00:00There were three terrific bangs.
00:05Pele had exploded.
00:10Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most lethal explosions the world has ever fallen victim to.
00:16For our criteria, we're including both natural eruptions and man-made blasts.
00:21A mushroom cloud appeared.
00:23People who saw this in Hiroshima are nearly all dead by now.
00:31Bhopal disaster.
00:32First on our list is the deadliest industrial disaster in human history.
00:37In Bhopal, India, in 1984, a pesticide plant had an extremely fatal gas leak.
00:42Almost 40 years ago, this factory in Bhopal, in India, had a leak that released tons of poisonous gas.
00:49When the leak was initially discovered, management thought it was just a water leak.
00:54Within a few hours, a terrifying amount of gas had built up, causing immense pressure.
00:59The tank broke in the night, and roughly half a million locals were exposed to this poisonous gas, with over 3,500 dying almost immediately.
01:083,000 people had died within the first few hours.
01:12Estimates claim that there have been more than 15,000 more deaths since then, but the true death toll will be impossible to verify.
01:19Has the industry learned anything from this tragic loss of life and the horrendous aftermaths that followed?
01:26Chernobyl.
01:27In 1986, in the Ukrainian SSR, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a horrific catastrophe.
01:34So it wasn't worth it.
01:35The power was climbing.
01:36I didn't know exactly what that was coming.
01:39What was that?
01:41Poor management led to inexperienced operators performing a test that resulted in a meltdown.
01:46Just after 1 a.m., Chernobyl Reactor 4 exploded and destroyed its entire building.
01:53The chain of disaster is now complete.
02:0130 people were killed due to the effects of the immediate blast, but the true number of lives lost will never be known.
02:07The figure ranges from 4,000 to 16,000 people, with some even going as high as 60,000.
02:14With the 500-ton safety cap blown off and air being sucked in below, the reactor becomes a giant blowtorch.
02:22At least 350,000 people had to be evacuated from the area, and the area still isn't safe to live in.
02:29Armero Tragedy
02:30Volcanoes are terrifying works of nature.
02:34Upon eruption, they'll release tons of perilous lava, ash, and gas.
02:39In 1985, the Colombian stratovolcano, Nevado del Ruiz, erupted, bringing death and disaster upon the nearby town of Armero.
02:48The relatively small explosion melted a mere 5 to 10 percent of the ice cap that covered the volcano.
02:55Nevertheless, it was sufficient to trigger the violent descent.
02:59Estimates believe at least 23,000 people lost their lives, but many blame the government rather than the volcano.
03:06This is because scientists had warned them of their impending doom, but the government ignored these warnings.
03:11The mudslides reached the city of Armero, 30 miles east of the crater, at a speed of perhaps 25 miles an hour, covering the city in mud.
03:22Thirteen villages other than Armero were affected, making it one of the deadliest eruptions in human history.
03:28It still erupts fairly regularly, but thankfully, the government has started to take it a lot more seriously following this event.
03:35After the disaster, hospital preparedness plans were updated for such cases.
03:39Unzen eruptions
03:41Mount Unzen lies on the coast of Kayushu, one of Japan's westernmost islands.
03:47It's still fairly active, and in 1792, resulted in Japan's worst volcanic disaster.
03:53One of its immense lava domes collapsed due to earthquakes, which then led to a landslide.
03:59Mount Unzen serves up an extravaganza, some 35 pyroclastic flows a day.
04:06This, in turn, caused a tsunami, which devastated the nearby city of Shimabara.
04:11Since it was so long ago, we can't get an accurate death toll.
04:15Historians estimate that at least 15,000 people died, mainly due to the tsunami and landslide.
04:21Within moments, it overwhelms the valley.
04:23So the explosion itself wasn't particularly deadly, but it led to a diabolical domino effect, which wreaked havoc upon Kayushu.
04:31Lak'i eruptions.
04:33This explosion was so immense that it altered global temperatures, causing crop failures and droughts in places as far as India.
04:41This eruption produced an enormous amount of lava.
04:44Most of Iceland is inhospitable, with volcanoes being a major factor.
04:49One of their worst volcanic disasters began in June 1783, when the Lak'i fissure began erupting.
04:56It wouldn't stop for eight months, causing 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide to be released.
05:03By the time Lak'i finally stopped erupting in February 1784, it had emitted 8 million tons of fluorine, a highly toxic chemical.
05:12This had a domino effect, which scientists believe caused droughts and crop failures globally.
05:19In Iceland, roughly 9,500 people died, alongside 50% of their livestock.
05:25Many of these deaths were due to the famine that followed.
05:28It was an immense tragedy, and it's unclear how many lives were lost outside of Iceland due to its effects.
05:34The period from the autumn of 1784 until the spring of 1785 was the most dismal that I ever lived through.
05:42Mount Pully
05:43Our next eruption took place in the Caribbean, in the Lesser Antilles.
05:48From April 1902 until 1905, Mount Pully displayed the most activity we've ever seen.
05:54It made its way to the nearby city of Saint-Pierre, causing the deaths of almost 28,000 residents during May 1902.
06:02Like a nuclear blast, within minutes, 30,000 people lay dead.
06:08Most of these people lost their lives within three minutes, on May 8th, 1902, when a 100 miles per hour cloud of gas was unleashed on the island.
06:18But it wasn't just the number of deaths.
06:20It was the fact that an entire town was transformed into a smoldering shell filled with corpses.
06:25It's believed only three survived this ordeal.
06:28A further 2,000 deaths were caused later in May, many of them rescuers.
06:33It went down in history as the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
06:38No volcano in history had ever been so thorough in its devastation, and yet so selective.
06:44Krakatoa
06:45The island of Krakatoa lies in the Sunda Strait, Indonesia.
06:50It's one of the most infamous volcanic islands.
06:52As in 1883, it caused the loudest recorded sound in human history.
06:57On the 27th of August, 1883, it experienced its most violent eruption.
07:03On the 27th of August, 1883, the uninhabited volcanic island of Krakatoa blew itself out of existence.
07:11It was so loud they could hear it in Perth, Western Australia.
07:15It caused a plethora of tsunamis and disasters, leading to over 36,417 confirmed deaths.
07:22The explosion was so vast that it was roughly 13,000 times the size of Little Boys.
07:28The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
07:31The eruption was so loud, the sound was heard over a twelfth of the Earth's surface.
07:35The eruption caused a massive shift in the island of Krakatoa's geography, destroying roughly 70% of it.
07:43And scientists of the time struggled to comprehend the geological forces that caused the tragedy.
07:49Nagasaki
07:49Atomic bombs are the most destructive weapons ever created, by a significant margin.
07:55They've been used in warfare twice, both occasions being in August 1945 against Imperial Japan.
08:02If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on war industry.
08:07America first bombed Hiroshima on August 6th, then Nagasaki on August 9th.
08:12The latter explosion killed somewhere between 60 and 80,000 people in the immediate blast.
08:18The majority of them were civilians.
08:20The bomb missed the aiming point and fell into a valley.
08:24This time there was no firestorm, but even so, more than 50,000 people were killed.
08:31Nagasaki was the least damaged of the two cities, largely due to its geography and the bomb exploding in an industrial area.
08:39That doesn't make it any less horrific, however.
08:41It's impossible to calculate how many deaths it caused in the decades following, but we can say for certain that it would be a horrendous figure.
08:48The flash radiation of heat from the blast scorched hillsides as far as 8,000 feet away from ground zero.
08:56Mount Tambora
08:57Indonesia is a region with a variety of active volcanoes, such as Mount Tambora in Sumbawa.
09:03In 1815, it was responsible for the deadliest volcanic eruption ever recorded.
09:09In 1815 in Indonesia, the Tambora volcano awakes.
09:13It began in 1812, but it peaked in April 1815.
09:20It erupted so violently that it reduced worldwide temperatures, causing a year without a summer in 1816.
09:28What follows are cold spells, bad harvests, and the biggest famine of the 19th century.
09:34Around 10,000 people were killed directly by the eruption, but somewhere between 49 and 90,000 died in the post-eruption fallout.
09:42This is what earns it the title of the deadliest recorded eruption, with the highest estimates claiming over a quarter of a million people lost their lives.
09:51How could a single volcano at the other end of the world cause so much death and suffering?
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10:12Hiroshima
10:13For the majority of human history, volcanoes have been the source of Earth's most violent explosions.
10:19Comparing the destructive capabilities of volcanoes to man-made atomic bombs is harrowing.
10:24The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 resulted in the deaths of between 90 and 166,000 people, most of them civilians.
10:40For decades afterwards, thousands suffered from health complications caused by the disaster.
10:46Ladders, railings, even people left their outlines on stone and metal.
10:50This makes it impossible to calculate how many lives were lost.
10:53It was truly one of the most violent acts of war ever perpetrated.
10:57Hopefully, it will never be outdone, as nuclear weapons are so powerful now, the consequences would be even more appalling.
11:06Although no one has used a nuclear weapon since, arguments continue as to the morality of dropping the bomb.
11:12Were there any other especially destructive explosions we forgot to include?
11:17Let us know in the comments below.
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