How can shockwaves break windows miles away without injuring people or resulting in much other structural damage?

Question

So I don’t want to imply that the Beirut disaster didn’t result in any casualties, because that’s obviously not true. But I was also thinking about the asteroid that hit Chelyabinsk which resulted in a lot of broken windows but not a great deal of injuries.

In: Physics

Answer 1

* Glass is hard.
* It can’t flex very much before it breaks.
* Humans are soft.
* They can flex quite a lot before they break.