Beirut Blast Registered As 3.3 Quake - Explosion Comparable To Low Yield Nuclear Gravity Bomb

The deadly explosion that devastated Beirut appears to have been far more powerful than the 'Mother of All Bombs'

(Ryan Pickrell)

An explosion at a port in Beirut brought destruction to the Lebanese capital Tuesday, damaging buildings, killing more than 100 people, and injuring thousands of others. People recorded videos showing the blast wave and a towering red cloud that some compared to a nuclear weapon's mushroom cloud.

The exact cause of the blast is unclear, but the focus of an investigation is a warehouse improperly storing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate.

The blast registered as a magnitude 3.3 earthquake, and the effects of the explosion were felt miles away from the blast site. Experts told Insider the blast most likely had an explosive yield of several hundred tons of TNT equivalent.

Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear and conventional weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California, estimated the yield to be "between 200 and 500 tons, looking at blast damage, the shockwave, seismic signals, and the size of the crater."

That much explosive power is at least nearly twenty times greater than that of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (nicknamed the "Mother of All Bombs"), which has a blast yield of about 11 tons and is the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in the US arsenal.

The first known use of the weapon in combat was in April 2017 against the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

The explosion in Beirut was so powerful that some observers feared the city had experienced a nuclear detonation of some sort, a fear exacerbated by the mushroom cloud towering over the blast site after the explosion.

The governor of Beirut compared Tuesday's horrific explosion to the atomic bombs that devastated the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.

"In my life, I haven't seen destruction on this scale," he said.

The explosive power would, however, be comparable to the lowest-yield B61 nuclear gravity bomb, which is believed to have an explosive yield of about 300 tons.

Some experts have estimated the explosive yield for what happened in Beirut to be 1 to 2 kilotons, which would make the blast more powerful than some of the other small US tactical nukes.