Imagine a booming wartime port suddenly transformed into the site of the largest human-made explosion before the nuclear age—a 2.9-kiloton detonation that briefly exposed the actual floor of the harbor. In this episode of pplpod, we conduct a structural archaeology of the 1917 Halifax Explosion, deconstructing the "Swiss Cheese Model" of disaster that allowed a floating bomb into a city of 60,000. We unpack the agonizing physics of the SS Mont Blanc’s collision with the SS IMO, analyzing a blast wave that radiated at 1,000 meters per second and generated an 18-meter tsunami. We deconstruct the Systemic Failure that prioritized wartime urgency over safety, exploring the stoicism of railway dispatcher Vince Coleman, whose final telegraph saved 300 lives while 1,782 ...