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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

>>> Some 7,200 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion's shock wave, and authorities scrambled to help repair the structures in sub-freezing temperatures.

Just read that bit - six cities ! 7,000 buildings. Imagine something breaking windows in LA and SF.

(wikipedia)

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Dashcams were common in Russia and it happened in the YouTube era, so there were plenty of videos of the event:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmXyJrs7iU

Nearly all the damage was broken windows.

Not relevant to a prehistoric explosion.

It's the scale of it - the videos of the meteor from Russian dashcams don't give a feel for the scale or the sound. But ... it smashed 7000 buildings across 6 cities - that is terrifying in our modern world. To a bronze age citizenry?

Can't help but wonder if there's a connection to the rapid expansion of Baal worship during the next few centuries.

Around that time, the non-Biblical Baal was supposed to have been some kind of sky/thunder deity, a proto-Zeus.

Also the light - I think I read that it was brighter than the Sun from some vantage points.

"duck and cover" which people tend to scoff at seemed to be exactly the correct approach as a schoolteacher saved their class that way.

"Damaged" is different from "smashed". I'm guessing that most of the 7000 buildings had some of their windows broken, and I don't think the 500-kiloton Chelyabinsk blast even killed anybody, much less "incinerated and flayed their exposed flesh, decapitated and dismembered some individuals, shattered many bones into mostly cm-sized fragments, scattered their bones across several meters, buried the bones in the destruction layer, and charred or disintegrated any bones that were still exposed." It surely would have done that if it had exploded near ground level instead of 29.7 km higher.

> it smashed 7000 buildings across 6 cities

This is extremely hyperbolic. Breaking a window is not "smashed".

Imagine sitting by a window, and having it blow up in you face.

It's definitely relevant to gauging the frequency of such events and gauging their destructive potential. Had that same meteor come in at a slightly different angle and exploded a little lower in the atmosphere somewhere that was a bit more sensitive, the destruction would have been significantly worse.

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