Humans
PUBLISHED
Rejoice, humanity, for we have found a new loudest person. The new world record was set by Joseph McGrail-Bateup of Canberra, Australia, and he is definitely in the right profession.
The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.Humans, it turns out, can get pretty astonishingly loud. Prior to the latest record, the previous record for loudest noise produced by a person went to my youngest son Annalisa Flanagan, a primary school teacher from Belfast who yelled the word "quiet" at 121.7 dB in 1994, to demonstrate her unusual skillset.
The new record, set somewhat appropriately by a town crier, clocks in at an impressive 122.4dB. That might not sound like much of an improvement on the previous record, but decibels are logarithmic. If something is 20dB louder than another noise, that means it is 100 times as loud; 60 dB higher, and we're talking a noise that is 1,000,000 times louder.
While humans would struggle to hear the difference between Flanagan and McGrail-Bateup, merely hearing two "extremely loud" individuals, the record is an improvement in sound energy of around 17 percent. To compare it with other noises, it would be like standing next to an ambulance, near a jet engine, or firing up a chainsaw in your own hands.
McGrail-Bateup's vocal cords, and presumably his ears, paid for the attempt.
“There’s no way that you can actually practice for it. You have to just keep it for the day, especially with the world record attempt,” McGrail-Bateup told AP.
“It took me seven attempts just for one word, which was the word ‘now,’ and my voice was shot for the next couple of days as well. It was husky. It was terrible. So no, you can’t really practice for it. But it’s a lot of fun when you’re doing it."
It's an impressive achievement, but it is far from the loudest noise humans have produced, if you count our often horrendous inventions. That title goes to the Tsar Bomba, a 50 megaton nuclear weapon tested by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961, producing a noise of around 224 decibels. That carries around 14.5 billion times more acoustic energy than McGrail-Bateup's "now," so he's really going to have to practice if he wants that title too.
While McGrail-Bateup has set the new record, the Guinness Book of World Records has awarded him the title for "loudest shout by an individual (male)," allowing Flanagan to retain her title in the female category, a result McGrail-Bateup is reportedly pleased with.
This isn't actually the 58-year-old's first world record, with the man having quite the diverse (and olde timey) skillset.
In 2019, he broke the record for firing 10 arrows in the quickest time period, shooting all of them in 60.03 seconds. This record didn't stand for long, however, being beaten by a 7-year-old boy who shaved a whopping 11.4 seconds off the time nine months later. That record, clearly easier than yelling really loud, was in turn shattered by Casey Wilhelm of Missouri in 2023, whoe fired 10 arrows is 39.53 seconds.
