That's all an explosion really is. Here's every one — from a finger snap to the asteroid that ended the dinosaurs, twenty-five zeros of energy on a single ladder you can climb.
the journey continuesNext → Energy & CarbonEnergy is measured in joules — but joules mean nothing to most of us, so the Ladder view places every rung on a logarithmic scale (each gridline up is 10× more powerful) and captions it two ways: its TNT-equivalent (the standard for blasts) and a switchable everyday yardstick you pick at the top.
The Blast radius view answers a different question — what would this do to a place you know? The radius of destruction grows as the cube root of energy, so it draws each explosion's real footprint and zooms a familiar reference (a house, a city block, Manhattan, a whole continent) to match. That's why "3,300 Hiroshimas" still fits inside a metro area, not a planet.
A chocolate bar holds about the same energy as a stick of dynamite. You're not afraid of chocolate because your body releases that energy over hours. Dynamite releases it in a millionth of a second. That rate — energy ÷ time — is power, and it's what turns "a lot of energy" into "an explosion." It's also why a rocket, which releases nuclear-scale energy over minutes, lifts instead of levels.
Everyday · Explosives · Rockets (sustained, not a blast) · Nuclear · Volcanoes · Impacts. Tap the coloured chips to filter.
Bomb yields are well documented. Volcano and impact energies are scientific estimates and can vary several-fold between studies — the Tunguska, Tambora, Yellowstone and Chicxulub numbers especially are best-guesses, shown to convey scale, not precision.