The GBU-43, otherwise known as the Mother of All Bombs, or MOAB unleashes a devastating fireball that incinerates anything within 30 feet when it first detonates.
In the milliseconds following the initial blast, all the oxygen would have been sucked out of the tunnels and for hundreds of feet around, literally sucking the life out of terrorists, suffocating them as their lungs imploded.
Then, in a flash the fiery shockwave would have blasted outwards at the speed of sound for up to a mile, causing huge concussive injuries to anyone caught in its path, essentially smashing them to death, while at the same time leveling buildings and trees.
Ears would have been left bleeding and internal organs battered by the staggering force of the blast.
Anyone caught inside the tunnels would have been crushed as the force of 19,000 pounds of highly complex explosives caused them to collapse on the ISIS terrorists.
Anyone left alive would have been shocked and left in awe by the ferocity of the blast – the psychological scars staying with them forever.
The Pentagon estimates that up to 800 ISIS soldiers were in the area at the time of the blast.
Its frightening power was unleashed by the United States for the first time on Thursday when it was dropped on an ISIS camp in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province, in order to obliterate underground tunnels used by the terrorists.
A crater left by the blast is believed to be more than 300 feet wide after it exploded just six feet above the ground. Anyone at the blast site was vaporized.
The energy released by the nearly 19,000 pounds of highly complex explosive, would have caused a barometric shock wave known as ‘overpressure’ that moves at the speed of sound away from ground zero.
Classed as a thermobaric bomb – ‘thermo’ for heat and ‘baric’ for pressure, the MOAB features a two stage detonation powered by H6 explosive which contains powdered aluminum.
The first blast detonates and spreads highly flammable aluminum dust and the second is the baric blast – which literally sucks oxygen out from cave tunnels before rapidly becoming an expanding shock wave.
Both the implosion and the blast wave cause massive internal damage to anyone who has not been already been incinerated by the detonation, with most injuries to hollow organs such as the ears, lungs and stomach.
Anyone in the tunnels who did not have the life sucked out them would have then been crushed to death by the sheer force of the explosion.
1: The MOAB would technically explode as an airburst weapon, albeit from six-feet and not thousands, like a nuclear bomb.
2: As the bomb ignites the alumimum dust and nearly 19,000 pounds of explosives a shock wave sucks the air from another 160-feet of prime Manhattan real estate and destroying Broadway. Concrete buildings are severely damaged and fatalities are also close to 100 percent here.
3: The dissipated air blast continues on to more than 300-feet, damaging more residential buildings and causing injury to anyone caught up in the blast and more fatalities.
4: People up to 330-feet away from Ground Zero would suffer 3rd degree burns and some would suffer the loss of their limbs.
* Known as the ‘Mother Of All Bombs’
* Its explosion is equivalent to 11 tons of TNT and the blast radius is a mile wide
* First tested by US forces in 2003
* It is designed to destroy heavily reinforced targets or to shatter ground forces and armour across a large area
* The bomb has ‘grid’ fins that fold into the body and then open up in flight to help control its descent
* It can only be deployed out of the back of a large cargo plane due to its size
* The bomb rides on a pallet, a parachute pulls the pallet and bomb out of the plane
* The pallet then separates so that the bomb can fall to its target
* It accelerates rapidly to its terminal velocity and is partially guided to its target via satellite
* It explodes six feet (1.8 meters) above the ground
* The idea behind this ‘airburst’ mechanism is to spread its destructive range
Join GhanaStar.com to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.