You see it in movies all the time and can read accounts of it, but scientifically speaking what is it that is actually throwing your body into the air?
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It doesn’t. Explosion won’t throw your body into the air like it does in the movie. An explosion is a gas expanding really fast, pushing air in shockwave. When that shockwave reach you, it’s like a punch all over your body. If the explosion is powerful enough, it will push your soft tissues around until they tear. Leaving your bleeding or dead on the ground. You might collapse or be pushed and fall on your back (if the explosion is in front of you), but your feet won’t really leave the ground. If the explosion is strong enough that it push you into the air, you body will just be a big mess of flesh and liquid.
Generally speaking, shockwaves won’t knock you down like they do in movies. They move ABSURDLY fast. They can rip you apart or feel like a puff of wind, depending on their strength and your proximity to their source. But that shoving motion seen in movies is pure Hollywood myth. If its strong enough to move you that much, you’ll move in pieces.
It is the sudden displacement of air being forced away from the explosion rapidly that creates the “shockwave” you see when an explosion goes off, when the wave of air hits you, it’s travelling at an extremely high speed, so it can knock you down.
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