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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.
*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
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.
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?
Question authorities
because the negative is often quite interesting ("interesting" is not to be confused with "woulda been great had it happened.")
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
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.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
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!
ermmm... don't take any notice of me... I'm too old...
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.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
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.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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!
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.