Think Again: The loudest sound ever recorded wasn’t from any nuclear blast – it was heard 3,000 miles away and circled Earth four times

When people think about extreme noise, they often imagine concerts, airplanes taking off, or gunshots. Push that further, and many might assume a bomb, perhaps even a nuclear blast, produced the loudest sound ever. But the truth is more surprising: the loudest sound recorded came from a natural event, the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa.

On May 20, 1883, Krakatoa, a volcanic island in Indonesia, erupted with an estimated 310 decibels (dB), far beyond anything produced by modern technology. The explosion was heard over 1,300 miles away in the Bay of Bengal. Even more remarkably, islands 3,000 miles away reported sounds comparable to a gunshot. The pressure waves from the eruption circled the Earth four times before dissipating.

Because sound takes time to travel, people on distant islands did not hear the eruption until nearly four hours later.


To understand how extreme this was, consider typical sound limits. Humans can generally tolerate noise up to around 140 decibels, beyond which sound becomes painful. Hearing damage may occur after exposure to 85 decibels for several hours, 100 decibels for about 14 minutes, or 110 decibels for just two minutes, according to the National Institutes of Health. For comparison, a vacuum cleaner produces nearly 75 dB, a chainsaw is about 110 dB and a jet engine is close to 140 dB.

For those near Krakatoa, the eruption likely wasn’t perceived as sound at all. At such extreme levels, acoustic energy transforms into a pressure wave capable of causing severe physical destruction.

The eruption released energy equivalent to a 200-megaton explosion, roughly four times more powerful than the largest nuclear test ever conducted, the Tsar Bomba test, according to the American Academy of Audiology.