Loudest Sounds You’ll Ever Hear

If you’ve ever had to cover your ears at the sound of a jackhammer, or a passing motorbike, you’ll know how it feels for something to be too loud. But compared to the loudest sounds it’s possible to hear, these things are barely a whisper.

Some sounds produced by nature, animals and human machinery alike get so loud, merely standing in their vicinity would be enough to kill you. So, to learn how to avoid such a demise, let’s explore the loudest sounds you’ll ever hear.

Krakatoa Volcano Eruption

On Sunday, August 26th, 1883, one of the loudest sounds ever recorded shook planet Earth: the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano. Even a whopping 100 miles away from the source, the sound of the eruption was registered at 172 decibels.

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We all know volcanic eruptions can get pretty loud, but let’s put that into perspective. If an explosion of that caliber occurred in downtown Los Angeles, San Diego residents 100 miles away would hear a sound louder than standing right next to a space shuttle launch. The shockwaves of Krakatoa’s blast circled the planet in every direction four times over, rupturing the eardrums of sailors some 40 miles from the eruption.

Dangers Of Loud Noise

But how can sound be dangerous? Well, to understand what makes certain sounds so loud, and why those sounds can hurt a lot, it helps to understand how sound actually works. When an object vibrates after being struck, plucked, or energized in some other way, it produces sound waves.

Unlike the up and down transverse waves of the ocean, sound waves are longitudinal, and look more like a moving spring. That is because, as sound waves travel along, they compress and expand the medium they’re moving through, creating differences in pressure.

Some things, like the tightly stretched membrane of your eardrums, can translate those changes in pressure into signals, which we perceive as sound once our brain has processed them. The louder the sound, the more pressure exerted. And, when sounds are loud enough, they can cause some serious damage.

Comparing Decibels

To measure how intense sounds are, we use decibels. In everyday scenarios, those numbers tend to be small. The sound of your breathing, for example, ranks at about 10 decibels, while a normal conversation usually peaks at 60 decibels.

Things start to get a little more unpleasant with things like dogs barking, reaching around 90dB, and crying babies, which can reach upwards of 100db. Because of how sound is measured, however, that 10db increase between 90 and 100dB actually translates to a doubling of the perceived volume. That doubling occurs for every increase of 10dB.

But, of course, sounds can get a lot louder than babies crying. Take a chainsaw, for example, roaring in at 110 decibels.

Hearing protection is recommended while you’re sawing away, as while the noise may not immediately produce hearing damage, prolonged exposure can have permanent impacts. In fact, operating certain chainsaws without proper protection for just two minutes can result in hearing loss.

Other sounds are equally scary, but not just for their loudness. If you’re ever unlucky enough to hear a lion’s roar up close, it may just be the last thing you hear. But before you’re devoured, your ears may be exposed to 114 decibels of roar, even while standing a few feet away.

That would be made considerably worse by the fact that lions can roar about 50 times in 90 seconds. Lions aren’t the loudest animal on Earth, but they’re still beefy enough to be heard as far as 5 miles away.

But there’s another type of roar most of us are more familiar with: the roar of a crowd. Things can get pretty noisy when huge groups of people are cheering and yelling, like at a sporting event. The crowd at the 2011 NBA playoffs was measured at 115 decibels, which sits about average for an event of that kind.

Stadiums have been known to get much louder though. Records exceed 131dB, which Galatasaray Football Club’s fans were registered as hitting in 2011:

Speaking of roaring, nothing roars louder than thunder, which typically booms at around 120 decibels. In the right conditions, an approaching storm can be heard from up to ten miles away. Thunder is caused when lightning rapidly heats the air to such an extent that the air particles explode outwards, forming a shockwave, part of which is perceived as sound.

Depending on where lightning strikes, the sound of thunder may soon be followed by the wail of an ambulance siren. Those are designed to get your attention by any means necessary, wailing out at the pain threshold for human hearing, around 125 decibels.

Standing too close for even a brief period can cause permanent hearing damage and will leave your ears ringing. That ringing, known as tinnitus, appears to be the result of the brain trying to adapt to damage to sensory hairs the inner ear by turning up the sensitivity to certain sounds. It’s not a pleasant thing to deal with, and can sometimes be permanent.

But when it comes to loud, annoying sounds, jackhammers are king. As anyone who’s experienced construction works near their home knows, those can be ear-splitting, as after all, it takes a lot of force to break through pavement.

That sheer destructive power often produces up to 130 decibels of sound, which is why any construction worker with braincells wears ear-muffs. Considering the 130dB of a jackhammer is twice the perceived loudness of a 120dB ambulance siren, you can probably imagine why that is important.

But jackhammers are just one of the many noises that contribute to the hubbub of cities. Take public transport, for example. Parts of the London Underground reach louder than 105dB for passengers, a level which makes listening to podcasts on the commute annoyingly difficult even with the most premium noise-cancelling headphones!

Collectively, all the sounds of a city from traffic and construction work to music and conversations contribute toward the ambient loudness. That ambience can be truly shocking in cities like Delhi, India. In parts of Delhi’s industrial and commercial zones, noise pollution exceeds 100 decibels, and even in certain residential areas, it approaches 90 decibels.

Because of those noise levels, people living in Delhi have been found to experience hearing loss equivalent to someone 19 years older than them from somewhere with more manageable loudness. But it’s the events in cities that rack up the most serious sound.

During festivals in India, such as the Hindu festival of Ganesh Chaturthi held in Allahabad, entire walls of loudspeakers are blasted in loudness competitions, sometimes approaching 140dB. People willingly stand in the middle for fun, despite the fact that acute pain and permanent damage occurs at around 125 decibels.

But while the noises of a city can be annoying, you may be surprised to learn that sounds can still cause you pain even when you can’t perceive them. Humans perceive sounds between 20 and 20,000Hz. Anything much lower than 20Hz is essentially impossible for us to hear. That doesn’t mean that sound isn’t there, though, and at high enough decibels, those inaudible sounds can have equally-damaging effects to their audible counterparts.

Low frequency sound of that kind is known as infrasound, and humans exposed to infrasound above 110 decibels experience changes in their blood pressure and respiratory rates. In experiments with powerful infrasound, people report feeling dizzy and have trouble maintaining their balance, as the infrasound affects the balance systems in the inner-ear.

In 1965, an Air Force experiment found that humans exposed to infrasound in the range of 151-153 decibels for 90 seconds began to feel their chests moving without their control. At a high enough decibel, the pressure changes of infrasound can even inflate and deflate lungs, effectively serving as a means of artificial respiration. Or suffocation, depending on who’s controlling the machines.

infrasound can inflate and deflate lungs

But as strange as that seems, audible sound can have some pretty strange effects on our bodies too. Civil defense sirens, often used to warn of natural disasters, are designed to be loud enough to alert people in their homes from miles away. And at 135 decibels, those sirens certainly fit the bill.

If you stood right next to one of those sirens while it blasted, it would be more than just painful, because at that decibel level, another odd phenomenon occurs. At 135db you may experience a slight cooling sensation, as the air pressure oscillates intensely enough to affect the perceived temperature! Although, you’ll probably be too busy going deaf from the incredibly loud siren to notice.

If a warning siren does start ringing near you, one of the many reasons could be a landslide caused by a local mining operation. But even without a disaster in progress, mining sites generate a tremendous amount of noise.

The constant sounds of hauling, digging, and grinding up stone, not to mention the explosives used to displace vast areas of land, hit from all angles on-site. With all that going on, levels at some sites reach as high as 140dB, which is seriously loud, making noise-induced hearing loss a very real threat for many in the industry.

Surprisingly, those same levels of loudness can also be produced by a relatively small living creature! If you ever take a trip to Central or South America, you may be lucky, or unlucky, enough to hear a group of howler monkeys.

Those primates earn their name by producing a call that usually hits at 90dB, but have been occasionally measured approaching a whopping 140 decibels! Thanks to a specially developed, highly resonant bone in their throats, a group of those rowdy monkeys can be heard from up to three miles away.

The howler monkey’s maximum decibel level of 140 is similar to that emitted by jet engines, though jet engines sustain their sounds much longer, making them way more dangerous.

The incredible loudness of jets makes ear protection essential while working on the deck of an aircraft carrier, though even with protection, excessive exposure can still cause permanent damage.

If you stood next to a jet plane during take off, you’d feel as well as hear the sound. At the 142 decibels typical of a jet, your chest would start to pound intensely, as the pressure waves begin to vibrate your ribcage.

Sticking in the danger zone, we have another classic sound from the ‘loud as heck’ playbook: gunfire. Those who visit the shooting range or hunt regularly can easily damage their hearing if they fail to wear protection. While most guns fire at about 150dB, some of the loudest handguns, like the .357 Magnum revolver, can reach 164 decibels.

The loudness comes from the fact that the explosive propellant used in bullets releases tremendous pressure after the gun is fired, creating the bang. And unlike most loud sounds, when firing a gun, that bang occurs just inches from your ear, meaning those decibels are barely reduced by distance.

But you don’t need guns to have blast. Nothing beats a live concert, hearing your favorite artist’s tunes blasted out of humungous speakers. But if you’ve ever been close to a live concert stage, you’ll know that those speakers which sometimes approach 400,000 watts can pack a punch.

Those speakers can bring music to your ears at a level of 130 and on rare occasions, even 145 decibels, which is great for making the sound reach those at the back. But for those too close, the full force of the sound often surpasses the pain threshold, and hanging out in front of the speakers can soon cause hearing loss.

At those levels, your body will begin to vibrate slightly too, distorting the perceived sound. So, if you want the best sound clarity, and value your ability to continue hearing music afterwards, pick a space near the middle of the crowd.

But music isn’t the only noisy thing that brings humans joy. We seem to love the colorful explosions of fireworks almost as much. In the right atmospheric conditions, the types of fireworks displays put on by places like Disneyland can be heard an astonishing 50 miles away.

Thankfully, most of the time we hear fireworks exploding from a distance as they soar into the sky. But if one were to go off right next to you, you’d experience 150 decibels of sound, not to mention the pain of the explosion. 150 decibels of sound is no joke, as around that point, a sustained blast of pure sound would feel similar to the compression experienced on a dive in deep water.

Even more powerful sounds could be experienced if you were ever unlucky enough to be locked in the main chamber of the Large European Acoustic Facility. The facility boasts two mega sized horns embedded in the chamber walls, which are injected with nitrogen to produce sounds exceeding 154dB.

With loudness comparable to several jet planes simultaneously taking off, the system is designed to test space craft’s resistance to vibrations. The vibrations are so powerful that the teams responsible have claimed that prolonged exposure would be enough to kill a human.

A slightly more fun way to experience extreme sound is watching Top Fuel drag racing vehicles do their thing. Unfortunately, though, sitting too close when those souped up cars begin racing could expose you to about 160 decibels of sound.

The power and sound generated by dragsters are so intense that the vibrations can temporarily blur your vision and affect your ability to swallow, even while wearing ear protection. The compression and expansion of each sound wave is felt right to your core, which can also trigger intense nausea. So, unless you enjoy feeling like a human Shake Weight, I suggest keeping your distance at drag racing events.

Even louder still is another invention specifically designed with maximum volume in mind. The Mother Of All Speakers or MOAS, was a gigantic, nitrogen injected, diesel fueled horn developed by the US Army during the gulf war, designed to call for surrender across battlefields.

That 56 foot long horn uses a WAS-3000 Acoustic Modulator Source, capable of producing up to 165dB, which could also realistically imitate the sound of approaching tanks and helicopters for intimidation.

While it never actually made it to the battlefield, similar technology has been used to test noise canceling equipment at airports. But if you come across a horn that big, make sure you’re not at the big end when they turn it on.

It’s not just the Mother of All Speakers that makes battlefields noisy. Soldiers who have experienced war zones often have hearing damage, and it’s not surprising considering some weapons are designed for that specific purpose.

Stun grenades are designed to disorient an enemy, and when detonated, produce a temporarily blinding flash alongside a 170 to 180 decibels bang; easily enough to permanently damage your hearing.

But if a flash bang grenade isn’t enough flash or bang NASA space shuttle launches have you covered. Getting up close and personal with a rocket about to blast into space isn’t advisable, and observers are forced to stand at least a half mile away for good reason.

A consistent 165-170 decibels of non-stop sound is emitted from the shuttle thrusters of most major spacecraft, but even that’s not the upper limit. NASA’s gargantuan Saturn V rocket has measured up to 204 decibels at the launchpad.

Standing right next to a launch like that, assuming you somehow survived all the heat, would see your eardrums ruptured immediately, and you’d probably be shaken to death by the vibrations. But, it’d be a great story to tell in the afterlife.

Soldiers and astronauts aren’t the only people at risk of sound based danger, though. One of the most dangerous sounds on Earth comes from an extremely surprising source: sperm whales. Those colossal beasts, which grow around 68ft long, push air through their bulbous, resonant heads, creating clicks.

Functioning as sonar, the clicks can transmit information to other sperm whales over hundreds of miles. Those sounds can reach a whopping 230 decibels, but because water is denser than air, they’d feel even louder in the sea than if they occurred on land.

When swimming in range of a sperm whale's clicks, divers claim to have experienced nausea and fainting, and some have even reported their bodies heating up. Swimming too close to the click beams could easily burst your eardrums, while a direct, sustained, full power blast, could hypothetically carry enough energy to vibrate you to death.

The Sound of Sperm Whales could kill you

Aside from sperm whale clicks, most sounds that exceed 194 dB aren’t usually just a “sound” anymore. The extra energy amplifies the sound wave so much that you end up with a shockwave alongside the noise.

At that level, the wave passes through the air with such force that the resultant pressurized bursts will likely do more damage than the sound itself. For that reason, most sounds above 194db tend to be explosions.

That was the case when scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory created the loudest recorded sound ever in 2019, at 270db. They blasted powerful x-rays at tiny jets of water, resulting in a shockwave chain reaction that kept building in decibels until it the vapor filled bubbles collapsed at the 270db limit.

How Loud Is A Nuclear Bomb?

But if we’re talking about explosions and shockwaves, nothing sums up those dual concepts better than nuclear bombs. It’s estimated that the blasts from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki reached over 200dB, but those aren’t even the biggest ever detonated.

Estimations for the blast of Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuke ever detonated, range from 224dB to as high as 280dB at its center.

Nuclear blasts like those can sometimes be heard from more than 300 miles away, and their shockwaves are powerful enough to level small buildings even at that distance! Needless to say, no level of hearing protection can save your ears from the sound of a nuclear warhead exploding nearby.

How Loud Is The Sun?

But giant fiery balls of terror aren’t all bad; after all, our very own energy providing sun fits that bill pretty well and does so very noisily. Scientists estimate that the sun produces sound at around 290 decibels and, using modified frequencies so we can hear it in our audio range, should sound something like this clip below:

Sounds like the sun’s got an interesting taste in music. However, sound can’t travel through the vacuum of space, so we’d need to be within the sun's atmosphere to hear its noises. But if we were close enough to hear it, we’d have much bigger problems than hearing damage to worry about.

The Tunguska Event

When it comes to loud bangs with accompanying flashes of light, nothing exceeds the sheer power of a falling meteorite. As they tend to enter the atmosphere faster than the speed of sound, they’re rapidly decelerated by the air, causing a sonic boom. One such example was the Chelyabinsk Meteor of 2013.

Those driving in Russia with dashcams captured the meteor on video, letting the world hear its blast. Astonishingly, the blast measured in at 180 decibels and that was three miles away from the source up above!

But that blast pales into comparison to The Tunguska Event of 1908, when a meteorite exploded in our atmosphere with a blast estimated to have exceeded 300 decibels at its source. The airburst above Russia was powerful enough to register on barometers in England and even knocked a Siberian man off his porch’s rocking chair.

Tunguska Event eyewitnesses saw the explosion from over 40 miles away

Those events prove it’s possible that you might hear an exploding meteorite at some point in your life. But if it’s of the magnitude of the Tunguska Event, you’d better hope it’s nowhere near you.

I hope you were amazed at the loudest sounds ever recorded! Thanks for reading.