How big was that explosion?
Explosive yields are quoted in tonnes of TNT, where one tonne is exactly 4.184 gigajoules by definition.
91% of Beirut 2020 explosion
1,000 t TNT is more than 4 of the 8 references on this page.
Reference figures are measurements and are rounded; the unit conversion behind them is exact.
| Reference | Size | Yours ÷ theirs | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| firecracker | 4.78×10⁻⁸ t TNT | 20,920,000,000× | |
| hand grenade | 0.000191 t TNT | 5,230,000× | |
| stick of dynamite | 0.000239 t TNT | 4,184,000× | |
| lightning bolt | 1.2 t TNT | 837× | |
| Beirut 2020 explosion | 1,099 t TNT | 0.91× | About 1.1 kilotons |
| Hiroshima bomb | 15,057 t TNT | 1/15.1 | 15 kilotons |
| Tsar Bomba | 50,191,205 t TNT | 1/50,191 | 50 megatons, the largest ever detonated |
| Chicxulub impact | 100,382,409,177,820 t TNT | 1/100,382,409,178 | The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs |
Worth knowing
- The Chicxulub impact released about 100 million times the energy of the largest nuclear weapon ever tested.
- A tonne of TNT is defined as exactly 4.184 gigajoules, which makes it a unit of energy rather than a measurement of any actual explosive.
Frequently asked
How much energy is in a kiloton of TNT?
4.184 terajoules, exactly, by definition. The definition was fixed so that yields could be compared without arguing about explosive chemistry.
How does a nuclear weapon compare to conventional explosives?
By a factor of about a million per kilogram. Chemical explosives release the energy of electron bonds; nuclear weapons release the energy of nuclear ones.