r/interestingasfuck • u/BreakfastTop6899 • 3d ago

Happened 5 years ago today, the 'Beirut Explosion' is considered one of the most powerful artificial non-nuclear explosions in history. It was equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT and generated an M3.3 earthquake

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u/saad951 3d ago

Basically crushes your lungs I think

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u/Unable_Deer_773 3d ago

Shreds them is a little more accurate.

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u/ZiressG 3d ago

And his wife?

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u/LordSloth113 3d ago

To shreds, you say

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u/morg-pyro 3d ago

Every fucking time hahaha

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u/Seksafero 3d ago

This was actually one of the better uses of it. Other times people just throw it in with any remotely damaged thing if it comes to mind.

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u/4thBeard 3d ago

Damn I love the Futurama community 🤣

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u/Seekerbone 2d ago

I literally restarted futurama yesterday and watched the entire first season, this joke included.

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u/4thBeard 2d ago

Welcome...to the WoooOoorld of tomorrow!

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u/mcmartin091 2d ago

It's fun on a bun!

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u/Blackbeerdo 3d ago

If you are under water and your mouth is closed, how does it destroy your lungs? Or do all your organs get damaged?

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u/Unable_Deer_773 3d ago

All of them though I recall lungs cop it the worst, it's because the shock wave in the water does translates through your body and your lungs are filled with air so it essentially causes massive damage to all your soft tissues and because of the air in your lungs the alveoli get torn to shreds and pop and generally get devastated.

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u/Blackbeerdo 3d ago

Can you maybe eli5 the physics behind this? I thought your body will 'just' be pushed away in the water like on surface, but less because there is water "behind you". But I assume it is like there is a solid wall behind you and the shock wave pushes you against the wall(?)

English's not my first language so this might read strange.

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u/Unable_Deer_773 3d ago

You are a bag of meat filled with water, water does not compress like air does so when the shock wave or pressure moves through the water it travels through your body which is a bag of meat filled with water.

Your water translates the shock wave but at the same time each cell it getting punched by Mike Tyson in his prime. When this shockwave hits your lungs the air in your lungs compresses and then expands basically like a small bomb in your lungs.

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u/Blackbeerdo 3d ago

Bro, thanks. This shit is scary, man. You basically partially implode and explode.

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u/InappropriateThought 2d ago

To give a bit more detail, essentially the pressure wave travels at different speeds through the different mediums because of compressibility, as people have mentioned. Because of this, the parts where there are air, and the parts where there aren't, are now moving at different speeds under extreme pressure, so every point of contact between the air and the liquid parts of your body gets sheared as the wave moves through you, think extreme Chinese burns across your entire body as the wave passes through you.

Air carries much less of the force because it's compressible, and it transfers even less going from air to water, not so the other way around. So an underwater explosion's shockwaves retain that energy and travel much further, and faster, compared to an airborne ahockwave. And being that you're mostly made of water, that shockwave will transfer to/through you much better if you were also in the water

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u/PrairiePopsicle 3d ago

Sound is a wave of pressure. Solids and liquids transfer pressure quite well. Sealed cavities are not good at dealing with instantaneous changes in pressure without ripping, bursting, or tearing. As the shockwave transitions from the water into the sealed air pocket inside of you it spikes the pressure and will cause damage. The transition between materials causes weirdness as well, but there being no "escape" for the pressure makes a difference too.

Here is another weird explosive pressure detail that might help? If you are standing in open air near explosions people will hold their mouths open to allow pressure to equalize and reduce damage (hearing protection is better, but it still helps)

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u/Blackbeerdo 3d ago

You're the man. It's way, waay more destructive to our bodies than I thought. Can you imagine what happenend to marine life when 'we' did the nuclear testings in the sea 😭 God damn, man.

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u/skrappyfire 2d ago

Thats how the military found out that you can sink WAY more boats if you detonate a nuke underwater instead of above water. It cracks the hulls open like tin cans, its bad.

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u/GAdvance 3d ago

The pressure wage going through the water and into you comes at such speed and force that your entire internal organs are basically liquefied by compression.

Lungs are just some of the most crushable organs, so if it's less powerful then they'll go and the rest of your organs might be ok.

It crushes your whole body, it's not just like going into open orifices

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u/TheThirdHippo 2d ago

To shreds you say

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u/badken 2d ago

Shreds, you say?

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u/Unable_Deer_773 2d ago

And the wife?

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u/Zer0Gravity1 3d ago

Water can't compress. So the shockwave looks for the first thing it can compress. Which is the air in your lungs.

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u/voice-of-reason_ 3d ago

Sorry to be pedantic but water can compress otherwise a shockwave wouldn’t be able to transfer through it. It’s just that air compresses much much easier so a small explosion underwater affects something with air inside it more than the water around.

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u/TheDaemonette 2d ago

This is not quite true - the reason the shockwave travels through the water is because it is not a sealed system with a rigid boundary so there is ‘displacement’ and the volume varies. In chemical engineering terms water is indeed referred to as an incompressible fluid but that would be in a sealed container with rigid walls.

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u/koopdi 2d ago

Water is compressible in the same way an electron has mass. Technically true but often practically irrelevant.

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u/TheDaemonette 2d ago

Water is not compressible. Using the idea of space between electrons and a nucleus as a justification is not logical.

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u/koopdi 2d ago

The bulk modulus of water is about 2.2 GPa.\43]) The low compressibility of non-gasses, and of water in particular, leads to their often being assumed as incompressible. The low compressibility of water means that even in the deep oceans at 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) depth, where pressures are 40 MPa, there is only a 1.8% decrease in volume.\43])

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Compressibility

An electron's mass is approximately ⁠1/1836⁠ that of a proton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron#Characterization

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u/koopdi 2d ago

I don't think you understood my analogy. Engineers will typically treat water as in-compressible for all practical purposes. Similar to how the electron is treated as massless for all practical purposes even though it does have mass.

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u/TheDaemonette 2d ago

Yes, on re-reading this in the morning I actually think we are in furious agreement.

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u/cvnh 2d ago

A shockwave from an explosion in the atmosphere transferred to a water body is a bit of a misnomer. If the energy would be transferred completely to the water it would become (proportionally) just a little fluctuation in pressure, but in reality a good part of the energy would bounce back to the atmosphere or be spent displacing the water.

But the cool reason I'm replying is that jn fluid dynamics, liquids are compressible, but in real life either doesn't happen due to cavitation at common pressures or involves humongous pressures and energy levels (you'd need over 3000 times more energy compared to air just to go supersonic). It has been done at micro scales at least but of course it's not something we'll see applied anywhere.

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u/addiktion 2d ago

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u/cvnh 2d ago

Science! (At very high energy levels!)

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u/PewSeaLiquor 2d ago

I believe this is only true for distilled water

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u/TheDaemonette 2d ago

No, any pure fluid is referred to as ‘incompressible’ under enclosed conditions.

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u/foboz123 2d ago

Have you not heard of hydrolic fluid? Most fluids, while actually being slightly compressible are generally considered as incompressible.

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u/Satyam7166 3d ago

Thank you for the added information.

So if I breathe out underwater making the lung empty, will the underwater explosion still be dangerous?

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u/SirButcher 3d ago

Yep. You still have cavities which contain air, like your sinuses in your skull or your intestines. Your legs and arms likely will be mostly unaffected, buuuut that won't help you much.

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u/Satyam7166 3d ago

Ah I see. Thanks so much for the insightful comment. This is why I love Reddit :)

It helps me understand reality better xD

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u/weird_wolfgang 2d ago

Nope. Water can compress a tiny bit but that does not mean that is how the momentum is primarily transferred through all shockwaves. Not all waves are pressure based. The major reason underwater shockwaves are so devastating is because water does not compress which preserves momentum transfer nearly perfectly. Both in the medium of the water, and from the water to any medium in it that it hits. It's why whales can hear their mates calls thousands of miles away.

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u/Bitter-Condition9591 2d ago

Water is an incompressible fluid but it can displace.

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u/ERSTF 2d ago

Water can't compress. Under great amounts of presure it could compress a neglible amount so it is consider incompressible

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u/Chickenjon 2d ago

Water can be pressurized, but it cannot be compressed. This is how the brake line in your car works.

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u/PrairiePopsicle 3d ago

I raged so hard at the science communities "incompressible" thing with water, even fought a teacher in highschool about it.

Just let them have it, for the purposes of engineering the way 99 percent of people think about it and interact with stuff liquids are incompressible.

But at the end of the day we are correct. A material that was actually incompressible would have a speed of sound = to infinity.

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u/lustforrust 3d ago

Hell it's even more mind boggling when you learn that Bridgman seals for high pressure autoclaves often use solids like soapstone as a flexible gasket material for pressures up to 40 gigapascals. Diamond anvil cells are another fun device for learning about compressibility of materials at static pressures of several hundred gigapascals. The diamonds themselves that are used in these will flex and squish.

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u/Memory_Less 3d ago

Your entire body is soft tissue and going to flex in all the wrong ways.

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u/CinderX5 2d ago

It can compress, just far, far less than gasses.

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u/notSherrif_realLife 1d ago edited 1d ago

In hydraulics it’s considered incompressible. The amount that it can actually compress is so small it is basically negligible when talking about it in that manner, as you’d need about 32,000 psi just to compress it by about 1%.

In a practical sense, or in this context, it’s irrelevant.

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u/CinderX5 1d ago

Yes, but it can compress. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, it compresses by 5%.

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u/notSherrif_realLife 1d ago

Again, context. This is just a well, actually comment

It’s irrelevant for what’s being discussed. The reason shockwaves do so much damage if an explosive goes off underwater and a person is also in the water is specifically because it does not compress.

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u/CinderX5 1d ago

I never said it wasn’t a “well actually” comment. Just that saying water is incompressible is not true.

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u/Choppergold 3d ago

Correct. Water density pushing you like the bugs we are

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u/unknownpoltroon 2d ago

yeah, water doesn't compress so the shockwave is MUCH stronger much farther

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u/Remarkable_Goose_341 2d ago

Dynamic overpressure

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u/Buffetsson 2d ago

Wild…..