How far can you hear the KABOOM--help please...

[NHBL]

I'm working on an ATL with some big (near nuclear and nuclear) level explosions. Finding things like destruction radius is easy--but I'm hunting for things like how far away a blast could be heard, how far away it could be felt, and minor effects like broken windows. THAT is hard to find. The blast occurs in time of peace, whith no one even expecting an earth-shattering KABOOM--or even knowing that there's a way to make a KABOOM that big.

Things like how far away it's heard will be important to the timeline; I just need a reasonable ballpark figure. (Atmosphereics and mountains and the like will have some influence.)

Thanks!

[Peabody-Martini]

For what's possible, the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was reported to have been heard 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away. Said to be 310 decibels.

As for nukes, the overpressure wave is around 250 to 280 decibels.

Does that help?

[NHBL]

Originally Posted by Peabody-Martini

For what's possible, the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was reported to have been heard 3,000 miles (4,800 km) away. Said to be 310 decibels.

As for nukes, the overpressure wave is around 250 to 280 decibels.

Does that help?

Doesn't the overpressure wave depend on how big the nuke is? I'm thinking "nuke" because we have real world experience with them, and not with big meteorite impacts. The rock is going to create about a 400 KT blast, and how far it's heard is important, as is the broken window effect.

This is no Krakatoa, but also no mere "pop"

[Cook]

In 1917 the British Army detonated 19 mines along the Western Front. The charge under Hill 60 in Belgium was 53,500 pounds, nearly 27 tons of high explosive. When they went off they were heard in London, and there are reports that the tremor was felt in Dublin.

[Peabody-Martini]

The size of the explosion you described could probably be heard for hundreds of miles. Depending on if its an airburst, surface or underground detonation.

Or as the saying goes "Even a small nuke will ruin your day".

[Cook]

Found it:

Originally Posted by British Atomic Testing in Australia

The First Maralinga Explosion

The weather was at first unfavourable at Maralinga for the initial test in Spring 1956. Some 1500 scientists and soldiers were waiting for this first test.

On a clear spring day, the first explosion was ignited. Only near the detonation point was ground motion felt, but people living hundreds of kilometers away heard the sound waves through the air. At Cook two or three distinct blasts were heard about 12 to 13 minutes after the detonation flash. At Kingoonya, 400kms from Maralinga, there was an explosion like a clap of thunder, shutters rattled and houses shook. On the coast, 300kms away at Ceduna, two large bangs rang out- like sticks of dynamite going off.

The first atomic bomb in the Maralinga series was about equal in power to that which destroyed Hiroshima. The device had been suspended from a 110 metre tower. The most distant seismograph known to have recorded it was at Southern Cross, 1000kms away.

http://allshookup.org/quakes/atomic.htm

[NHBL]

Originally Posted by Peabody-Martini

The size of the explosion you described could probably be heard for hundreds of miles. Depending on if its an airburst, surface or underground detonation.

Or as the saying goes "Even a small nuke will ruin your day".

It's not a nuke, but a meteorite. It lands in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, some 60+ miles north of Concord, NH, with an impact similar to the detonation of a 400 KT bomb. Will it break windows in Concord? Can they hear it in Boston, about 120 miles away? Or Providece, 170 or so miles away?

New York City?

I'd assume that it's a very noticable BOOM in Concord--a clear "This is BAD" sort of boom. But--hopw noticable in Boston?

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Originally Posted by NHBL

It's not a nuke, but a meteorite. It lands in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, some 60+ miles north of Concord, NH, with an impact similar to the detonation of a 400 KT bomb. Will it break windows in Concord? Can they hear it in Boston, about 120 miles away? Or Providece, 170 or so miles away??

There is an online calculator at http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/ for that very thing:

Working backwards from a 400 KT blast, this would be the same energy as a stony iron asteroid 8.5 meters wide striking Earth at 20 km/s. It would not reach the surface (or even the lower atmosphere), and the airburst would not produce any damage in Concord; it would barely be audible even at ground zero.

It would need to be at least 250 meters wide (1000 megaton yield) to shatter windows in Concord and to be audible in Boston and Providence.