The 10 Biggest Explosions in the History of the World

There’s nothing quite as exciting as explosions (preferably going off in the distance) to remind us how small we are compared to the raw power of nature or human invention. If the Big Bang is considered to be the proto-boom that started all other explosions, what would the top 10 most powerful blasts in the history of our world be? To make it more interesting, they’re not all supernovas.

1. The First A-Bomb

In July 1945, scientists gathered in the New Mexico desert for an experiment that would change the world forever. They tested the first nuke, unleashing a mind-blowing blast equal to around 20 kilotons of TNT. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the project’s leader, later quoted the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, saying, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The test paved the way for nuclear weapons used to end World War II and sparked decades of fear over nuclear annihilation.

2. The Chornobyl Nuclear Disaster

In 1986, one of the reactors of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded, causing the worst nuclear disaster in history. The defective reactor blew off a 2,000-ton (that’s almost 4,400,000 lbs!) lid off the core and unleashed radiation hundreds of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The radioactive fallout contaminated huge swathes of Europe, affecting more than 77,000 square miles. Around 600,000 people were exposed to high doses of radiation, and over 350,000 had to leave their homes for good. Today, the 1,040-square-mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone remains largely off-limits, though a few people have illegally returned to live there.

3. Texas City Disaster

On April 16, 1947, disaster struck the port of Texas City when a fire broke out on the SS Grandcamp, a ship loaded with 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate. It’s a chemical used in fertilizer and explosives, and it packs a hell of a punch. The ship exploded so violently that it knocked two airplanes out of the sky and set off a chain reaction, blowing up nearby refineries and another ship carrying 1,000 more tons of ammonium nitrate. The Texas City explosion killed about 600 people and injured around 3,500, making it the worst industrial accident in U.S. history.

4. Tunguska Meteor Explosion

One summer morning in 1908, a mysterious explosion lit up the skies over Siberia, flattening around 500,000 acres of forest, which is roughly half the area of Rhode Island. Scientists believe it was caused by some kind of space rock, either an asteroid or a comet, about 65 feet across and weighing over 185,000 tons. The blast’s force may have been equal to about 4 million tons of TNT, roughly 250 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. To this day, the Tunguska explosion remains one of the biggest cosmic mysteries, as no impact crater was ever found, which makes no sense at all. Unless… aliens?

5. The Halifax Explosion

The Belgian ship Imo and the French cargo ship Mont-Blanc, loaded with World War I explosives, collided in Halifax Harbor, Canada, in December 1917. The collision set off a tremendous explosion equivalent to about 3,000 tons of TNT. A white mushroom cloud soared 20,000 feet into the sky, and then a tsunami with waves as high as sixty feet washed ashore. The city was reduced to rubble within 1.2 miles. It was the biggest unintentional man-made explosion in history, with about 2,000 fatalities and 9,000 injuries.

6. Mount Tambora

In 1815, Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted with the force of around 1,000 million tons of TNT, making it the biggest volcanic eruption in recorded history. It blasted out around 140 billion tons of magma and killed over 70,000 people. The eruption spewed so much ash into the atmosphere that it affected not only local but also global weather as well. The following year became known as the “Year Without a Summer.” Snow fell in June in New York, rivers froze in July in Pennsylvania, and famine swept across continents. A single, massive eruption caused all this.

7. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

In 1994, space watchers were treated to an extraordinary cosmic show when fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter. Torn apart by the planet’s gravity, the pieces struck Jupiter at speeds of about 37 miles per second. The impacts produced fireballs towering up to 2,000 miles high and left dark scars on Jupiter’s clouds as wide as our lovely planet Earth. The biggest of these explosions equaled about 6,000 billion tons of TNT!

8. K-T Extinction Impact

To reach the next step of our highly explosive list, we need to go back to the time when giant lizards ruled the Earth—about 65 million years ago. That’s when a giant space rock slammed into our planet near what’s now known as the Gulf of Mexico (or is it the Gulf of Trump?). The asteroid was about six miles wide and unleashed an explosion equivalent to an unimaginable 10,000 billion (with a B) tons of TNT! That’s like blowing up all the world’s nuclear arsenals at the same moment and place, but times 1000. The blast triggered wildfires, giant tsunamis, and a cloud of dust that plunged Earth into darkness for possibly thousands of years. This event wiped out the dinosaurs and about half of all species on the planet.

9. The Shadow-Casting Supernova

In the year 1006, a star in the constellation Lupus exploded so brightly it lit up the night sky for months and was even visible during the day. Called SN 1006, this supernova was about 7,000 light-years away but shone brightly enough to cast shadows on Earth. It briefly outshone the entire Milky Way. More recently, in 2016, astronomers found SN2016aps, the most luminous supernova ever recorded, shining from 3.6 billion light-years away. Sadly, that one was so far away that only people with powerful enough telescopes could enjoy the view.

10. Gamma-Ray Bursts

Finally, we have the GRBs, aka, the gamma-ray bursts. On October 9, 2022, scientists spotted the brightest GRB ever recorded. Known as GRB 221009A, or as the nerds call it “the BOAT,” which is just a fun acronym for “Brightest Of All Time,” this galaxy-scale explosion, caused by a collapsing massive star 2.4 billion light-years away, was at least 10 times more powerful than any previously seen. Scientists say it might be the biggest explosion in the universe since the Big Bang itself.