ГАЛИФАКС 1917: Самый страшный взрыв до атомной эпохи

On December 6, 1917, at 9:04:35 in the morning, the harbour of the Canadian city of Halifax ceased to exist. The French vessel SS Mont-Blanc, loaded with 2,300 tons of picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 10 tons of gun cotton, and 35 tons of benzol in open drums on deck, collided with the Norwegian steamship SS Imo in the narrow strait of The Narrows. Twenty-five minutes after the collision, a force of 2.9 kilotons wiped the northern part of the city off the map. Around 2,000 people died. 9,000 were injured. 200 were blinded — the disaster gave rise to an entirely new chapter in ophthalmology. 1,600 buildings were completely destroyed, 12,000 damaged. The shockwave shattered windows 80 kilometres away. Hiroshima was still 28 years away, and throughout that entire period Halifax remained the most powerful explosion ever produced by human hands. This is not only a story about a catastrophe. It is the story of a cargo concealed from the harbour master. Of a navigational error that cost two thousand lives. Of documents that vanished after the inquiry. Of how, a quarter of a century later, the Halifax data ended up on the drafting table of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. And of why, on August 4, 2020, Beirut repeated the Halifax scenario almost word for word. TIMECODES 00:00 The minute that destroyed a city 00:46 Halifax as the Atlantic's principal military harbour 01:30 The collision of the Mont-Blanc and the Imo 02:20 A burning ship and 25 minutes without evacuation 03:54 Detonation at 9:04:35 04:20 The secret cargo and picric acid 06:20 Navigation errors, language, and military secrecy 07:54 The physics of the blast: fireball, shockwave, and tsunami 10:14 The first photograph of a catastrophe on this scale 11:35 Richmond, the victims, and blindness from broken glass 12:44 Tufts Cove and the forgotten tragedy of the Mi'kmaq 13:20 Vince Coleman and the train that was saved 14:21 Rescue efforts, the blizzard, and help from Boston 16:16 The inquiry, the accusations, and the missing documents 18:57 The Manhattan Project studies Halifax 22:48 Beirut, Tianjin, Texas City: the scenario repeats 25:37 Why Halifax remains a warning SOURCES AND MATERIALS Janet Kitz. Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion and the Road to Recovery (Nimbus, 1989) John U. Bacon. The Great Halifax Explosion (HarperCollins, 2017) Laura M. MacDonald. Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion of 1917 (Walker Books, 2005) Janet Maybee. Aftershock: The Halifax Explosion and the Persecution of Pilot Francis Mackey (Nimbus, 2015) Samuel Henry Prince. Catastrophe and Social Change: Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster (Columbia University, 1920) — the world's first sociological study of a mass catastrophe Joseph Scanlon, Carleton University. A series of studies on the sociology and communications of the Halifax catastrophe Wreck Commissioner's Inquiry (Drysdale Commission). Inquiry records, December 1917 – February 1918. Library and Archives Canada Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax. Archive of photographs, artefacts, and survivors' correspondence Nova Scotia Archives. The Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book — a named list of the dead Arthur Barnstead. Archival photograph of the mushroom cloud, taken 15 seconds after the detonation, December 6, 1917 US National Defense Research Committee. Effects of Impact and Explosion (1946) — a report that used the Halifax data to model the effects of atomic weapons George Kistiakowsky. Documents on shockwave research as part of the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos archives Lebanese Government. Final Report on the Beirut Port Explosion (August 2020) US Chemical Safety Board. Report on the West Fertilizer Company disaster, Texas City, 2013 Halifax Explosion National Historic Site of Canada