Weapons of Mass Destruction? Hardly...

The Weapons
Remember your history classes where you learned of the bombing of Hiroshima? Remember how devastating that was? An entire city flattened in a few moments. Approximately 60x10^12 Joules of energy were released by Little Boy destroying Hiroshima in what seemed to be an instant. And shortly after  What if I were to tell you that 60x10^12 Joules is weak? That it really is just a small event?

Well think about it like this. Remember the Tohoku earthquake that hit Japan last year? The estimated total energy released by that earthquake and the resulting tsunami was 4x10^22 Joules. That means roughly 670 million Little Boys would be needed to equate the same energy as just that one earthquake and tsunami. This may seem crazy and impossible because the damage wasn't quite as bad, but the biggest difference is the earthquake and tsunami's energy was spread out over huge areas relative to that of Little Boy.

But what if I were able to tell you that even the total energy from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami were also  minimal and negligible? I wouldn't be lying...

The Real Explosion

As I'm sure you've already figured out, I'm telling you that what we consider to be a massive explosion is really negligible. Just a speck, a point, a mere event. You see, as a star ages, it eventually runs out of fuel. At that point the star has no pressure holding itself in a spherical shape and the star collapses. This collapse turns into an explosion as the matter reaches the center where there's an extremely dense core of neutrons which prevent the matter from collapsing any further. It's really incredible. This is considered a supernova. The star releases massive amounts of energy as solar wind and exhausted materials and light. Energy amounts on the order of 10^45 joules. Just to add perspective:

The amount of energy consumed annually by every country on the Earth is estimated to be 5x10^20 Joules. That means that it would take humans roughly 2*10^22 years to consume the same amount of energy. Imagine the possibilities if we could harness even one millionth of a percent of the energy released in a supernova. We'd be able to sustain the entire planet's energy for longer than the age of the universe.

Are You Sirius?

That's incredible. Of course, there are many more factors which we'd have to work out; however, our general energy consumption problem would be solved forever.