News MOABs, big bangs, and blowing up islands.

[Notebook]

Brexit may have triggered a political earthquake in Europe, but 70 years ago the UK sent real shockwaves across the seas with the largest non-nuclear explosion of that era.
As one of the four victorious allied powers after World War Two, Britain was governing a large area of occupied Germany.
The British sector included the tiny island of Heligoland, which had long been a source of diplomatic tension between the two countries.
So, when in 1947 the British needed a safe place to dispose of thousands of tonnes of unexploded ammunition, Heligoland must have seemed an obvious choice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-39590752

Seems to have ended well.

N.

 

[K_Jameson]

The largest non-nuclear explosion in history wasn't the N1 rocket explosion?

 

[Notebook]

It may well be, the article says" of that era", so you can pick your own time period.
I would guess they mean post WWII, before the Cold War starts.

N.

 

[Artlav]

The largest non-nuclear explosion in history wasn't the N1 rocket explosion?

I think Halifax was much larger.

In any case, there were plenty of industrial and military accidents that were in the range of small nukes, so hundreds of times more powerful than MOAB.

 

[kuddel]

1. Funny that I never noticed that the island is called Heligoland in English, it's Helgoland (no "i" anywhere) in German
2. one can always say "the largest non-nuclear explosion of that era" when you define the "era" as short as you like "the largest non-nuclear explosion of that minute" e.g.

 

[Urwumpe]

1. Funny that I never noticed that the island is called Heligoland in English, it's Helgoland (no "i" anywhere) in German
2. one can always say "the largest non-nuclear explosion of that era" when you define the "era" as short as you like "the largest non-nuclear explosion of that minute" e.g.

AFAIR, The Heligoland spelling is more historic. It was a germanic cult site in the past, called "Fosetisland" in some chronics because of that site (and was constantly mistaken for the Faroer Islands because of that). The "modern" northern Frisian name of it is "Hallunn", which was possibly once something like "Hallig(o)land" in Germanic (which constantly placed vocals like o at the end of words to give the word endings more sound)

Destroying everything on top of this rock is a good historic tradition, you can't blame the Brits for keeping the tradition alive.

 

[steph]

Wasn't it the Chicxulub event one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history? :lol:
Edit: technically speaking, I'm not sure it qualifies as an "explosion", despite the shockwaves and all that.

Joking aside, the war-boner for massive explosions is worrying. Who's to say there won't be a regional nuclear war? Say NK drops the few nukes they have on someone (maybe the Carl Vinson strike group ? ) , and the others drop nukes on NK.
Now with Donnie and Vlad being buddies, one gets the feeling they might be trying to create a precedent. Before, use of nukes was taboo. But, with all that mutually-assured destruction out of the way, they're pretty much free to drop the nuke (or at least use it to intimidate) on any country that irks them. I might (and hope to) be wrong, but if the NK crisis goes nuclear, I'm pretty sure Syria will be the next target for nukes