That initial cloud coming towards you at that speed is terrifying!

This is the coolest thing I’ll forget about immediately

The speed of that fuse is just amazing. The first second you can see the line streaking to the end of the tunnel almost immediately.

Judging by the number of frames between the explosion and the shockwave coming back, we can estimate that the tunnel infront of the camera is about 183.5 Meters long. Edit: for those of you asking, I calculated it by counting how many frames it took for the Shockwave to bounce back (as I mentioned earlier) then, I took the average speed of sound, and divided it into the number of frames (considering that the video is at 60 fps), giving me the answer.

My lower intestine after Taco Bell.

The fact that you can see the wave bounce back and forth a few times is epic

This is why you never run into a tunnel to avoid an explosion. If the pressure wave wasn't strong to kill you outside it might be strong enough INSIDE.

My father works in the mining sector as a maintenance manager, and this type of blasting happens very frequently. The base camp is about 1.5-2 km away from the mining site and I could hear loud explosions from that far.

I’ve felt shockwaves from being in the military around explosions. It’s not like high speed wind, its a completely different experience. It’s like all of the atoms in your body are shifting over a bit and coming back to their original place. Like the wave passes through you instead of just a force pushing around you.

Not sure somebody answered that yet but ... the waves bounce back and forth because the waves cannot spread but instead get reflected at each end. Outside, sound or shock waves from blasts would spread in all directions and become weaker, but here the tunnel shape keeps things focused. This is actually what happens inside flutes, organ pipes or any other tubular instruments (the bouncing - not the explosions) and exhaust pipes - the sound gets trapped and the pitch generated depends on the length of the tube, which determines the travel time of a reflection before it turns back. The fluffiness (i.e. that you can see the waves) is due to the fact that the explosion is a sudden and high pressure event - a shock wave. It has a leading high pressure front, followed by an almost equally strong drop in pressure. This rapid pressure drop is what causes condensation. Air at a given temperature and pressure can hold a certain amount of humidity in gaseous form. If the air's pressure suddenly drops its temperature will too, and can no longer hold the same amount of humidity. All excess humidity turns into small liquid droplets. In shock waves, this only happens close to the wave front so the air gets cloudy where the wave is and returns to normal once it passed. Edit: initially, this was really meant as a simple explanation for the curious ones. I am overwhelmed by the number of reactions and questions. I have slightly modified the original comment to work in some clarifications. But since people liked the "shortness" I will leave it at that. There are however, more detailed discussions in the thread below. But overall I am happy for the sincere interest and thanks - both for the thumbs up and questions / discussions and the stuff I learned from this thread.

Me after a taco bell night: Workers in the sewer:

video uploaded 3 years ago... from a random channel... is less than 30 seconds long... Truly one of the great videos in all of youtube!

That’s like being inside a gun barrel without the projectile being flown at you

It’s always interesting seeing how, in the grand scheme of things, sound is actually pretty slow. My god, how did a whole war break out in the replies?

"your hearing loss is not work related"

My dad was a mining engineer forever in PA back in the day, and my Grandfather was the VP in charge of safety for the same mining company. They had to get Oxygen into the mine for the miners to breathe, but also evacuate all of the Methane gas out of the mine so it wouldn’t explode when encountering sparks from the mining apparatus. One day a mine DID explode. It happened during “miners vacation “ which was a one week period when all of the mines would shut down at the same time, and everyone went on vacation. There was only one person present in the mine when it happened whom was a supervisor and stayed behind that week to monitor the mine. I remember we at the beach in Ocean City, MD when it happened, and we had to leave as soon as it happened so they could begin rescue operations. My dad said when they found this unfortunate souls body, it was as thin as a sheet of paper because the pressure of the blast basically crushed his body against the shaft of the mine. That’s how powerful mine explosions are.

not many people have experienced a shockwave before. A shockwave is like an uneasy feeling of energy going through your body. Your inner organs can actually feel the vibration, making the feeling for first time super weird

Watching the sound wave barrel toward you must be one of the most intimidating things to witness.

I love how at the frame the guy hits the detonator the camera's shutter speed cannot keep up and you can see the line between the lit up parts of the detonation line and the unlit ones that were taken a fraction of a second sooner.

Very entertaining and fun to watch. Thanks for posting this.

Pretty impressive how this person kept the camera steady, especially when you compare it to his friend to the left. I feel like something that loud and intense is hard not to flinch from, he must have alot of experience.

That was the coolest thing I've seen in while

Me and the boys committing a lil bit of tom-foolery in the particle accelerator

would be interesting to see a barometer in slow motion here, so the pressure "peaks&vallys" would be visible!

There might be so many standing waves as well. But the fact that we can see shockwave compressing the air multiple times, is amazing.

the fact that there is a frame where you can see the entire spark is absolutly insane

I hope they had a pressure there to record the pressure waves. That would be interesting to see the data from.

It must have been terrifying experiencing the first shockwave storming towards you and it get's you within 1 second after the charger. The second and third were just cool.

It’s really cool having a visual reference for the speed of sound (or something close to it) with that initial shockwave! It’s fast, but honestly not as fast as I thought it’d be.

When I was 11 years old, my father explained to me the difference between the speed of light and the speed of sound while showing an explosion in the quarry!

..Interesting how that guy gets enough time to cover both of his ears with his hands after hitting the switch....It surely gives us a sense of how lengthy the tunnel is in actuality !

Can you imagine the amount of damage it does to your hearing even with plugs the waves have no place to go but forward and backwards so it takes longer for the sound to dissipate so your hearing is absorbing all of that energy until it stabilizes again

If I was there, I'd be shocked. Many times over.

When younger, I worked as a Certified Underground Bituminous Coal Miner! At depths of well over a thousand feet underground, we often used explosives to remove hard rock obstacles and to remove overhead rock, to enhance or redirect airflow. Explosions in any limited space, will bounce shockwaves back & forth multiple times and as that happens, Coal Dust is kicked up and if it find an ignition source, it too becomes explosive and can kill everyone inside and blow them out the portal!

I really like seeing the condensation propagating with h the wave. One mechanism of energy loss in an acoustic wave is heat transfer from compressed (and thus warmed) to uncompressed ( and thus cooled) portions of the wave. Here, the condensation shows the cool portion of the wave. Thanks!

I work the 11 miles of penstock feeding a hydroelectric power plant. None of the welders inside the steel section heard the blast whistle from the miners. When that thing blue we talked the whole damn thing was coming down, the miners were laughing their ass off!!

Based on time the shockwave hit them, and the fact that they were underground where the air pressure may have been even greater that it is at sea level, the end of the tunnel where the explosion detonated was almost half a kilometer away.

It's amazing to actually see the trillions of particles in unison reacting, bouncing so quick from one another, rushing to get to our ears one second after the blast. INCREDIBLE!

Good old days of KZfaq, no bogus background commentary 👍

if you hit the > key to the 24th frame of the video you can see the whole det cord lit up, awesome shot only lasts one frame

The first shockwave is terrifying as it's coming towards you

You can actually see the spark or whatever travel all the way down if you look at the pipes right after he does it. Really cool.

Amazing, seeing the fuse light moving that fast back to the tunnel then the incoming wave.

“you better have shockwaves to finish the job, if he had shockwaves after he-“ moments before disaster

You can practically see all the details, from the electric pulse sent to trigger the explosions, to the shape and speed of the shock way traveling around. Simply fascinating!

Lol! At 0.25 speed you can see the Nonel cord flash down the tunnel to the charge. Really cool to see the return pressure wave so clearly. I've never seen one before, as I'm always in total blackness. Even though I'm the one that presses the button it still makes me jump every time!

Shockwaves are terrifying

Thank god we got landscape video

I once walked through the abandoned Woodhead rail tunnel under the hills between Manchester and Sheffield, four miles long, dead straight and concrete lined. My footsteps crunching in the stone ballast echoed and echoed seemingly infinitely. It was a most bizarre sonic experience. Stone or brick lines tunnels dont do this.

It's been over 40 years since I worked inside a hydroelectric tunnel. The miners had a blast and didn't tell us. All I saw was the black cloud of dust rushing up the tunnel at me! But we were two miles inside, where could we go. The miners were all laughing at us!! We were the welders. And those were the good old days

Now immediately think of a practical superhero filmed using this blast as he stood there.

Imagine doing this but in a tunnel that loops back and fourth… imagine how many shockwaves

As a 17 year old who has nearly been hit by a very deadly shockwave from an explosion causing my eyesight to be lost in my right eye and my color vision to be lost in my left, almost going deaf in both ears, and almost breaking my spine, I can confirm these shockwaves are not nearly as weak as they may look. Be safe from these, this was done by professionals, I would assume.

I can't imagine being a proctologist, doing this all day.

Picture this. First, you are inside a long dark tunnel, then you hear a loud explosion in the distance that goes BANG! After that, you feel and absorb a mass shockwave of energy that’s coming right at you.

Im glad we didnt get the footage from his mate to the left who filmed vertical.

This is basically a very expensive demonstration of the reason your water pipes make a hammering sound when you close a faucet too quickly! X3

This was well worth watching at the slowest playback speed, especially the initial shockwave. Interesting to note, a few of the waves seemed to go backwards, and then forwards, likely due to the initial blast, and the air pressure at ground zero.

The visible cloud of moisture is a result of expanding air at the trailing end of the shockwave, not a result of air compression at the bow front of the wave. Moisture in air condenses as a result of expansion, not compression. Compression increases temperature/pressure and an air packet's ability to hold moisture, expansion reduces it. The trailing end of the shockwave is an area of sudden expansion and therefore the air is depressurized and cooled to its saturation point which produces the visible moisture in the air. Who want to fight about it?

First one is the shock wave, the rest is just the pressure fluctuation.

You can tell that the tunnel is a lot longer behind the camera than it is in front, just by counting how long it takes for the first shockwave to bounce back. Amazing video!

Pay attention people: Now this - THIS - is how you shoot a KZfaq video: LANDSCAPE ORIENTATION, CAMERA HELD STEADY AND NOT SPASTICALY WAVING ALL AROUND. And keep in mind, this guy did it confined in a tunnel with a damn explosion going off!

Crazy how you see sound travel.

My dad was a tunnel superintendent they did all hard rock drill and shoot mining. He always told me after setting a charge you went around two 90ﾟcorners before detonating it.

This is the same effect that occurs inside engine's intake and exhaust manifolds. This is the science of tuning those items by changing length for power and torque curves.

Ive already seen this, liked it, and then forgotten about it immediately. Classic!

I was once hit with a pretty small shockwave from a gas explosion and it knocked me over, I have no idea how these guys weren't blown away

Random fact: If anyone would like a rough idea of how fast the voyager 2 space probe is traveling through space, then the spark on the detonation cord at the very beginning is traveling around a third of the voyagers speed. 😊

That cloud is actually the speed of sound

This is so awesome, yet instantly forgotten, that when I went to like it... I seem to have already watched this and liked it in the past

Kudos to the guy holding the camera dead still.

Fantastic vid! Interestingly, this is exactly what happens in a train's air line for the brakes. The train can be miles long, and when you take air on the train, the air moves in waves through the "tunnel" - a pipe running the full length of the train. The air wave moves to the tail end of the train, reflects off the end and the reflected wave moves back up to the head end at the locomotives. This is why they train you when you take air on the train to wait 30 seconds for the air pressure to stabilize before you do anything else because you have these pressure waves moving back and forth a few times, changing the air pressure at the specific location in the air line at each pass of an air pressure wave, and changing the applied braking pressure at each point in the air line.

That’s insane, you can actually see it reverberating throughout the tunnel

I wonder what it sounds like up top in the city if thats where they are.

That's crazy that you can actually see how round and smooth that first blast is. It really shows you what sound actually looks like

Workers: “here it comes”… Ryu at the other end: “hadouken!!”

When you've actually been in a cave you have to listen to notice what's going on listening more than just the essential not talking when there's slippage in the plates you might hear some groaning that's rocks grinding against each other just by the force of the weight but when you talk about a frequency reaction that's when you're talking shattering not cutting

sound waves can move blocks of granite high into the air also quartzite and limestone can be moulded with different vibrations

I need this kind of more algorithm, not just a random meme.

It looks like this would be a blast to experience

*''And that kids is how the vine boom sound effect was created!''*

Played on .25 speed the wire seems to "ignite" before the sparker even hits down all the way as well as the glow of the cable is visible for all of a single frame basically. Insane

00:01 what you see right before death

Great, now you've awakened Cthulhu!

All right just the fact that they're having to use a detonation to get deeper causes microfractures and even the boring machine can't stop that because they're physically having to grind something there is no cutting surface other than laser that could do it without causing a fracture

Best video. No long boring intro, straight to the content, no cringy thumbnail, and not a clickbait.

awesome, it's like being inside a science experiment

There's something oddly Death Star-y about this...

After a year, it's still very cool!

This is why you wear hearing protection at the range, and especially indoor ranges. Could you imagine if someone threw a grenade in there or a small firefight happened. You'd nearly burst your ear drums.

Sketchy demolition man: I'm going to explode Dynamite inside a closed pipe, care to come inside with me? Camera guy: sure!

Straight to the point. Good vid.

The fart that you let loose when everyone's finally gone.

That‘s definitely one the closest experiences of speed of sound you can get. ..and on my channel you can also experience the speed of sound and even beyond.

I've watched it dozens of times. What does the guy actually do, which causes the shock waves? -thank you for explaining!

Thanks for video.i think tunnel like this cannot use any type of DETONATION for any purpose..until now.those miner got nerve of cast iron

I like how the demoman actually made an effort to cover his ears. He knows.

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time..... The pressure difference was literally visible in the moisture in the air, that was amazing and I'd never get sick of seeing it everyday.

I was waiting for the water to rush around the corner.

This is exactly the kind of things i would see in a movie and think it doesn't looks like that in real life.