Guy Fawkes' Explosion Would Have Devasted London

Anonymous Coward writes "Experts at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth have worked out for the first time the true extent of the damage Guy Fawkes would have caused if his daring deed had not been foiled on November 5, 1605. " Sorry - history geek/major in me coming out, but this is definitiely one of those major points in history when things Could Have Gone Differently.

Comments

Future

[Anonymous Coward]

The Guy Fawkes day was a frightning day for all of us British. Had it turned out differently, things would be different today. Why must we worry about the negative what ifs of history, instead of focusing on the future?

Re:Future

[kaltkalt]

because the negative is often quite interesting ("interesting" is not to be confused with "woulda been great had it happened.")

Re:Future

[Random832]

it's only a "negative if", under the assumption that everything since then would have ended up worse than it did now... and you can't make that conclusion unless you _do_ consider what might have happened.

Re:Future

[clickety6]

but there is a lesson which should not be ingored.

and after what the catholics got up to earlier, the lesson is surely:

"what goes around, comes around"

Gotta love that karma!

The Article's ending says it all

[tanya2526]

*If* he was an expert,
*If* he had it packed in
_Then_ it would've had same effect as TNT
(and so blasted about a km big hole)
So this is a GOOD model.

yada yada.

Seriously, the assumptions they have made are just too far-fetched. It sounds like someone thought of this idea - hey what would've happened if.. -- and then did some calculations, and then put it in a sensational manner to get press.

As Dick Feynman would say, this is something like Cargo Cult Science - no true scientific backing for this

Huh?

[arvindn]

Does it take a history major to tell that if London had been blown up then things could have gone differently?! :)

Re:Huh?

[misterpies]

It qould have destroyed the Houses of Parliament, including all the MPS, the Lords and the King who were there for the state opening of parliament; Westminster Abbey; and the main royal palaces of Whitehall and St James's (Buckingham wasn't built yet). So the effect on the government & ruling class would have been devastating.

On the other hand, the main commercial, shipping and population centre of London at the time was the City of London, which is a couple of miles from Parliament (technically in the City of Westminster), so the direct effect on London's population would have been small. The knock-on might have been huge, though. Just as 9/11 may have ended lower manhattan's dominance of the finance sector in NYC, it's possible that London's importance as a trading centre would have been seriously dented.

Re:Not much to destroy

[marsbarboy]

err....it would have been a major twin-towers scale disaster, London was one of the biggest cities in the world at that stage, and westminster palace was almost at the centre.

Re:Not much to destroy

[Cockney]

Not much to destroy? Only the newly fledged parliament and all the MPs. It would be like blowing up the Senate building with all the people in it. Sure there wasn't much else around but this may have completely changed the course of British history.

Gun powder = TNT

[T.i.m]

the 2,500kg of gunpowder Guy Fawkes was found with, would be equivalent to the same amount of TNT today

So TNT is no better then gunpowder? What is so special with this guys gunpowder?

Re:well at least

[stonedCoder]

The moderation is screwed! The parent '5, Insightful' is showing as '5, Funny' for some reason(!)

As a UK 'citizen' who is 'lucky' enough to see the current load of self-serving, jeering, ignorant political whores performing live, I can confirm the parent post is true!

;)

I don't get it.

[CGP314]

I moved to London recently, but no one has been able to answer my question about Guy Fawkes with certainty: Are Londoner's celebrating because Fawkes tried to blow up parliament, or because he was caught before he could?

Re:I don't get it.

[Dusabre]

Of course, given that Mr Fawkes represented the oppressed (at the time) Roman Catholic community, was he a terrorist, or a freedom fighter?

You can get in trouble for thinking unpatriotic thoughts like that.

So I'll get into even greater trouble. The phrases freedom fighter/terrorist describe the same people from different viewpoints. The person getting freedom fighted calls them terrorist. Those who use terror call themselves freedom fighters.

Of course the real qualifier is what means they use and what ends they want to achieve (the means being more important than the ends in judging whether they are acting for good or evil IMHO).

The Resistance movement in Europe was called terrorist by the Gestapo. Old resistance fighter readily admit using terror tactics against the Nazis. They are proud of the fear they raised amongst the murdering invaders.

The Polish underground even used anthrax to discourage the Gestapo from reading anonymuous tipoff letters!

Re:Sometimes the experts know what they are doing.

[eyegor]

What I find laughable is the statement that black powder (especially 17th century black powder) would have the same explosive power as an equivalent mass of TNT. As an example, when used as a bursting charge in an artillary shell, black powder is only 1/3 to 1/2 as efficent as TNT.

Re:well at least

[SubtleNuance]

OH yes, a man, involved in a plot to kill the current government to start a Catholic Jihad and take over Government is someone w/ "Honest Intentions". As honest as Pat Robertson (catholic-o-fascist) and every islam-o-fascist around.

Which Reminds me: "The world will never be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest. ---Diderot"

Fawke & Co's plot would only have accomplished 50% of this goal.

Re:Halifax Explosion

[TGK]

Basicly this allowed them to ascertain that a detonation at ground level would have more of its energy absorbed by the ground and terrain than a detonation at altitude X.

Remember, the Manhattan project dealt with explosive forces heretofor unreckoned with in history. No one was really sure if a blast of that magnitude would be substantialy dampened by man made obstructions.

The afforementioned incident provided a passable model wherein one could reason that buildings could act as a sheild to a several ton explosion, there was no evidence to suggest that this would not be true for a several kiloton explosion as well.

Think of it this way. Oppenheimer didn't use this case study as a reason to detonate the bomb in the air, but rather a reason not to detonate it on the ground.

WMD?

[CrazyTalk]

By todays definition, does this count as a "Weapon of mass destruction" then? As horrible as the damage would been, it seems that phrase is highly overused from the day when it just meant Nukes.

Re:Done later anyway

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The Gunpowder Plot was essentially 9/11 in 1605, except that the plot was foiled.

Except that had it succeeded, the Protestant English of the time probably wouldn't have made a token effort at catching the killers, failed, and then gone off and started a war in Mesopotamia by way of covering up their failure.

Re:Done later anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

No, instead the exagerrated and publicized the scope of the failed plot and used it as an excuse to further oppress Ireland too since all catholics were obviously evil fanatics.

Re:Has any of you noticed...

[Lawbeefaroni]

Kind of does but it's more external association. If someone said that was a drawing of John Locke, for example, no one would notice.

Re:well at least

[Anonymous Coward]

i refuse to know

Many are ignorant, but few so willfully so.

I'm now wondering just how much difference there is between this refuse and mental refuse, but I'm somehow expecting you to get lost on the homophones back there.