Good point, another of my loudest was not a top fuel dragster, but it was some sort of big block rail type dragster with the same sort of exhaust. I was standing next to it when they started it up. It was pretty cool, then the guy goosed it to run it down to where they had the tractor trailer parked at the other end of the parking lot. When he goosed the gas, it felt like a someone hit me in the torso with something really big. It was pretty impressive.

Shuttle launch is number one followed by a full afterburner take off of a B1B

I've played in rock bands with drums on one side and Marshalls on the other, and I've driven race cars, but I've also worked for a railroad in their test shed where they hook a locomotive up to a load box and let it run and load in notch 8 for a few hours. It can be quite deafening. And yeah, those damn horns too...

+1

Raceway Park @ Englishtown, NJ - I think I was 8 or 9 years old.

We had seats that were damned near trackside. The fuelies were loud but the jet dragsters were downright insane. 30+ years later I still remember the feeling in my chest as those things went by!

Not to mention the idiot who did an exhibition run in one of these things:

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Loudest for me too. Earmuffs over earplugs and it's still deafening.

A crazy old bastard called Bruce Hannan fired a 12 gauge from slightly behind me. My left ear hasn't been the same since.

5"/54 Cannon off the deck of the USS Chandler DDG-996. and the SM2 Missiles we launched. pretty much a tie for freaking loud.

lots of concerts as a stagehand.... did a truss spot call for blink 182 where i was 15 feet from the pyro,1 pound black powder concussion charges- loud

had a sound guy miss patch phantom power (48v dc) to the input of a sub amp- sounded like the theater roof was dropped- wielded the output transformer of the amp open and melted the voice coils of three of the four 18"drivers in the cabinet-

Same here, USS Missouri, Northern Arabian Gulf 1991, I was there helping the CIWS techs for two days. The loudest sustained noise was definitely CIWS Live fire on a TDU shoot, as deck safety observer. 77 rounds a second of 20MM for what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 6 seconds. That noise sucks the air out of your chest and makes all your body hair stick out.

I'm so jealous that you got to see the launch from the VIP area. I understand that the VIP area has trees in the way so you don't see the shuttle until after lift of, but still, I suspect it's at least an order of magnitude more impressive than from 12 miles away and that's pretty impressive.

Passenger seat of car. Windows closed except driver's. Pal needed to kill a road sign in the country with a 357 magnum. Did not want to stick the gun out too far as someone might see him.

Back in high school in 1969, four of us were riding around town in a VW Beetle on Halloween night launching M-80s out the window with a sling shot. I was driving, the guy in the passenger seat was loading and launching them while one of the guys in the back seat was lighting them. Well, one was aimed a little high and hit the top of the window sill above the door bouncing back and under one of the seats. All the other guys knew what was going on and put their hands over their ears. All I remember is hearing "Oh $hi#" while I had both hands on the steering wheel. Then the thing went off and I could not hear anything for a while. The car filled with white smoke and it was all I could do to get the Bug stopped and off the road.

B1 at full song. Louder than any concert I have been to. The SR-71 was coming in not going out so I can't say if it would have been louder.

8" Howitzers when I was in the Corps.

Steam Blows when I was working in India. You use high pressure steam released at intervals to scour the inside of pipes. The flow exit flow is sonic.

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Close second was a ruptured over pressure disc on a Natural Gas Line when I was working in Pakistan. I left the site that day. Not worth my life. The area was hazy from unmixed natural gas!

Loudest sound I heard, but not too loud where I heard it:

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Of course, we were about 75 miles away!

When I was pretty young we lived near Plant 42, not too far from the runway and as the SR-71 took off it would fly almost directly overhead and the sound used to scare the crap outta me as a little kid. My mom probably described it best when she said it sounded like "the sky splitting open." Probably one of the loudest sounds I've ever heard. Maybe some rock concerts I've been to might top it, I don't know...it certainly had the biggest effect on me.

F1 at Indy was pretty loud, too.

I work at plant 42, haha. also forgot...my old roommate is a rocket scientist for NASA. he took me out to Edwards (to their remote location away from the base) to let me observe some rocket tests. that was pretty loud, too.

Numerous jet flyovers, but one that still resonates me was several years ago, sitting a couple feet from Jack White's amps when he ripped through an extended version of "Screwdriver".

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^this^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

lightning strike about fifteen feet away from me, shock and awe!