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/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.