Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Today, we'll be talking about Lebanon, one year after an almighty blast in the capital Beirut,

how it came at an already terrible time for the country,

a personal view on how Beirut's history is pockmarked with explosions, shrapnel, and civil war,

and how the still unfolding economic crisis affects everyday matters like the price of a hamburger.

It was shortly after 6 p.m. on the 4th of August, 2020, when hundreds, perhaps thousands of

tons of a chemical called ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut's port, exploded.

Shattered glass rained down from buildings. Residents were thrown like rag dolls against the walls of their apartments.

All the windows, all the stairs, everything, everything went chaos.

It was a nightmare.

We felt that for the first time.

The blast killed at least 200 people,

injured 5,000 and left 300,000 people without their homes.

It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history.

One year on, the country remains in dire straits,

mired in political instability and facing an economic crisis

that ranks as one of the world's worst since the 1850s.

It's hard even a year after the explosion to find the words to describe what Beirut felt like in the hours and days afterwards.

I was living there at the time and walking around the city, it felt apocalyptic.

Greg Carlstrom is our Middle East correspondent.

I remember walking past, for example, the hospital across the street from my apartment,

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