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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.
For the first time ever my old university is mentioned on Slashdot. I'm so happy!
He has been the only person to go the parliament with honest intentions
CJC
Experts at the Slashdot labratory have worked out for the first time the true extent of the possible damage to the University of Wales in Aberystwyth's web server due to the posting of a story about Guy Fawkes
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BBC has a nice website about it too. (much more informative)
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He said the physicists used the weight of explosive to work out how it would affect its surroundings.
"We know that the more explosive we have the more energy will be released when the charge is set off.
"From the pressure pulse generated by the explosion, we can tell if windows are going to be smashed or if whole buildings will be demolished," he said.
He explained that the further from the blast the lesser the effects until only a faint bang is audible.
Obviously they had their top minds working on this.
The government's moral compass is controlled by GPS.
In times of crises, they alter it to suit their needs.
At may 13th 2000, a fireworks storage facility (located in the middle of a residential area, of all places) in the city of Enschede in the east of the Netherlands went skyhigh. Some general info is here.
Whereas the London event would have been equivalent to 2.5 tons of TNT, the Enschede explosion was estimated as being equivalent to anywhere between 5 tons and 15 tons of TNT (between 2e10 and 6e10 Joules, and at maximum about 1/1000th of Hiroshima in terms of energy). In the event, about 100000 kg of fireworks detonated, set off by a detonation in one of the central containers. The energy in the explosion was estimated by analyzing images of the shockfront wave set off by the explosion.
The result was similar to what has been predicted for London: in Enschede, about 1200 houses were obliterated and 22 were killed.
Fortunately, the event led to changes in legislation and much stricter requirements for such dangerous storage facilities near residential areas.
On a personal note: I was about 6 km from Ground Zero when the event happened, and the sound from the explosion was very, very impressive even at that distance!
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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.
*If* he was an expert,
There's a link at the end of the article where they point out that Fawkes was brought into the plot because...he was an expert in gunpowder.
*If* he had it packed in
This was not a spur of the moment event. There was more than enough time to ensure the gunpowder was correctly placed and packed.
Some of us Brits object to the American import of Halloween overshadowing our own pyrotechnic traditions.
Very funny diatribe about 20 minutes into last week's Now Show (radio 4 comedy programme) about this very matter.
The Halifax Explosion is one of the most impressive disasters in history. Often billed as the largest non-nuclear explosion prior to the atomic age, two ships, one loaded with war ammunition, collided right in the middle of Halifax Harbour in Nova Scotia. It exploded, killing over 1600 people. The anchor from one of the ships was found 5 kilometers away. The explosion shattered windows and rang churchbells in my hometown of Truro, over 100 km away.
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Quoting from the article
Bear in mind that even if only a few thousand people died in the initial explosion (there were hundreds of MPs in westminster, plus all the support staff) that there weren't firemen in the same sense as we have now. There would probably have been a fire sweeping london, like Great Fire of 1666:
"On Sunday morning, the 2nd September 1666, the destruction of medieval London began. Within 5 days the city which Shakespeare had known was destroyed by fire. An area of one and a half miles by half a mile lay in ashes; 373 acres inside the city walls and 63 acres outside, 87 churches destroyed (including St. Paul's Cathedral) and 13,200 houses." source
That fire started in a bakery. I think that Guy Fawkes could have done pretty well too.
Not even close. TNT is "tri-nitro toluene", is a pale yellow crystalline, aromatic hydrocarbon compound that melts at 81 C. It is way more stable than nitroglycerine (not related to gunpowder either). The specific combustion energy of TNT is 4.6 MJ/kg. I'm not sure what gunpowder formula Fawkes used, but I doubt that it could have been as effective as TNT.
An explosion of this magnitude (over 2.5 kilotonnes of TNT) did explode in a city back in 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada was devestated by an explosion of a munitions ship on its way to Europe. The explosion killed almost 2000 people, injured over 9000 and rattled dishes about 300 km away. The explosion was so large, it was actually studied by Oppenheimer and his crew as a model of how to deliver the atomic bomb. From this, they determined that damaged is greatly enhanced when the bomb is exploded above ground. If you want to find out more, just go here.
We have a national day (it's not actually a holiday) in the UK (well, England certainly) on the 5th of November to celebrate the fact that Guy Fawkes, and his fellow conspiritors we prevented from commiting a major act of what was essentially religious-inspired terrorism, namely the assisnation of the monarch and parliament.
That's why effigies of Mr Fawkes are burnt as part of the celebrations.
Of course, given that Mr Fawkes represented the oppressed (at the time) Roman Catholic community, was he a terrorist, or a freedom fighter?
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
TNT, or tri-nitro-toluene, is a high explosive. It detonates, producing a violent shock wave.
High explosives are more violent in their effects than low explosives. That's why they are so popular with the military. They do a better job of breaking things.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I recognized that cogent description. My wife wrote it.
The rest of the article is here:
www.bonfirenight.net/gunpowder.php
She was interviewed about Bonfire Night by the Assoc. French Press:
http://tinyurl.com/tnu3 (Yahoo News)
(My wife is a bigger geek than I...Yay!)
What were you expecting?
Particularly the consequences of persecuting a minority within your population.
Some years ago I was given a book about the Gunpowder plot, which sets the context. After the death of Elizabeth I, there was hope among the English Catholics that life would get better. Instead, James I set up what was effectively an inquisition, and appoined Popplewell to turn the screws down even tighter. My family were tucked away in North Yorkshire, and got away with a series of fines, but many English Catholic families had members executed - the English Martyrs. That's why even in today's more ecumenical time I'm not ashamed to sing "Our fathers chained in prisons dark were still in heart and conscience free".
Yes, a splinter group decided to resort to violence, and yes that was totally unforgiveable, but there is a lesson which should not be ingored.
Dunstan Vavasour
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Back in WW2, the RAF had a huge ammo depot called the Fauld.
g e2_lge.j pg
l dc rater.htm
e r. htm
On November 27, 1944, there was an accident and it blew up.
This is the supposedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in recorded history.
3670 tons of bombs went up in an explosion that was seismically recordable in Casablanca
The crater was half a mile across.
78 people killed.
A photo:
http://www.historicairphotos.com/g_uk/ima
Some informative links with other photos:
http://www.carolyn.topmum.net/tutbury/fauld/fau
http://freespace.virgin.net/kehla.barnes/disast
It has been surmised by some historians that James' aides, and not Guy Fawkes, planted the explosives only to have them found. The English people were pretty sceptical of a mostly-Catholic Scot ruling their country (remember that because of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France, the Scottish nobility was about 90% French as every Scottish king married a French princess for many generations, and the French princesses were all Catholic), and James I of England needed to prove that he was (1) not Catholic but rather C of E; and (2) primarily James I of England and only secondarily James VI of Scotland.
So anyway, some surmise that his advisers knew nothing would prove his non-Catholicism better than some Catholic zealot trying to kill him. Of course that was the result, that the C of E English largely accepted James I until his death as loyal both in terms of religion and nationality. Of course things went a little differently for his son (and grandson too)...
As a European historian, I've always found Stuart England and its brief reprieve during the Commonwealth to be the most fascinating part of English history. Perhaps it's because they were just so untrustworthy and untrusted...
I did not design this game/I did not name the stakes/I just happen to like apples/And I am not afraid of snakes-AniD
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Centre for Explosion Studies!! Now there is a cool major.
Bob: Hi, what's your major?
Jane: Theater. How about you?
Bob: Explosion Studies.
Jane: Wow, that is soooo cool. Wanna go out tonight?
Doesn't work that way with CS I can tell you. Seriously, was there ever a cooler thing to major in? I would have even dropped out of CS to be able to blow things up. They also get to study all the great explosions of all time.
I wonder what kind of job Explosive majors get? Cool stuff like special effects, building demolition, pyrotechniques, rodent control. I think I missed my true calling in life.
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m0smithslash
http://www.ferociousflirting.com
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.