How many tons of TNT would be required to get rid of the Moon?

Said another way: you would need some 30 trillion million tons of TNT. If you would like to ... But that's just the energy to blow up the moon, not the energy to blow up the moon and the TNT you used to blow up the moon. We need to ... Oops--now we have increased the binding energy by 50%. read more

Hand grenades contain as little as 2 oz (56 grams) TNT equivalent, but are designed to send shrapnel in all directions. We’ll assume it takes about 1 oz to kill someone. Even with this distribution, it would require about 200 kilotons of TNT to kill everyone on Earth. read more

To blow up the moon, you’d want at least 1.24 × 10 to the 29th J of energy to exceed its gravitational binding energy. A megaton of TNT releases 4.184 PJ so you’d need at least 2.96 × 10 to the 13th power megatons of TNT. read more