OK, Choggie. This is the most impressive non-nuclear blast I've ever seen. Watch to the end for the shock wave racing across the desert. Also, listen to the information about the six ton railroad car being hurled by the first blast. Incredible stuff!

Enjoy!

There is another version of the Pepcon fire that is worth viewing for the non-narrated and slo-mo video here:

http://www.videosift.com/story.php?id=9838

Kudos to Wumpus

The word he keeps saying is BLEVE, an acronym for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion.

Whhoooa! I learned a new acronym today! You are on a roll now silvercord!! Soon you'll be a born-again kablloooey voyeur.
Personal love for this viddy, in 1977, I was 11 in Dallas, TX, was drawn like a moth, along with most of the residents of the immediate area, to a column of flame shooting 75 feet in the sky, which was the aftermath of a tankcar fulla propane, that had derailed and exploded...we got to a spot in a parking lot about 200 yards away, to gawk. As we watched the flames, and felt the heat, another tankcar exploded, sending an orange mushroom cloud about 300 feet into the sky....I remember standing, transfixed, while a sea of fellow gawkers ran past me and away from this primo vantage point....and the next thing I remember was being scooped up and clumsily run with, by my dad...the next day some of our biker friends came over, who had had a better view from nearer the blast, wearing melted pleather jackets!...(they were wannabe, weekend warrior, crackers, hence the fake leather.)

ahhhhh memories.

scotta bee an arsonists wettest dream

('largest human made non-nuclear blast', if you wanted to get down to specifics)

porno for pyros.

There have been bigger ones
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions

I think this is the biggest
* The Texas City Disaster. On April 16, 1947, the SS Grandcamp, loaded with 8,500 tons of ammonium nitrate, exploded in port at Texas City, Texas; this is generally considered the worst industrial accident in United States history. 581 died, over 5,000 injured.

I read the wiki article and also saw this:

"The weight of the explosive does not directly correlate with the size of the explosion, so an accurate ranking of these explosions is impossible."

Who knows? I want to post 'em all!

Yeah, too bad a lot of them are unfilmed.

I hope they detonate on of the Messines 'mines'. That would make for a very nice display.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines

I read about the Battle of Messines. The last mine sounds inviting! Here's a link to Ripple Rock. They say that this explosion was the largest non-nuclear peacetime explosion:

archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-75-657-3654-20/that_was_then/science_technology/ripple_rock_blasted

(type http:// before the addy).

....then there is the event in Tunguska that all the "experts" say was either geophysical, or came from outer space.......I don't know, did Tesla come from outer space.....
http://www.galisteo.com/tunguska/bbs/messages/142.html

At 5:17, during the fourth and largest of the PEPCON explosions, there is a "wooshing" sound that sounds like something is incoming, and then another explosion. Does anyone know what that sound is? It almost sounds like something vacuum related.

I hope it's the shockwave rushing at the recorder. The alternative is too horrible to think about. Because it's either that or a collective pucker.

It's as if a million armadillo cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

Oh god LOL I think deathcow just killed me!

I *nominate that as the TOP COMMENT OF 2006!

This video cannot be nominated by farhad2000 because farhad2000 has already nominated 5 videos this year - sorry.

I don't know if Tesla came from outer space. But I do want to know about Philip "Taylor" Kramer.

Look, farhad, you even got Sifty involved!

(And, not so by the way, that's why they call him "DEATHCOW!")

However, the reporter looks like an 80's hotty. Just keeping things in perspective.

*promote

I remember voting for this waaaay back then. Awesomelicious.

Re-promoting this video to the front page as a VideoSift Classic. Originally published on Thursday 9th November 2006 (promotion called by gold star member maudlin)

To think that the sift #1 is a guy playing ukulele... the mind boggles.

Wow, *history-ical *actionpack.

Adding video to channels (Actionpack, History) - requested by Krupo.

A miracle that only two died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEPCON_disaster

*length=00:05:43

The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 5:43 - length declared by critical_d.

Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion- BLEVE has been added as a related post - related requested by silvercord on that post.

It's always so damn weird when they shift the sound effect of a far away explosion to the moment it happens. It's even weirder when they leave the time delayed copy of the sound in as well!! *promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Thursday, November 9th, 2006 12:42pm PST - promote requested by NicoleBee.

When I saw "Learning Channel" in the title, I assumed it was caused by honey boo boo's mother farting

Especially when it's obvious stock sounds

Not the Largest Man Made Non Nuclear Explosion
Halifax has you beat.
The Halifax Explosion occurred on the morning of Thursday, December 6, 1917. SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship fully laden with wartime explosives, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. Approximately twenty minutes later, a fire on board the French ship ignited her volatile cargo, causing a cataclysmic explosion that devastated the Richmond District of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, and collapsed buildings, and it is estimated that nearly 9,000 others were injured.The blast was the largest man-made explosion prior to the development of nuclear weapons with an equivalent force of roughly 2.9 kilotons of Trinitrotoluene (TNT). In a meeting of the Royal Society of Canada in May 1918, Dalhousie University's Professor Howard L. Bronson estimated the blast at some 2.4 million kilograms of high explosive.