What's the loudest noise you ever heard?

[Beware the Beast Man]

Silly question, but it just crossed my mind. For me it was a train derailment by my old house 12 years ago. Some drunken idiot was standing on the tracks, flagging down the train. Thirteen cars jumped the track and spilled out on to the highway (no injuries, thank goodness). By far, the loudest thing I ever heard.

[livetohike]

1. J. Geils Concert years ago

I was in the front row. Couldn't hear for 5 days.

[Beware the Beast Man]

3. As far as concerts go,

The loudest I ever saw was a band called Alabama Thunderpussy (great name), who played the 31st Street Pub in the Strip District. If you've ever been to the Pub (I know you're from Pgh originally), it's pretty small. They ended their set with tons of feedback. My ears rang for days.

[livetohike]

13. Those small venues will get you!

The J.Geils concert I saw was in the gym at IUP!! (Saw many great bands there before the admin. got fed up and banned concerts for a year or two.)

I miss the Strip District :sigh:

[barackmyworld]

67. I went to a concert at a club

and on the way back I thought my friend was trying to be funny or something by slurring his s's like he had a lisp. I was going to ask why he was doing it when I realized I couldn't hear S sounds that came out of my own mouth!! I lost that high-fidelity hearing for a couple days.

[veteran_for_peace]

4. Mortar Round

I lost about 20% of my hearing from that.

[SaveElmer]

7. At a Civil War Reenactment - Gettysburg

Used to do reenacting, and was at one of the big Gettysburg events. Had about 20 cannon (both) sides firing, plus 5,000 muskets firing. Unbelievable sound.

I actually read somewhere that until the explosion of the atomic bomb, the artillery duel at the Battle of Gettysburg was the loudest man made sound in history. Cannon fire could be heard in Pittsburgh.

[sniffa]

2. gunshots

cLose 2nd - front row seats at the first smokin' grooves concert.

[amber dog democrat]

20. I like to wear ear protection at the range

just for that reason.

[sniffa]

22. i've never been to a range

except for burying bodies for whitey buLger.

[amber dog democrat]

25. Well, the tea kettle on my "range" is pretty loud

when the water starts to boil.

but what is a whitey bulger?
just currious.

[sniffa]

30. whitey - gangsta

he's currentLy on the Lam, and on the FBI's top 10 most wanted List.

he (and/or his gang) snuffed out rivaLs, potentiaL rivaLs, squeaLers, potentiaL squeaLers, etc... one of the graves where they disposed of (and apparentLy murdered as weLL) of the bodies was a firing range (in hudson, ma i beLieve.. or maybe hopkinton).

[amber dog democrat]

32. oh. so does he have a CD out?

I might give it a listen and say, you are NOT in the witness protection program are you ?

[miss_kitty]

34. wasn't his brother boston's mayor?

and wasn't there an alleged dodgy lottery win on whitey's behalf?

[sniffa]

39. cLose - his bro was senate prez

for the mass. state senate. he Later became president(?) of UMass (my aLma mater). when mitt romney became guvnuh here (fucking carptetbagging douche - shame on my feLLow masshoLes for voting him in) he put aside his governing duties and spent months trying to get biLLy buLger fired.

as for the Lottery ticket - yeah, whitey won the mass miLLions or one of those huge payouts... except he didn't win it. he tracked down the winner and forced him to hand over the winning ticket.

whitey aLso Loved LittLe cathoLic schooL girLs - so much so, he raped quite a few of them. sometimes he had his buddies watch the rapes.

[Blue_Tires]

54. did you really do that for whitey?

or were you joking?

[sniffa]

68. you may never know

unLess i teLL you, and then i'LL probabLy end up back there..









yes, i'm joking. sorry for any confusion. :P

[Blue_Tires]

52. i went to that in '97

at the Va Beach amphitheater...don't remember if that was the first one, though

[Kadie]

5. My 4 year old making his "siren" noise right in my ear. n/t

[Richardo]

Molten steel being poured into a Bessemer Converter...

(It was a decidedly 'old-school' steel mill near Provo, Utah.)

The sound was like standing inside a jet engine at full throttle. Except I was at least 200 feet away.

[Fovea]

6. When a psychotic patient

open hand slapped me on the ear, and broke my eardrum.
Still don't hear that well out of my left ear, even after the repair.

[jukes]

33. so, THAT'S the sound

of 1 hand clapping?

[Fovea]

49. LOL!

indeed.

[ET Awful]

8. A TOW missile being fired a few yards from me.

As part of a training exercise at Ft. Benning, GA.

[TheSuaveOne]

9. Hmmmm...

I would say an F-4 (fighter aircraft)...la

[XNASA]

10. A Harrier landing on the deck of an Aircraft Carrier in 'hover' mode.

I was standing on deck about 100 yards away at the time.

[DS1]

21. My brother spend 5 yrs as a Harrier airframe mechanic, he'd agree

I've heard things. (pun not intended)

[XNASA]

23. Carriers are really noisy places to begin with......

...but the loudest sound, even louder than the catapults, were Harriers.

You could even hear them below deck. I remember being in the berthing area, 6 decks below the flight deck and everyone could tell when a Harrier in hover mode was on deck.

[midnight armadillo]

31. Yes, 100% agree

Saw one of those hover about 100 yards off the deck of a carrier when I was a child. Holy crap was that loud - the sound just cut you in half.

[DemoTex]

62. A flight of eight Harriers hovering at the Paris Air Show.

Converters. They convert fuel into noise.

[GCP]

69. A squadron of Vulcan V-bombers doing a 'scramble' at an air-show

1960s era British delta-winged bombers, loud as all hell, taking off as fast as possible in a simulated attack. The sound made my entire thorax vibrate.

[alphafemale]

71. Harriers. Yes. At an Air Show. You can feel the soundwaves.

It's almost like a physical assault.

I WAS going to say nearly getting hit by lightning.

Put the Harrier was louder.

[Terran]

11. lightning striking

about 100 feet from where I was standing. Pretty. damn. loud.

[ret5hd]

12. just yesterday...

when a (obviously goofy) co-worker decided he wanted to see what it felt like to clip his company id badge to his right nipple.

[Blue_Tires]

14. Trackside at an NHRA event in Topeka

nothing else in my life has come close

[amber dog democrat]

19. The whistle of our Southern Pacific 2-8-2 is pretty loud too.

as i think of it. It makes dogs howel for blocks.

[amber dog democrat]

15. Jeff Beck Concert

20 years ago. Found myself right in front of the walls of PA Speakers.... holding hands over ears. Rang for hours afterwards.

[DS1]

16. An LCAC leaving or boarding an amphibious Navy ship

goddamn.

[X_republican]

17. General Admission Seating for a Blue Oyster Cult Concert.

Front row right in front of the speakers.

[amber dog democrat]

18. One other thing - using a pneumatic air hammer on aluminum utility poles

to remove slag. This was a day labor job with out ear protection.

But using a deck crawler to remove paint and primer on the steel deck of an Allen M Sumner tin can comes in a close second.

I will never forget the expressions of the people in Supply and Engineering over whose berthing compartment we got to work at 0800 on a Saturday morning
as they poured out of the scuttle and on to main deck fleeing the noise.

Priceless.

[Throckmorton]

24. Rupture of a 5500 PSI air accumulator,

cost me 30% of my hearing.

[LynneSin]

26. the jerks standing outside the conference by my cube having a meeting

:grr:

[ProfessorGAC]

27. A Quarry Explosion

4 Tons of slurry explosive, detonated with cordite. Even though slurry is a low velocity detonation, that is a lot of explosive to go off within a quarter of a second.

We were wearing hearing protection, and it was still louder than loud!

Second place: The rollers in a masking tape factory. Think about the noise of pulling 8 inches off a roll of 1" masking tape. Now think a 40 foot wide roll having tape pulled off at 150 feet per second, through a set of cutter wheels and put onto the rolls you and i buy. Very noisy.


The Professor

[Xithras]

28. A propane tank explosion

About ten years ago I was helping a friend and his neighbor build a new fence between their ranchettes. That morning the propane truck had come by to refill their propane tanks for the month. About noon that day we began to smell gas. My friend and I headed for his house to check his tank, and the neighbor headed to his own home. A minute later we heard the neighbor yelling "My tank is leaking! Call 911!" My friend ran inside to call the fire department, and I began running towards the neighbors house (about 500 feet away) to see if I could help. I was about 200 feet away when the tank exploded. The neighbor had gone into his shed (next to the tank) and flipped the light switch, which ignited the gas. He was killed, his wife and daughter were seriously injured when the explosion essentially levelled their mobile home, and it broke every window on every building in sight (which, in the boonies, really isn't that many).

When noise gets that loud, you feel it more than hear it because human ears aren't designed to process that much energy. In addition to getting blown back 20 feet by the force of the blast...luckily in a muddy pasture...I was deafened for more than two hours, and my ears rang for weeks.

I've heard a train wreck as well, and it is loud, but a propane tank explosion is like a large bomb detonation...brief, but incredibly loud and violent.

[BlueJazz]

29. When my Dog eats 3 bean Burritos!

:)

[miss_kitty]

35. the blue angels flying less than 50 feet overhead

and that tax money wasting fly boy show needs to be stopped. it is wrong wrong wrong. if they want to continue it, to recruit the young and stoopid, let the RNC and the richest 1-5% payfor those effin shows. they, after all, are the ones who derive the benefit from it.

[Englander]

36. My Bloody Valentine at gig ...

at London Brixton Academy ,'91. Similar effect,I guess, to
putting your head in jumbo jet engine.

The sound of a sonic cathedral..

:bounce: :beer: :bounce:

[SOteric]

37. My mother's angry silence.

Mountains trembled, oceans cowered and fled, grown men wept like babies in the presence of the utterly-still, loud silence of Luisa Avedon.

[GOPisEvil]

44. I thought it was just my mom.

My mom's icy silence could freeze Lake Michigan, force the Mississippi to reverse course and reduce Old Faithful to ice cubes.

[ReadTomPaine]

38. Loudest sound ever heard by human ears...

...was the eruption of the super-volcano in Sumatra that formed Lake Toba. It was 10,000 times the size of the Mount St. Helen eruption in 1980.

RTP

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

40. Formula One

19,000 rpm feels like somebody is taking a power drill through your eardrum.

[MrSandman]

41. Winston Cup race at Bristol...

Forty-three 700 hp engines on 1/2 mile in a bowl.

Thunder Valley is an appropriate name.

[hunter]

42. Me and my best friend in college built a big bomb...

Ammonium Nitrate, etc, lots of it.

We buried the bomb in the river bed.

I think we were lucky to survive.

Shit, I didn't even hear it, but I do remember big rocks raining down on us.

I bloody damned hell hate bombs.

[Beaverhausen]

43. 1994 Northridge earthquake

I thought a train was coming thru my bedroom.

The sound of the earth moving underground, the apt building I was in shifting, windows rattling and shattering and various things falling.

It's a sound like no other.

[hunter]

47. That's what my brother says...

He was there. His wife's piano took a nice stroll through their living room wall, and outside the concrete block walls in their yard were falling down, and nearby gas mains and power lines were exploding.

[ScreamingMeemie]

45. A firework exploding right outside my driver's side window. Someone

had tossed it out their window. Left me with damage so that I no longer hear loud noises quite so loudly. :hi:

[HughBeaumont]

46. High on Fire

7/5/2002, Grog Shop. Damn that band is so amazingly loud live.

[BlueHandDuo]

48. Exploding transformer

Not only was it loud, it was weird!

VWAAP!

That made it even scarier than the lightning strike less than ten feet in front of me, because it wasn't immediately apparent what had happened.

[MissMillie]

50. I was in a car wreck

And the car that hit me from behind was going about 50 mph

The rear passenger and the hatch window exploded on impact.

[phillybri]

51. Monster Truck Pull @ the Spectrum...

Not good when you're 6 years old...:scared:

[Endangered Specie]

53. Lightning striking within feet of me, hitting a transformer.

KABOOM!!!!!

[hunter]

58. Lightning is good too.

Me and my friends were walking home from school in the sixth grade and lightning hit the streetlight next to us. Wow. I still remember thinking how cool that was. I couldn't see or hear anything for a few minutes after that, but still, it was really cool. I can't forget the feeling in my skin just before it happened.

[barb162]

55. 2 things

a tornado very close or the movie Bourne Supremacy

[Dukkha]

56. a Survival Research Lab show

http://www.srl.org

[Westegg]

57. The start of a Led Zeppelin concert in '77 at Madison Square Garden..

...before the sound guys toned it down a bit. The bass guitar quite literally shook my ribcage. I could feel the damn thing vibrating. I loved it at the time, of course---being 13 years old. These days, it would probably cause a stroke.

[jbane]

65. John Bonham drum solo...

John Bonham drum solo, 1975, Physical Graffitti tour, Greensboro N.C.

[slackmaster]

59. Setting off high explosives

It doesn't get much louder than that.

[Red State Rebel]

60. Diana Ross Concert - I think my ears were bleeding.... n/m

[radwriter0555]

61. AC/DC concert. It was so loud and at such a specific pitch, I fell asleep

on the soundboard.

Strangest thing EVER.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

63. Armed Forces Day at Aberdeen Proving Ground...

When I was a kid, they held an open house on that day, and they demonstrated their latest weaponry.

It smelled really bad, too.

[TrogL]

64. Recording studio accident

100W amplifier fed back through studio-quality headphones i was wearing at the time.

COuldn't hear properly for a week. Still have tinitis.

[arbusto_baboso]

66. A Time-on-Target barrage from a MLRS battery...

I was just outside the kill zone. I couldn't walk a straight line for days after.

Actually, that might explain a few things.

[Reciprocity]

70. Columbia space shuttle explosion

Saturday, Feb. 1, 2003 the Columbia space shuttle exploded over our heads here in East Texas. The sonic booms that followed is beyond description.

Lost but not forgotten.