Not that this has anything to do with anything but I wonder what that Russian Submarine was up do down there and if any connection can be made

The reason its growing is because the New Madrid Seismic Zone is getting ready to split the US in half .

"The 1.5 million barrels of liquid butane 1500 feet from the sinkhole has an explosive capacity of 100 Hiroshima nuclear bombs, 1.5 times the explosive force of the largest thermonuclear weapon in current service in the U.S"

I think that would be enough for me to start packing.

Does anyone know how many miles the blast would go out if the butane were to ignite? Is there any way to calculate this, or make an educated guess?

butane cannot burn or explode unless mixed with the proper amount of oxygen. it is childish to claim one hundred hiroshimas blah blah blah. will not happen.
furthermore, the amount of air mixed with butane to cause an explosion is about 18 to one, about the same as gasoline.
this posting is noxious scare mongering.

now, if the butane were to begin escaping, and was ignited on the surface, it would make a really big and smoky fire.

not going to explode though.

most curious is why a useful fuel was buried.

Anyone actually informed on this knows it for what it is:
An unfortunate, limited, and containable local emergency. Yes, it is a real thing happening. No, it isn't going to involve a massive explosion or the loss of tons of life or even affect all that much wildlife and will only affect a few people (God help them)
The hysteria surrounding this is mostly spurred by an advertisment driven blog called the Examiner, fanned by radical enviro groups who will use anything, even if completely unrelated, to go after the oil and gas business in the state.
The "conspiracy" is simply a case of a Texas brine extraction company basically mining the salt for 30 years and capping the "dome". The integrity of the dome was called into question, the state DNR (Dept of Natural Resources) knew about that and did pretty much nothing. Then a year later this sinkhole begins to develop. All natural gas pipelines in the immediate area were cut off and re-routed. The butane well is still a concern but remains an unlikely scenario. And no, like an earlier poster stated, it would not "ignite a dirty bomb". The worst case is a big nasty fire that will send lots of nasty smoke into nearby communities, and depending on wind, into the large metro areas of Baton Rouge and New Orleans. But again, an unlikely scenario.

Any speculation that the cop shootings in the Valero Refinery parking lot are in any way connected to the sinkhole are based on absolutely nothing but frantic ranting at this point? Why shoot 2 local cops over this?

Anyway- DNR head has already resigned and the Texas company is being forced to pay for the response efforts and will surely be sued. It is shame altogether, but please, lay off the extreme sensationalism!

This brings to mind the maps of Edgar Cayce and Michael Godron Scallion, and the rumored future maps that the US Navy has too, of the Great Lakes feeding directly into the Gulf. A simple collapse of the caverns, without any explosion, might just do it.