I often see pop sci articles saying something like '400 dB would represent a sound strong enough to tear the world apart', or 'military sonar is X dB -- strong enough to liquefy your organs at Y distance'. It's rarely clear to me which of these usages of 'dB' are directly comparable. I think the dB measurement for sonar is a different scale/unit than the one for hearing damage thresholds in air, but I couldn't figure out how to convert between the two last time I spent a few minutes trying to look it up, so in my opinion it can be fairly confusing.