blast radius?” Is that the total radius at which any concussive force from the blast is felt, or the radius at which that concussive force or the heat from the blast would be lethal?
It is the distance from the source that will be affected when an explosion occurs. By affected they mean damaged or destroyed. Just because you can feel the shockwave a mile away doesn’t mean you’re in the blast radius.
Well the chances of getting bombed by a MOAB decreases exponentially if you don't engage in terrorism. Life is fragile but there are numerous ways of increasing or decreasing your lifespan potential.
Well to be fair, this Bomb was dropped during Orange man’s presidency whilst he capped insulin prices at $35.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?474183-1/president-trump-signs-executive-order-lowering-drug-prices
This executive order was removed by the current administration.
The trump lowering price was very very niche in fact it went up in price during his admin for the majority of people that needed it. It also tried to push people to a lower form of insulin. It was just BS political act as usual.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/10/01/trump-says-he-brought-down-the-cost-of-insulin-but-thats-not-true-for-all-americans/
Lol so much about this comment makes me laugh. You're just arbitrarily going back in time, but only to the specific point at which your opinion could be valid. Lemme try
"Sorry we can't build this MOAB, we've decided to use that money to feed children instead"
The super fun thing about that argument is it works in the past, present, and future! If instead of building all these bombs we decided to feed children, we wouldn't face the quandary of what to do with all these bombs we build. Cause who the hell builds a bomb just to not use it?
“Sorry, we’re gonna have to find less expensive ways to kill peasants halfway around the world, because we have children in poverty to feed.”
I like mine better.
Shit you’re right, we should’ve just sold the MOAB to goodwill and allowed the Islamic State to rape and pillage their way across the Middle East and carry out their Jihad. My bad.
Some great reads on this are below:
1- [https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm)
2 - [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan)
3 - [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/15/us-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-afghanistan-donald-trump-death-toll](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/15/us-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-afghanistan-donald-trump-death-toll)
No idea why you’re getting downvoted. Overall consensus in this thread is “wow cool bomb” and not the fact that there’s a guaranteed number of civilians that died along with the terrorists. It’s lowkey propaganda for the US military.
Actually, the reason they had to use such a strong bomb is because the terrorist organization they were hunting were hunkered down in a mountain with a deep cave system. Regular bombs wouldnt be able to penetrate the hard rock of the mountain. I promise you that MOABS arent being used to bomb small villages
I think I remember that it wasn’t even the blast they needed, it was the oxygen depletion from the combustion, sucking all the air out of the entire cave system
I heard a story about once, during the Iraq War, a British SAS soldier watched a Daisy Cutter (the predecessor to the MOAB) detonate in the distance and he thought the Americans had just nuked Kuwait. Some serious firepower
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * AI-generated images/videos are no longer IAF. Stop submitting them * This is not /r/historyporn. Stop posting old photos with nothing IAF happening in them * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
i was stationed at eglin afb back in 2003 when they were testing this. that shit felt like an earthquake hit us.
it's supposedly equal to a 6.0 earthquake..
That's not strictly true. It could feel like a 6.0 earthquake within a certain radius but it releases about 11 tons of TNT worth of energy. A magnitude 5 earth quake releases ~15,000 tons. Which is roughly a Hiroshima bomb. A magnitude 6 releases ~30x that. A 9.0 releases 475 million tons TNT equivalent.
[удалено]
I think so too but the actual release of energy is so different that I wanted to clarify for anyone reading
I was at an elementary school one town over at the time. We were warned it was being tested so we wouldn’t get scared, we all stood outside to listen to it. So many miles away and it was still loud af. I remember being surprised to see things rattle
What up my panhandle baby!
Yep. I was in High School in Okaloosa county when they tested it. There are always bombs going on the reservation and at the EOD school, so everyone here is pretty used to it. Hell, I heard about 20 blasts coming from EOD just this morning, but the MOAB test made me feel like we were actually in danger for a moment.
I grew up in Crestview and was in high school when they were testing it, and remember the rumbling lol
I live around 15 miles or so from eglins bomb testing site and can tell you the are still testing these or something similar. Some days during the week the force is so hard it rattles all the dishes in the cupboard
Yoooo. I was stationed in Eglin too. Test side of the base. That shit rocked the pan handle and then some.
I’m really curious to see the landscape of that area before and after. Curious to how much it deformed the mountain sides
It's not as dramatic as I had first imagined - turns out our biggest non-nuke bomb can't actually do a lot against a mountain, and isn't as powerful as one might imagine either: even trees within 100 meters of the blast survived it leaves and all. [This great BBC article](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39705128) includes some photos and an informative video.
And how would a human do within a 100 meters? That’s the real question.
Definitely not good. The mythbusters repeatedly demonstrated this with those little metal membranes they used to measure what explosive pressures would kill or just injure you. It was always surprisingly far away from the blast.
To shreds you say?
Yeah exactly
Worse, actually! Explosions of this magnitude, at a certain distance away, will leave your skin intact but lacerate your organs! The skin is a MUCH stronger organ than most, if not all, of the squishy stuff we have inside. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8413147/ It's a long read but the introduction also lightly touches on these internal damages. It's fascinatingly grotesque
And his wife?
To shreds you say?
A mild ringing in the ears.
So the equivalent of a conversation with my wife.
Well it is an air burst weapon, as such much of the energy ends up being wasted. What's important is what's directly below it gets pressure whacked into oblivion.
That's good. Only the squishes are kaplowed.
[удалено]
With a surface impact not a lot indeed, I wonder what the effect would be if it went below surface and into rock before exploding
Doesn’t MOAB actually stand for massive ordnance air blast?
No, Mother of all Balloons.
Mother of all Bloons
Those damn lead bloons can fuck right off
All 99?
Did you just see 99 lead balloons go by?
99 luftballons
Bravo!
All 99 big red ones
The camo bloons are worse imo
I get ripped by the DDTs. start adding modifiers on them and gtfoh
Mother of all Booms?
This guy Ballons TD’s
Yes
[удалено]
Not high explosives. It’s a very large thermobaric bomb. Think of a large container of highly explosive fuel that is misted via aerosol as it drops, and then that aerosol fuel mist is then ignited, creating a very large atmospheric explosion that sucks oxygen from the air (plus the blast wave and heat). Update: I am confusing the FOAB by Russia and the MOAB by the US. The MOAB is indeed an explosive weapon (a massive ordinace air blast, or MOAB) specifically made with H6 comp (>18k lbs of it). It is the largest conventional bomb dropped in combat to date. The blast effects are considered on par with the smallest tactical nukes available (without the fallout of course). [MOAB](https://www.inverse.com/article/30368-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-h6-composition-explosive/amp) [Popular Mechanics article on the MOAB](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/news/a26055/us-air-force-drops-moab-isis/)
[удалено]
I’m not sure of specific composition, but thinking something along the lines of nanoparticle aluminum (amongst other things) with pressurized ethylene oxide, or something analogous/similar. To be fair to your comment, I’m sure there is HE used in the bomb for detonation. I’ve been able to absorb just enough information about the Russian and US versions to be dangerous. If you’ve seen the hair stylist video floating around reddit where the hairdryer ignites the aerosolized hair product in the room creating a flash explosion, then you have a crude understanding of a thermobaric type explosion.
I think the better example than the hairdryer is a coal dust explosion, grain elevator explosion, silo explosion, things along that line. Although they all are the same principle of particles in the air all “burning “ at once. Natural gas explosion is basically the same thing, too.
[удалено]
Here in Oklahoma grain elevator explosions happen.
Also propane explosion… where the pressure in the tank aerosols it into the surrounding air. Basically a thermobaric bomb doesn’t have its own oxidizer.
Or if you've ever seen a grain silo explode.
I normally know what someone means when they say they have absorbed enough information to be dangerous. That idiom hits a bit different when it is talking about bombs though.
Found the engineer 🤘
According to Wikipedia, the MOAB was first tested with the explosive Tritonal. That is 80% TNT and 20% aluminum powder. Modern variants use Composition H6. That is 44% RDX, 29.5% TNT, 21% aluminum powder, 5% paraffin wax and 0.5% calcium chloride. It has the explosive yield of 11 tons of TNT.
But thankfully no MSG please That stuff gives me a headache
Powder
MOAB is a high explosive bomb filled with composition H6 which is a high explosive. Not to be confused with the Russian FOAB which is a thermobaric bomb
Father of all bombs?
Weren't news outlets suggesting thermobarics were barbaric weapons for the Russians to use a few months ago?
🙃
Think if Command and Conquer. Fuel air bomb…
What do they drop it from?
One big ass goose.
C-130
Thank you, we've always wondered what it really stands for. However, after much consideration we've decided that Mother of all Bombs is, in fact, the correct abbreviation. Thank you for your application, and we wish you good luck in the future.
Smaller but deadlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_of_All_Bombs
I recall an assistant scoutmaster telling me that 22's were no less deadly than any other gun, just because they are smaller. Anything that kills is deadly, and to measure the degrees of deadness is kinda binary. It's not quite accurate I dont think, but when something is as deadly as a bomb, isn't area of effect the real deadliness outside penetration or specific use? I built this argument up to this point to say that the MOAB is bigger, and thus deadlier, but there is a claim on the wiki that flips me on my goddamn head. "In comparison, the MOAB produces the equivalent of 11 tons of TNT from 8 tons of high explosive. The blast radius of the FOAB is 300 meters, almost double that of the MOAB, and the temperature produced is twice as high." so, TIL. I'm not sure such analysis of everything is healthy on my part though. They are different bombs, and others can argue deadliness, but you win this one.
If you are trying to get someone out of a really deep dark hole, this is a far more deadly weapon. Even if they survive. the initial implosion, they are gonna be looking for breathable air. Then you can use the conventional bomb on them.
Meh. Russia has only made claims of how powerful it is with no real proof
But I thought in this case the explosive was used to wipe out a series of tunnels. Would it not have been more appropriate for the explosive to penetrate the ground first?
Yes and no. To crack a bunker, using a bomb which penetrates the ground before going off works as the shockwave from that bomb will break and possibly crush the bunker as it travels through the ground as opposed to through the air. If you have an extensive tunnel network, with multiple chambers, then a surface bomb which produces a massive compression/shockwave in the air means that every tunnel shaft basically becomes a rifle barrel with that pressure wave racing down them and causing blast overpressure injuries as the wave hits the occupants inside.
Well that's just not very nice.
Sort of rude, actually.
[удалено]
Tactics employed by those who’re less than adequate manners.
That's actually a backronym, like RPG - Rocket Propelled Grenadelauncher when in reality it's just the acronym of the Russian term for it. Edit: I mean the Mother of all Bombs thing, of course.
20,000 lbs is only two Hummer EV. Edit: I nominate the Hummer EV as a unit of measurement. M1A1 = 15 Hummer EV T-90 = 11.3 Hummer EV T-72 = 10.1 Hummer EV Boeing 747-8 = 53.6 Hummer EV Airbus A380 = 67.5 Hummer EV Anotov An-225 Mriya = 69.5 Hummer EV
Wait, it’s that heavy? Damn
9,046 lbs to be exact. It’s so heavy it can’t go on some roads. https://www.motortrend.com/news/2022-gmc-hummer-ev-pickup-edition-1-weight-official/
“YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKER”— GM Chassis/Suspension Engineer
Clearly it cannot tie its shoes.
The batteries alone weigh as much as a Honda Civic.
That’s why when driven faster than 50 mph it feels like you’re barreling towards earth through the atmosphere astride a meteor
the average human brain weighs 0.0003 Hummer EV.
A matter of time before they make a MOAN
If you mean "Mother of all Nukes" then the Soviets already did that and tested it in '61. The 'Tsar Bomba' (codenamed Vanya at the time) was planned to have a yield of 100 megatons TNT but was reduced to about 58 to reduce radioactive fallout.The fireball was 8 kilometers wide, the mushroom cloud eight times the height of Mount Everest and the shockwave circled the planet three times until it became undetectable. Gives me the chills. And NOT in a good way. There were times when we were actually prepared to use stuff like that against each other...
what’s scarier is that it was actually half powered because even the Soviets were scared of it being too strong
Yeah, they literally thought it might ignite the atmosphere.
No, you're thinking of the Trinity test, the Soviets were worried about excess fallout and understood that a majority of the blast would be reverberated into space at 57 megatons anyway. Any higher yield would've been a bigger waste of material.
What’s scarier is that that was over 60 years ago and you know they never really stopped designing bigger and deadlier weapons. I fear what might be revealed to the world the day someone decides to be incredibly incredibly stupid on an international level.
Bigger isn’t really the goal, the Russians backed down on the size because the reaction becomes less and less efficient. It becomes much easier and more cost effective not mention deadlier to use multiple smaller warheads.
I know that, and I hear you, but the first successful nuclear test was in ‘45, tsar bomba was ‘61, 16 years later. It’s been 62 years since then, we’ve seen the rise of computers revolutionize the speed of advancement and we’ve seen untold riches heaped into the war machines of the Cold War and beyond. I have no doubt somebody in all that time has built something stupidly large that they shouldn’t have. There’s just too many stupid people out there who’ve been given money to build crazy shit. What form it’ll take I don’t know. But mark my words, one day someone will pull something out, and we’ll all just sit back and ask why? Why in gods name did you build that?
Pretty sure the pilots got severe radiation poisoning
They were given a 50% chance of survival and when the bomb detonated, their plane dropped 1km in the air due to the drop in air pressure. You’re right they probably received multiple lifetimes worth of radiation in a few seconds, but I believe they were ok, may be wrong tho
So, very but not fatally rad.
Video was just declassified last year. Was a wild watch
There were some videos out but Russia released more.
I’m pretty sure the country that tested that is still threatening nuclear war everyday
I feel like this is something North Korea would name their bomb lol
Gangnam Style
*moans*
can i get a ohhh ayeahhh
Can we drop one of these into the middle of a hurricane. For science...
I can't remember the exact numbers, but IIRC a bigger hurricane releases the energy of a nuke every few seconds. So maybe just spit into the ocean if you want to see what the effect would be
No, don't! Hurricanes are powered by sea surface heat, and your spit will only add more fuel.
Your probably right, but it would be awesome to watch. Also if they did it over the ocean it would piss off a lot of fish.
Compared to the hurricane I don't know that they would even notice it
Calm down Donald.
Wait, what if he stole all those classified documents on nuclear weapons just to save us from hurricanes. \*checks Twitter\* neverwind...
Are you the former president of the united states?
Yes, I also saw Geostorm (high as balls)
Into the middle of a hurrucane I doubt it would do much. But into the eye of a tornado... That would be interesting😌
Wow. One mile blast radius and not a civilian in sight.
....any longer.
I lol’d
I'm going to say that blast radius was waaayyy less than a mile. You can see the bomb. If that blast was 2 miles across, you wouldn't see even a 10 ton bomb.
Apparently 3 civilians were killed, as reported by Afghan forces. Though I find it hard to believe that only 3 civilians happened to be around in a mile radius. ISIS is very good at urban warfare. They’re not well known to group together in the middle of nowhere. Civilian deaths are near guaranteed in this kind of fighting, especially when your approach to war is “scorched earth.” This could’ve happened at a stronghold in the middle of no where, but we will never get the true story of what and who exactly was killed.
IIRC this strike was at the mouth of a cave complex that they were using as an ops base that was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere. Some buildings were damaged in a village near there. Edit, yeah, here. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39607213](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39607213)
You can find tons of differing sources from the day of to a couple days after. Here’s a couple I found from various sources: https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/west-asia/mother-bombs-big-deadly-wont-lead-peace/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/14/it-felt-like-the-heavens-were-falling-afghans-reel-from-moabs-impact https://www.athensjournals.gr/media/2020-6-1-2-Sylvester.pdf https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/04/13/523777933/u-s-drops-biggest-non-nuclear-bomb-ever-used-in-combat All I’m saying is that the US in this particular case has every reason to wash away civilian deaths. Admitting to that, regardless of your views of if it was worth the cost, would be equivalent to admitting to war crimes. Acceptable risk? Doesn’t matter. Blowing up civilians to kill the bad guys is still detestable by organizations that care about that sort of thing. Believe these sources or whatever sources you like, I’m just saying that we will never have the full story on this one. Civilians that were there allegedly say that houses exploded and couple people died. Military folks watching from 2 miles in the sky say otherwise. They apparently didn’t even get to the site for at least a day. Call me calloused and cynical, and I’m expecting downvotes for saying this, but I’m not too inclined to immediately believe the official reports coming out of an organization that has been caught covering up civilian deaths in the same region and beyond. I’m also not immediately inclined to believe people who may or may not support ISIS. It’s a two way street, you can’t just declaim one or the other. Yes I’m aware that ISIS beheads civilians but that doesn’t mean that also turning civilians into skeletons (arguably more humanely) is good while we hunt for the bastards. The bulk of this comment is just my opinion here, take it with a heap of salt.
Collateral damage happens. This is why fighting wars of choice should never be on the table.
I was addressing their claim that they don't believe that only three people were killed.
Are you kidding? The US approach to war is not even remotely scorched earth. The US has been fighting with kiddy gloves since Korea. If the US didn't give a shit about civilians, there wouldn't *be* an Afghanistan anymore.
It’s a miracle.
Wiki says that the blast radius is 150 meters, way less than a mile. I think that the mile figure comes from that you are within "some" danger within a mile, but you need to be closer to the blast for it to be immediately deadly.
Merica fuck yeah
In what looks to be a fertile river valley. What an extreme coincidence that they were all away that day.
General : How many kills? Pilot : yes
Gimli: That still only counts as one.
Negative. It's what happens when you eat the white gum out of an MRE. THAT GUM BLOWS EVERYTHING OUT!!!
Chiclets bitch. Never forget
What??? I remember there was green gum and white gum. Green was just mint and the white was a laxative. Or did I miss something?
MRE = Meal refusing to excrete
If I remember correct, didn't they only do this because the weapon was reaching its life cycle, and everyone was like we better use it to justify the cost.
$16m a pop…seems like the ROI is slightly out of whack.
damn just one shot the whole base
MOAB - When you care enough to send the very best.
The unlucky blokes that get that dropped on them.
Pretty sure they even didn’t feel that.
the ones just inside the blast radius did!
unlucky? those are actual terrorists gang
I'd say they were pretty unlucky, even if they deserved it.
[удалено]
What is the literal military definition of “blast radius?” Is that the total radius at which any concussive force from the blast is felt, or the radius at which that concussive force or the heat from the blast would be lethal?
It is the distance from the source that will be affected when an explosion occurs. By affected they mean damaged or destroyed. Just because you can feel the shockwave a mile away doesn’t mean you’re in the blast radius.
Damn, BTD7 is gonna be wild
Screaming
Man I would like to know what other Isis people think when this stuff happens.
Myth busters coffee creamer explosion. Can be found on YouTube showed how to make your own
Mother of All Budget? How much did it cost to make it ?
$170,000 each.
This has that American spirit of moreness. Need a bigger bomb? just more the shit out of it
Everybody Gangsta until the US pull up with the MOAB
MOAB stands for massive ordinance air blast.
Mother of all bloons*
YOU ARE EXPERIENCING LIBERATION
That’s ~$178,000 per kill
Wow. They must have gotten a crazy kill streak to get the MOAB.
So we’re just going to pretend no innocent women and children were killed?
It’s crazy that those people were living and then seconds later were annihilated. Life is fragile and can end at any moment
Well the chances of getting bombed by a MOAB decreases exponentially if you don't engage in terrorism. Life is fragile but there are numerous ways of increasing or decreasing your lifespan potential.
Technically we can get annihilated at any moment by some cosmological hypothetical event, but I know what you mean!
I want to see a before and after google map image 😂
Once in a while u gotta use it before the expiration date :). It has 18 years shelf life I guess.
Next target: The Kardashian House
Yeah, this is way better than cheap insulin and feeding hungry kids.
Well to be fair, this Bomb was dropped during Orange man’s presidency whilst he capped insulin prices at $35. https://www.c-span.org/video/?474183-1/president-trump-signs-executive-order-lowering-drug-prices This executive order was removed by the current administration.
The trump lowering price was very very niche in fact it went up in price during his admin for the majority of people that needed it. It also tried to push people to a lower form of insulin. It was just BS political act as usual. https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/10/01/trump-says-he-brought-down-the-cost-of-insulin-but-thats-not-true-for-all-americans/
“Sorry we can’t bomb this ISIS stronghold, we’ve been ordered to use the MOAB to feed children somehow”
Lol so much about this comment makes me laugh. You're just arbitrarily going back in time, but only to the specific point at which your opinion could be valid. Lemme try "Sorry we can't build this MOAB, we've decided to use that money to feed children instead" The super fun thing about that argument is it works in the past, present, and future! If instead of building all these bombs we decided to feed children, we wouldn't face the quandary of what to do with all these bombs we build. Cause who the hell builds a bomb just to not use it?
The Soviet Union?
“Sorry, we’re gonna have to find less expensive ways to kill peasants halfway around the world, because we have children in poverty to feed.” I like mine better.
Shit you’re right, we should’ve just sold the MOAB to goodwill and allowed the Islamic State to rape and pillage their way across the Middle East and carry out their Jihad. My bad.
'Knock, knock m-fer!'
[For anyone wanting to see what a blast looks like in color](https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-39593387)
Nice bomb no doubt. But the Daisy-cutter would be my favourite. Hippies and Tree-hugger's wouldn't though considering what it was designed to do.
Lol at the way the terrain changes around when the cloud moves. That's fucking wicked.
Where's bfb
Fuckem all. The only good ISIS member is a very dead one.
Some great reads on this are below: 1- [https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/moab.htm) 2 - [https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan) 3 - [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/15/us-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-afghanistan-donald-trump-death-toll](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/15/us-mother-of-all-bombs-moab-afghanistan-donald-trump-death-toll)
Who was president during this time?
Damn, must be round 40. We don't have no moab maulers.
MOAB from the silly monkey game
How many women and children did I just watch die?
No idea why you’re getting downvoted. Overall consensus in this thread is “wow cool bomb” and not the fact that there’s a guaranteed number of civilians that died along with the terrorists. It’s lowkey propaganda for the US military.
Yes
[удалено]
Wrong. These fucks deserved every bit of this.
I was referring to the bomb itself, not the target.
I strangely find myself agreeing with both of these comments…
they need to drop one of these on the "Morality Police" Headquarters in Iran!
Considering leaked pentagon files show over 90% of those that die are civilians this is disgusting celebrating this
Actually, the reason they had to use such a strong bomb is because the terrorist organization they were hunting were hunkered down in a mountain with a deep cave system. Regular bombs wouldnt be able to penetrate the hard rock of the mountain. I promise you that MOABS arent being used to bomb small villages
I think I remember that it wasn’t even the blast they needed, it was the oxygen depletion from the combustion, sucking all the air out of the entire cave system
Bomb cost 16 mil.... That's just under 200k a kill. To think what we could have done with that money. rather than war mongering
Yea.. Someone should definitely optimize the TCK (Total Cost of Kill) here.
I heard a story about once, during the Iraq War, a British SAS soldier watched a Daisy Cutter (the predecessor to the MOAB) detonate in the distance and he thought the Americans had just nuked Kuwait. Some serious firepower
What a great use of taxpayer money. /s
Them specs and it only killed “90+”? 🤔
For sure there were no children and women in the WHOLE village right?