March 11, 2003

Mother of All Bombs

Look what the army tested in my state today. (To any who are curious, no, I don't live close enough to Eglin to have heard anything. In fact, I live several hours' drive away. Florida is a bigger state than people realize. In fact, I have my suspicions that parts of this state are not actually in the same space-time continuum as the rest of the earth, making Florida technically bigger than the entire universe. That's the only way I can explain how it takes so friggin' long to drive out of here any time I want to leave by car.)

Posted by Andrea Harris at March 11, 2003 08:33 PM
Comments

I live in Pensacola...Eglin is about an hour to an hour-and-a-half away. Didn't hear a thing.

Posted by: susan b. at March 11, 2003 at 11:31 PM

Good Christ in heaven. I keep hearing that this is a "21000 pound bomb" but it only occurred to me recently that they mean 21000 pounds of explosive force.

That's about 4 kilotons. Entirely comparable to what they dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fucking unbelievable.

Posted by: Dean Esmay at March 12, 2003 at 12:11 AM

In fact, if it's really 21000 pounds of force, that's about 9 kilotons. It's more powerful than what was dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Chemists are powerful people too. %-)

Posted by: Dean Esmay at March 12, 2003 at 12:19 AM

I hate to nitpick, but 21,000 pounds is 10.5 tons of explosive power (actually a little less because not all of the weight is in the explosive mixture). Fatman and Little Boy were in the 10,000 ton to 20,000 ton class.

BTW, Andrea, it was the Air Force, not the Army doing the testing. The largest aircraft operated by the Army is the CH-47 Chinook. It's max gross weight is 50,000 pounds and it's empty weight is about 23,000 pounds.

Posted by: yak at March 12, 2003 at 12:32 AM

Air Force, right. It's late, they both begin with A, I have a headache. You know who you guys are. Let's just say I used "little 'a' army," as in "military."

Did I mention I have a headache?

Posted by: Andrea Harris at March 12, 2003 at 12:47 AM

From the looks of the MSNBC video, along with a few reports, the MOAB wasn't as powerful as expected. But it's still on the drawing boards, so . . .

Posted by: Matthew at March 12, 2003 at 01:27 AM

The second half of this post made me think you were posessed by Dave Barry.

Posted by: Yobbo at March 12, 2003 at 05:38 AM

Andrea, if you've ever read Piers Anthony's ongoing series of "Xanth" books, you would know that Mr. Anthony appears to agree with you about Florida.

But those who dislike puns should avoid those books like the plague.

Posted by: Kevin McGehee at March 12, 2003 at 08:39 AM

I have my suspicions that parts of this state are not actually in the same space-time continuum as the rest of the earth

That might explain a lot of things.

Posted by: Lynn S at March 12, 2003 at 11:15 AM