When I was a teenager, my Dad was the Sherriff of Orange County Florida (Orlando, Disney World, etc.) He played golf with Kennedy Space Center security honchos, and so we were able to get passes to watch all these launches: Apollo 13 (April 1970), Apollo 14 (April 1971), Apollo 15 (late 71), Apollo 16 (1972) and Apollo 17 (December 1972). We watched those beasts from three miles away, parked on the causeway next to the Vehicle Assembly Building.
When these babies fired up you could see the shock wave moving toward you, across the swamp and saw grass between you and the pad. Cars oscillated up and down on their shocks. Apollo 17 lifted off at 12:30 at night into a perfectly clear sky. Magnificent. You "felt" the sound deep inside. It was, and remains, the most awesome thing I have ever seen.
63 - "When I was a kid I read a book about rockets that said we would never go to the moon because the booster that would be needed would be so large that the sound could kill people 30 miles away."
Well, my house is 20 miles from the pad, and even the shuttle launch shakes the windows if the wind is right, and the SaturnV really shook things.
They built the operations center with glass windows several inches thick because of the potential problem, and it is 3 1/2 miles from the launch pads.