[madvoid]

An example to back you up: if the laser pulse was 1 nanosecond, the energy required to make the beam a 500 terawatt beam would be 500 kJ, or the energy released by the combustion of one gram of gasoline

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28500e12+Watts%29+*+%2...

*Edited because of wrong numbers

[MSM]

Once I got the "for dummies" (Thanks james!) I immediately made the connection that it was an extremely short pulse-

However that really puts it into perspective, thank you.