Death From Above! [Weirdest Disasters]
Posted by Brett on July 23rd, 2010Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Disasters ever to strike down man or beast.
In 1986 in Bangladesh death quite literally rained from above (…well, no…I guess that is figurative too since it was actually death, it was hailstones, and it didn’t actually rain so much as, y’know…hail).
Bottomline: These Bangladeshian iceballs measured almost seven inches across and weighed in at 2.2 pounds. They fell with such force that the storm killed 92 people and leveled entire homes.
Can you even imagine being smacked in the face by a 2.2 pound object falling at terminal velocity from the sky?! Oh, right…you probably cant. Let me help put this in terms I’m sure everyone is intimately familiar with:
That’s like being shot in the face with an iPad duct taped to a loaf of bread moving at over 100 miles per hour and being hit with the significantly less squishy iPad side so that the loaf of bread doesn’t add any padding, just weight. Better?
This is not the kind of hail where you put on a bike helmet and run around outside like an idiot taunting nature as it bounces off your Styrofoam and fiberglass covered noggin. This is the kind of hail where you hope to Science (this blog has a bit of a skeptic bent in case you haven’t noticed) that you’re near a bomb shelter and/or a giant hairdryer pointed at the sky.
Even larger hail fell in Nebraska in 2003…but apparently Nebraskans are better at staying indoors than Bangladeshians (probably because there’s nothing to do outside there anyway if you’re not growing corn…).
That’s it gang! Time for the Weird Off! How would you rank this week’s Weirdest Disasters? We have:
3. Dark Ages 2.0! (Coming soon to an Earth near you.)
4. World’s Most Homicidal Lake!
5. All Hail…um…Hail.
What do you think, gang? Sound off!
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July 24th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
The mud volcano and the homicidal lake are definitely tied for first. One is the Earth having a really bad case of diarrhea and ruining the lives of thousands of people, while the other is the Earth squeezing out a literal silent but deadly. Both are equally amazing.
The whole solar storm thing will probably be second cause anything that might turn Mad Max into reality is pretty awesome.
In third place is the molasses flood. It's a slow creeping death of sugary sweetness that tempts you to just dip one finger in and try it. That's how it gets ya.
Coming in last is the giant hail storm. It's hail…really giant hail, but hail, not the sun throwing a temper tantrum, or the Earth the morning after eating 50 extra spicy been burritos from Taco Bell with a 24 pack of Bud. It certainly isn't the slow creeping death of molasses that lures people to their doom. It's big and falling really fast, but compared to the others, it's just kinda…meh.