April 29, 2010 • 24 mins
People often think of volcanoes as conical mountains erupting ash, smoke and lava into the air. But how do they work? Why are they so dangerous? Listen in to learn more about volcanoes (and all the ways they can kill an unlucky bystander) in this podcast.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Anom like the Science or how stuff
works dot com. This is Robert Lamb Signs, writer at
how stuffworks dot com. And this week we're talking about
(00:23):
death by Volcano, which which kind of takes me back
because when I was a kid. Um, I think everybody
had a variation on this game, but me and my
sisters should played this. This game where would be like
in the living room and suddenly somebody would yell out
everything but the couch is is lava and we'd all
have to jump on the couch because if you were
stuck on the floor, then you were burned alive by lava.
(00:45):
Sometimes it was never ending pit, but most of the
time I think it was law. Do you guys do that? Um? Yeah,
occasionally it wasn't. One of our central games were more
like Ghost in the Graveyard type of crew. I don't
know that one. Oh really goes to the graveyard where
you uh, you're outside, takes place at night and there's
like somebody who is I guess the ghost and anyway,
you have to make a lap around a prescribed circuit
(01:07):
and make it back safely. Well that sounds fun. It's
actually really fun. Yeah, it's a really good summer game.
But I did we did play the volcano game as well. Okay, well, um,
well yeah, so basically we're talking about ways since you
wouldn't you're not actually going to have your living room
suddenly turned into lava and burn you alive. Um, but still,
volcanoes can be pretty deadly. So we're gonna we're gonna
(01:28):
talk about him a little bit here today. If you
have if you have any personal experience with volcanoes, yeah,
not so much. Um, I've seen some. But the story
that stuck out to me when we've decided on this
podcast topic was that there was this story in winter
two thousand and ten about this climber who fell into
the crater at Mount St Allan's. Did you hear about that? No?
I don't. Yeah, he was a he's a pretty expert climber.
(01:51):
I think he climbed Mount Saint Helen's like to the
tain of almost seventy times, and so you know, he
was up at the heat, he was at the summit
and here have just backpack and he took up his
jacket and he was going to pose for a picture.
Why not? Yeah, and he fell into the volcano. Yeah yeah,
Cornis gave away the great way to go. I mean
that's like, that's like the manliest death ever. Oh I
(02:12):
don't know. I mean I I got to debate that
because you know, what if you're still living and you know,
he's at the bottom wherever he fell, and he's wondering
if somebody's going to get to him, or maybe he's
kind of dying, you know, slowly, and he sees help
because they did actually recover his body. Yeah, but I'm
just thinking, like you know, it's like later, it's like
they're talking about mountaineers and mountain climbers and they're like, oh, yeah,
there was old Carl and he h he died in
(02:35):
the old folks home up there, and uh in uh
in Coffee County. You know. How about about Doug Oh
he uh he sprained his leg real bad. He's still
around Medda and do much. Well. How about what's his
name is that? Oh? He fell into a volcano. Like
that's the most awesome death ever. Like people were probably
thinking when I'm premated, I want my nevs, like I
want my ashes to go into a volcano. Like, that's
(02:55):
just so epic. And this guy that's how he died
and that's I mean, if you have to tick away,
it's pretty fantastic. Right, So that's one way to uh,
to die by way of a volcano. Um. And what
are volcanoes again? In case you guys need a quick review,
I'm happy to provide such review to you. Yeah. Well,
you know, most of the time we do think about
(03:15):
like Mountain St. Helm's we think of or we think
of a big fiery mountain, you know, like the kind
of place where a dark lord might board some sort
of horribly powerful ring to enslave the population of a
fantasy world. But but but they can be a little
more than that. Um. Generally speaking, a volcano was any
place on a planet where some material from the inside
(03:35):
of the planet makes its way through to the planet's surface. Um.
And you know, it's like, you know, sort of like
a pimple or something, you know, except more geologic terms, right.
And the geologic terms would be lava, ash and gases
right right. And the layers wouldn't be skin, muscle, et cetera.
They would be core, mantle, and outer crust. So magma
(03:55):
can rise where two plates meet. That's right, right. So
you remember the crust of the Earth is about it
into you know, about twelve different plates, right yeah, and right,
like you were saying, Robert doing a fun job, magma
can rise up for the two places. It's like the
ring of fire all that stuff. You know, It's like
wherever they meet. Um, you basically have this this rift
where magma can rise. Um. But it can. Magma can
(04:18):
also push up, push up under the middle of a plate.
It's much less common, but this is the interplate interplate
volcanic activity is casban an unusually hot mantel material forming
in the lower mantle, then pushing up into the upper mantle, right,
and then this uh, this wells up and uh and
it basically creates a hot spot, okay, And it's not
(04:40):
just some tiny hot spot. It's a hot spot that's
you know, hundreds to maybe even a thousand kilometers wide.
We're talking a huge hot spot. And due to the
unusual heat of the mantel material, it melts, forming magma
just under the Earth's crust, all right, and then that
burst up and you have a volcano. Um. But it
is a since the this is kind of interesting though,
Since a continental plate move is over this spot, the
(05:01):
magma will create a string of volcanoes which die out
once the plate moves past the hot spot. So you
have situations like the volcanoes in a white uh, which
which were created by the spot forming this volcano. And
then this is like an assembly line of of geologic strife,
if you will. Yeah, I mean speaking of geologic strife,
(05:22):
I mean the ring of fire has to take the kick.
And incidentally Indonesia has the most oh yeah yeah in
the US. I feel like Mount St. Helens gets a
gets a lot of credit, gets a lot of volcanic credit.
But really they're a hundred sixty nine active volcanoes in
the US. Did you know that, Robert I did not
have that figure of floating around my head. Of course,
we have Haaii too, and they have they have they
(05:43):
have some awesome volcanic activity there as well, which I
got to see firsthand several years back. Did you know
you've been yeah no, no, uh no, we did not
did my honeymoon to Mexico. But this was like during
a time when I didn't know what I was doing.
But a friend of mine and uh J P. Collen
if he's listening. Um. Moved out to Honolulu. He had
(06:05):
an architect job out there, so he's like, Hey, everybody
wants to come visit me. You got a fruit place
to stay in? Why So I went out there and
visited him for as long as he put up with
me to see it was awesome, got to see the
volcano is a beautiful place. Yeah. I was a big
fan of Hawaii. Only been to twice though. Oh yeah,
well you can pretty much any of those islands are great,
even the leaper ones so or the Leopard one, it's
(06:27):
just the one. So death by lava. Yeah, while I
was in a way, I saw a guy get hit
by a bus, But I did not see anybody killed
by a lava flow. Um, and that's what we're gonna
talk about here. Did you really see a guy hit
by a bus? Well, I didn't see it happened, but
I like, I went in to get a coffee and
came out and I'm like, huh, what are they doing
over there in front of that bus as parked in
the middle of the road, and it's like some guy
(06:49):
with a lay on had been hit by a bus. Yea. Anyway,
back to the back to the lava. All right, so
lava flows or streams of malt and rock that poor
oo's out of an erupting vent, all right. Now, this
can come out explosively, uh, you know, like an eruption
lava fountains, like you know we're used to seeing, well,
(07:11):
we're used to seeing images of anyway. Um, but it
can also occur non explosively, where it just seeps out
a slower rate. Um. The speed that at which lava
moves depends on several different factors. It depends on the
type of lava erupted. It's viscosity, uh, the steepness of
the ground over over which it travels. You know, like
(07:31):
you know, if you're uphill from the lava, you know,
you're a lot safer than you are if you're you know,
if you're looking up at it on a mountain peak. Um. Also,
whether the lava flows in a broadsheet or it's confined
to a channel down a lava tube, et cetera. It's
kind of the difference between putting a kink in the hose.
You know, water moves faster through the kink. Lava is
going to move faster through a confined space fluid The
salt flows can extend tens of kilometers from an erupting vent.
(07:56):
All right, the leading edges of these flows can travel
it's mass fast, six miles per hour, ten kilometers per
hour on steep slopes. Um, when they're confined to a
channel or something, they can they can hit like nineteen
miles per hour. Okay. So I wasn't really thinking that
death by lava flow was Um, it was a real
certainty for a lot of us who can who can
move quickly. But now that you're getting into some of
(08:17):
these faster speeds than you know, it seems like it's
posing more of an issue. Yeah, one of the one
one of the things is reading them. Basically, it's still
moves slow enough that most of the time the lava
itself is not a risk because generally you're gonna see
you know, you can Hey, oh the mountain is now
spewing fire and ash into the air and it just
became like pitch dark. You know, So maybe I should
(08:39):
run away, right, But maybe you're in the middle of
a very you know, serious text, you know, to your
to your partner, girlfriend, boyfriend. You're not paying attention, You're texting, Hey, Um,
I don't know what the the shortcuts for this would
be like, hey, volcano just erupted, I'm gonna go get
a picture of it and send you Gonna get a
picture of my iPhone and send you a picture. So
they run out to the law going to get a
(09:00):
picture of it and then get burned alive. UM. That
that is actually the more the more common form of
people getting killed by lava or like getting out around
it and sudding suddenly getting cut off from their escape
by the flow of lava or UM one thing that
they have to be real careful with. UM. On the
Big Highland in Hawaii, UM at the Volcanic National Park,
(09:22):
we actually when I was there, I got to actually
go down and walk on the lava flows and get
really close to lava where people were being really disrespectful,
like like like I don't know, I thought it was
disrespectful to bring marshmallows so you could get your picture
made with a marshmallow over the lava flow. The marshmallows
were tasty. I don't know, but it's like likezz so people,
you know, you get tourists down there around lava and
(09:43):
it's a wonder they don't lose. Just people every day
because one of the things about this particular area this
is that where it's flowing out towards the water and
you can walk on where it's you know, it's it's
become rock. But a lot of times there's there's lava.
I mean, there's a you know, there's there's molten rock
right underneath there. So if you don't know what you're doing,
you could easily walk out into an area where there's
(10:05):
not all that much rock. It's like walking out into
thin ice um. You killed that way. So so yeah,
generally you're you're gonna be pretty safe from the lava
unless you're you're stupid or slow. So the next method
is perhaps not as exciting as a lava flow. It's
a vogue And no, I did not say fog, I
said vogue. Yeah, so let's take you. Let's take you
(10:29):
into the vogue um. In June of New Zealand's Mount Ruapa,
who erupted violently. It had an ash cloud blotting out
the sun for miles, and that ash cloud climbed almost
about th fet into the atmosphere. It is a classic
(10:49):
example of the erupting volcano fire mountain ash all the
all the bells and whistles you'd expect. Yeah, we're talking
seven million tons of rock and ash rejected. But good news.
Nobody was killed, at least initially, and at least not
within sixty miles of the volcano. In the cities of
Auckland and Hamilton's, however, which I located hundreds of miles
from Ruape, who something strange started to happen. There are
(11:12):
no warnings sounded, and the skies mostly appeared normal. But um,
a lot of people started showing up at hospitals, and
a lot of them started dying of aggravated respiratory diseases.
In fact, about sixty nine people in the two cities
died from unexplained respiratory illness that July, according to public
health statistics. So you could have surmised that perhaps it
(11:33):
was undiagnosed flu or something else, But a bunch of
researchers that just published a study in the journal Atmospheric
Environment I think no. They think it was invisible particles
of acid coated volcanic ash wafting into the cities. I mean,
you don't want that stuff in your lungs. Over in Hawaii,
Kilauea has been erupting since nineteen eighty three, using streams
(11:54):
of lava in you know, relatively peaceful volcanic way. And
this is where we get this is where we get
the term vog, right, because it's volcanic fog or fog.
Little portmanteau going on there, right. I wonder how Hawaiians
feel about their vog versus you know, the Los Angeles
folks with their fog. Which would you rather have Los
Angeles fog smog? Oh? Right, right, right? Los Angeles have smog.
(12:21):
San Franciscans have fog, and Hawaiians have vog. Yeah, I
think vog is definitely more exciting. Yeah, vog is pretty
much more exciting. So, like I said, Kilauea has been
erupting since but these are, you know, pretty mellow eruptions
as far as eruptions go, and the gas from the
eruption is rich and sulfur. Diack said. What happens is
(12:43):
that trade winds regularly waffed it towards small communities on
the southern part of the island. Along the way, some
of the gas can morph into these hazy sulfate particles,
and together this is what makes up Hawaii's much maligned
volcanic smock a k talk and they looked at they
started looking at it was affecting people. Between two thousand
(13:05):
and four and two thousand nine, they found that the
high exposure to VOG nearly doubled the risk of coming
down with sore throat or asthma attack. Uh. And it
also elevated bronchitis risk and adults by actually yeah, and
of course children proved pretty susceptible to VOG related diseases,
with risks of upper respiratory infections nearly doubling, and the
likelihood of an asthma attack rose by a factor of five.
(13:28):
And also bronchitis, as you just were talking about, the
risk for bronchitis was six times higher. So vo poses
a serious public health threat. Yeah, and they've started, they've
gotten to where they're they're doing a lot more real
time air quality monitoring. Just make sure that they're on
top of it. And yeah, they're aware of this situation. Yeah.
And it's a sparsely populated area by the name of
(13:49):
Ku that's by far the most grievously affected. Yeah, I guess,
I guess. We drove through Ku when we were when
we were there, did you did you know that? Um who?
I also boast the niest place on Earth. I seem
like I have hear that. Well, that's why the they
have so many rainbows and thens. You know they have
the rainbow and the license plate at all. M Yeah,
(14:11):
it's amazing. You go to vote the Volcano National Parking.
You can see complete rainbows inside a crater. Like I
walked under a rainbow and then look back and saw it.
And at one point we're on top looking down into
a crater looking down complete rainbow underneath this. It's crazy.
I didn't even think it's possible. Um. So yeah, our
next method that a volcano might use to a tempera
kill you. Um, it's actually this is a kind of
(14:33):
a double pyrocrasts pyroclastic flows and lahars. All right, these
are pretty pretty awesome unless you're, you know, in their path.
A pyroclastic flow is a cloud of hot volcanic gas, ash,
and volcanic bombs that sweet down the volcano sides and
other steep hills. It speeds approaching a hundred miles. That's fast.
(14:54):
That's a heck of a lot faster in this one
is really more of a far are more of a
killer than than just lava flows. When a volcano erupts finolently,
it's coming for large volumes of rock to just pulverize
in the explosion, and they were reduced to these tiny particles,
and these mixed with high temperature gases ash larger pieces
of rock and it all forms together into this big
(15:15):
hot cloud. Um. Like imagine like opening your you know,
when you open your oven, check on the cookies or whatever,
and that blast comes out, like you just imagine that
just a huge blasts like that, except just intensely hot um.
And it doesn't smell like cookies, right, does not smell
like cookies though, and none of your cooking pork. I
guess you know that might be accurate because of all
the burning flesh. Because this is a great example. Well
(15:40):
we're talking about ways it would kill you. Um. So
like the classic example is this is when Mount Vesuvius
erupted in Italy back August seventy nine. It was on
the twenty five though, that the pyroclastic flow came down
and hit Pompeii. So it damaged the walls of the buildings,
it ripped roofs off, and it killed every in their path.
(16:00):
They found about two thousand bodies UM in the in
the later when they were excavated the site. And and
this is what's really weird and grotesque is that they
discovered all these fractured skulls among the Pompeian dead signs
of basically the pyroclastic flow like heated them up so
(16:21):
fast that it boiled their brains and their skull and
shattered their heads like eggshells. Again a very nice image.
The the other um thing to worry about is the lahar,
all right, and this is this is actually caused by
the pyroclastic flow. UM. When the pyroclastic flow mixes with water,
(16:41):
then the ashtional water mix can form into a type
of mud. It sets like concrete. The incident stops, so
think of it as like a pyroclastic mud flow. Really,
this happened with Mountain St. Helen's pyroclastic flow melted the
snow and the ice and the upper slopes and it
formed this All this fast flowing mud swept down the
mountain uh into the river and UH and and instantly
(17:02):
heated the river up. The mud flows UM and you
ended up going through houses, picked up trucks, cars, et cetera.
And they once it settled into into into place, it
just sets. Yeah, it's like a moment in time of destruction,
just frozen forever. Like when when Mount Vesuvius went off,
the town of Herculaneum was hit by the lahar and
(17:23):
so they've been digging around in that for for a
while now. It's just you know, everything was just sealed
up in it, in this concrete. So this is one
of those ways to die that if you're looking to
die fast stuff, I would think that this would be
the way to go. Yeah. The pyroclastic flows definitely gonna
hit you hard. Um, just instant death. Yeah. So the
(17:44):
next one is a volcanic winter. Do you've ever sat
the campfire, and I know you guys probably have. Um,
you've probably noticed the smoke and the bits of ash
that are rising from the flames. These are the product
of combustion. The smoke you see it sending out of
an erupting volcano, on the other hand, and consists mostly
of these tiny mineral particles formed by the explosive release
(18:04):
of gases. One's volcanic ashes airborne. Three factors determine how
far it will travel before falling back to the Earth.
Can you guess one of the factors particles, right, The
larger the particle, the closer it's going to fall to
the volcano. Smaller the particle, the farther the winds are
gonna be able to carry it and drift it into
a town near you. Another factor that determines how far
(18:25):
it's going to fall from the volcano is the wind
speed in direction you know, I mean, what kind of
winds do we have blowing. If if it's just a
strong direct wind, then it's just the volcanic ash is
going to blow in a relatively straight line. But for
some storm type winds into the mix, and they're going
to be much more effective at distributing volcanic ash in
many different directions. Eruption type also determines how far away
the ash is going to fall um and there are
(18:47):
several different kinds of volcanic eruptions, and their severity plays
into both of the above factors. So if you have
um a particularly powerful eruption, then that's going to be
able to blast particles perhaps into the upper levels of
the planet's atmosphere. If you have kind of a nondescript
front of the mill explosion, then you know, the volcanic
ash won't be blasted quite as high into the atmosphere.
(19:09):
So once in the air, the volcanic ash kind of
mills around and it joins other dush particles, and UH,
it forms what's called condensation nuclei, which water vapor condenses
around form clouds. Some violent eruptions can even add volcanic
ash cloud cover to the atmosphere to drop global temperatures
by several degrees. So this is sort of like your
nuclear winter. UM. So back in three the eruption of
(19:33):
Krakatoa lowered global temperatures by two point two degrees fahrenheit.
And in fact, some of these are cases that scientists
point to UM when making arguments and calculations about nuclear winter.
So there's one theory called the Turba catastrophe theory UM
so named for Lake Tobin, Indonesia. And according to this theory, UM,
(19:55):
modern human evolution was affected by a recent large volcanic event.
That's the thought, and by recently means seventy to seventy
five thousand years ago, but it's still pretty recent geologic terms. UH,
and the event that they point to they think there's
a category eight or what's called the Mega colossal eruption
on the Volcanic Explicitty Index. Yeah, this was a six
(20:16):
year A six year long volcanic winner followed this, and
that was followed by an estimated thousand year long instant
ice age. Yeah, and of course also followed by a
decimation of humanity. Yeah. And by recent we mean seventy
to seventy five thousand years ago. Yeah, the Toba Caldera
in Indonesia underwent a category eight UM eruption on the
(20:39):
Volcanic Explicity Index. So this is the mega the mega colossal,
as so dubbed. That's the actual term. No wonder what's over?
Is it like like mega awesome? After that? Um, And
there's some pretty serious ramifications after this particular eruption. There
was a six year long volcanic winter and pretty much
(21:00):
in a thousand year long instant ice age that followed
Mount Toba's eruption, and of course modern man uh was decimated.
The population of modern man just you know, plummeted. Yeah,
I felt it. They think to around ten thousand adults
between and this was between fifty and a hundred thousand
years ago. The survivors they think would have found a
refuge in isolated tropical pockets mainly in equatorial Africa. Meanwhile,
(21:24):
populations living in Europe and northern China would have been
basically wiped out. Um, So just a twelve twelve degree
change in temperature can have just catastrophic effects. Right, So
that's volcanic winter. Why don't you talk to us about
tsunamis and earthquakes? Yeah, well, earthquake earthquakes are related to
volcanic activity. Can produce hazards which include ground cracks, ground deformation,
(21:48):
and and damage demand made structures. Obviously, um. And there
are two categories of volcanic earthquakes volcano tectonic earthquakes and
long period earthquakes. Alright, volcanic earthquakes there are pretty pretty
simple to imagine. Um Right, Volcano volcano erupts, and this
creates all these stress changes in the solid rock due
(22:08):
to either the injection or withdrawal of magma. So you
have like all this liquid rock moving around. Suddenly there's uh,
it's you know, areas that used to have you know,
rock under them, um end up falling in other areas,
blast out, um and produce all these large ground groundcracks.
The earthquake can occur as rock is moving in to
(22:30):
fill the spaces where magma is no longer present. Um
and uh, and then they just happened. They're just a
part of the volcanic eruption. The other category are long
period earthquakes, and these are produced by the injection of
magma into the surrounding rock. All right. These are are
the result of pressure changes during the unsteady transport of magma.
So this is the type of These are the type
(22:50):
of seismic activities that scientists will study and sit and
and and be able to say, like, oh, well, this
the seismic activity is increasing around this particular of polcano
eruption exactly, yeah, whereas the other type just is a
part of the eruption and like a byproduct of the
eruption see yeah. And then of course, um, if volcano
volcanoes are producing seismic waves, this can also um produce tsunamis,
(23:16):
especially in the case mainly in the case with like
sub submarine volcanoes. UM it quickly collapsed downwards few fourth
lava which heats the surrounding water quickly, which generates these
massive waves which which can be catastrophic so Krakatoa. The
explosion in um actually had a pretty large impact on
the population due to a crazy tsunami um. The tsunami
(23:39):
in that instance killed about thirty people. So yeah, I
think out of all the ones that we've mentioned, I
think the way to go is falling off of the
mountain into a volcano. No, I disagree. I think that
I would much rather be gone in one of those
paraclastic flows instantly. You'd rather your skull explode? Yeah, yeah,
I would rabber. That's what I want to go, I think.
All right. If you want to find out more about
(24:00):
volcanoes and other topics, you can also check out our blogs,
which you can reach via the homepage. You can send
us some email and tell us about your volcanic experiences
at science stuff at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is a
(24:21):
how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com homepage.
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison Anom like the Science or how stuff
works dot com. This is Robert Lamb Signs, writer at
how stuffworks dot com. And this week we're talking about
(00:23):
death by Volcano, which which kind of takes me back
because when I was a kid. Um, I think everybody
had a variation on this game, but me and my
sisters should played this. This game where would be like
in the living room and suddenly somebody would yell out
everything but the couch is is lava and we'd all
have to jump on the couch because if you were
stuck on the floor, then you were burned alive by lava.
(00:45):
Sometimes it was never ending pit, but most of the
time I think it was law. Do you guys do that? Um? Yeah,
occasionally it wasn't. One of our central games were more
like Ghost in the Graveyard type of crew. I don't
know that one. Oh really goes to the graveyard where
you uh, you're outside, takes place at night and there's
like somebody who is I guess the ghost and anyway,
you have to make a lap around a prescribed circuit
(01:07):
and make it back safely. Well that sounds fun. It's
actually really fun. Yeah, it's a really good summer game.
But I did we did play the volcano game as well. Okay, well, um,
well yeah, so basically we're talking about ways since you
wouldn't you're not actually going to have your living room
suddenly turned into lava and burn you alive. Um, but still,
volcanoes can be pretty deadly. So we're gonna we're gonna
(01:28):
talk about him a little bit here today. If you
have if you have any personal experience with volcanoes, yeah,
not so much. Um, I've seen some. But the story
that stuck out to me when we've decided on this
podcast topic was that there was this story in winter
two thousand and ten about this climber who fell into
the crater at Mount St Allan's. Did you hear about that? No?
I don't. Yeah, he was a he's a pretty expert climber.
(01:51):
I think he climbed Mount Saint Helen's like to the
tain of almost seventy times, and so you know, he
was up at the heat, he was at the summit
and here have just backpack and he took up his
jacket and he was going to pose for a picture.
Why not? Yeah, and he fell into the volcano. Yeah yeah,
Cornis gave away the great way to go. I mean
that's like, that's like the manliest death ever. Oh I
(02:12):
don't know. I mean I I got to debate that
because you know, what if you're still living and you know,
he's at the bottom wherever he fell, and he's wondering
if somebody's going to get to him, or maybe he's
kind of dying, you know, slowly, and he sees help
because they did actually recover his body. Yeah, but I'm
just thinking, like you know, it's like later, it's like
they're talking about mountaineers and mountain climbers and they're like, oh, yeah,
there was old Carl and he h he died in
(02:35):
the old folks home up there, and uh in uh
in Coffee County. You know. How about about Doug Oh
he uh he sprained his leg real bad. He's still
around Medda and do much. Well. How about what's his
name is that? Oh? He fell into a volcano. Like
that's the most awesome death ever. Like people were probably
thinking when I'm premated, I want my nevs, like I
want my ashes to go into a volcano. Like, that's
(02:55):
just so epic. And this guy that's how he died
and that's I mean, if you have to tick away,
it's pretty fantastic. Right, So that's one way to uh,
to die by way of a volcano. Um. And what
are volcanoes again? In case you guys need a quick review,
I'm happy to provide such review to you. Yeah. Well,
you know, most of the time we do think about
(03:15):
like Mountain St. Helm's we think of or we think
of a big fiery mountain, you know, like the kind
of place where a dark lord might board some sort
of horribly powerful ring to enslave the population of a
fantasy world. But but but they can be a little
more than that. Um. Generally speaking, a volcano was any
place on a planet where some material from the inside
(03:35):
of the planet makes its way through to the planet's surface. Um.
And you know, it's like, you know, sort of like
a pimple or something, you know, except more geologic terms, right.
And the geologic terms would be lava, ash and gases
right right. And the layers wouldn't be skin, muscle, et cetera.
They would be core, mantle, and outer crust. So magma
(03:55):
can rise where two plates meet. That's right, right. So
you remember the crust of the Earth is about it
into you know, about twelve different plates, right yeah, and right,
like you were saying, Robert doing a fun job, magma
can rise up for the two places. It's like the
ring of fire all that stuff. You know, It's like
wherever they meet. Um, you basically have this this rift
where magma can rise. Um. But it can. Magma can
(04:18):
also push up, push up under the middle of a plate.
It's much less common, but this is the interplate interplate
volcanic activity is casban an unusually hot mantel material forming
in the lower mantle, then pushing up into the upper mantle, right,
and then this uh, this wells up and uh and
it basically creates a hot spot, okay, And it's not
(04:40):
just some tiny hot spot. It's a hot spot that's
you know, hundreds to maybe even a thousand kilometers wide.
We're talking a huge hot spot. And due to the
unusual heat of the mantel material, it melts, forming magma
just under the Earth's crust, all right, and then that
burst up and you have a volcano. Um. But it
is a since the this is kind of interesting though,
Since a continental plate move is over this spot, the
(05:01):
magma will create a string of volcanoes which die out
once the plate moves past the hot spot. So you
have situations like the volcanoes in a white uh, which
which were created by the spot forming this volcano. And
then this is like an assembly line of of geologic strife,
if you will. Yeah, I mean speaking of geologic strife,
(05:22):
I mean the ring of fire has to take the kick.
And incidentally Indonesia has the most oh yeah yeah in
the US. I feel like Mount St. Helens gets a
gets a lot of credit, gets a lot of volcanic credit.
But really they're a hundred sixty nine active volcanoes in
the US. Did you know that, Robert I did not
have that figure of floating around my head. Of course,
we have Haaii too, and they have they have they
(05:43):
have some awesome volcanic activity there as well, which I
got to see firsthand several years back. Did you know
you've been yeah no, no, uh no, we did not
did my honeymoon to Mexico. But this was like during
a time when I didn't know what I was doing.
But a friend of mine and uh J P. Collen
if he's listening. Um. Moved out to Honolulu. He had
(06:05):
an architect job out there, so he's like, Hey, everybody
wants to come visit me. You got a fruit place
to stay in? Why So I went out there and
visited him for as long as he put up with
me to see it was awesome, got to see the
volcano is a beautiful place. Yeah. I was a big
fan of Hawaii. Only been to twice though. Oh yeah,
well you can pretty much any of those islands are great,
even the leaper ones so or the Leopard one, it's
(06:27):
just the one. So death by lava. Yeah, while I
was in a way, I saw a guy get hit
by a bus, But I did not see anybody killed
by a lava flow. Um, and that's what we're gonna
talk about here. Did you really see a guy hit
by a bus? Well, I didn't see it happened, but
I like, I went in to get a coffee and
came out and I'm like, huh, what are they doing
over there in front of that bus as parked in
the middle of the road, and it's like some guy
(06:49):
with a lay on had been hit by a bus. Yea. Anyway,
back to the back to the lava. All right, so
lava flows or streams of malt and rock that poor
oo's out of an erupting vent, all right. Now, this
can come out explosively, uh, you know, like an eruption
lava fountains, like you know we're used to seeing, well,
(07:11):
we're used to seeing images of anyway. Um, but it
can also occur non explosively, where it just seeps out
a slower rate. Um. The speed that at which lava
moves depends on several different factors. It depends on the
type of lava erupted. It's viscosity, uh, the steepness of
the ground over over which it travels. You know, like
(07:31):
you know, if you're uphill from the lava, you know,
you're a lot safer than you are if you're you know,
if you're looking up at it on a mountain peak. Um. Also,
whether the lava flows in a broadsheet or it's confined
to a channel down a lava tube, et cetera. It's
kind of the difference between putting a kink in the hose.
You know, water moves faster through the kink. Lava is
going to move faster through a confined space fluid The
salt flows can extend tens of kilometers from an erupting vent.
(07:56):
All right, the leading edges of these flows can travel
it's mass fast, six miles per hour, ten kilometers per
hour on steep slopes. Um, when they're confined to a
channel or something, they can they can hit like nineteen
miles per hour. Okay. So I wasn't really thinking that
death by lava flow was Um, it was a real
certainty for a lot of us who can who can
move quickly. But now that you're getting into some of
(08:17):
these faster speeds than you know, it seems like it's
posing more of an issue. Yeah, one of the one
one of the things is reading them. Basically, it's still
moves slow enough that most of the time the lava
itself is not a risk because generally you're gonna see
you know, you can Hey, oh the mountain is now
spewing fire and ash into the air and it just
became like pitch dark. You know, So maybe I should
(08:39):
run away, right, But maybe you're in the middle of
a very you know, serious text, you know, to your
to your partner, girlfriend, boyfriend. You're not paying attention, You're texting, Hey, Um,
I don't know what the the shortcuts for this would
be like, hey, volcano just erupted, I'm gonna go get
a picture of it and send you Gonna get a
picture of my iPhone and send you a picture. So
they run out to the law going to get a
(09:00):
picture of it and then get burned alive. UM. That
that is actually the more the more common form of
people getting killed by lava or like getting out around
it and sudding suddenly getting cut off from their escape
by the flow of lava or UM one thing that
they have to be real careful with. UM. On the
Big Highland in Hawaii, UM at the Volcanic National Park,
(09:22):
we actually when I was there, I got to actually
go down and walk on the lava flows and get
really close to lava where people were being really disrespectful,
like like like I don't know, I thought it was
disrespectful to bring marshmallows so you could get your picture
made with a marshmallow over the lava flow. The marshmallows
were tasty. I don't know, but it's like likezz so people,
you know, you get tourists down there around lava and
(09:43):
it's a wonder they don't lose. Just people every day
because one of the things about this particular area this
is that where it's flowing out towards the water and
you can walk on where it's you know, it's it's
become rock. But a lot of times there's there's lava.
I mean, there's a you know, there's there's molten rock
right underneath there. So if you don't know what you're doing,
you could easily walk out into an area where there's
(10:05):
not all that much rock. It's like walking out into
thin ice um. You killed that way. So so yeah,
generally you're you're gonna be pretty safe from the lava
unless you're you're stupid or slow. So the next method
is perhaps not as exciting as a lava flow. It's
a vogue And no, I did not say fog, I
said vogue. Yeah, so let's take you. Let's take you
(10:29):
into the vogue um. In June of New Zealand's Mount Ruapa,
who erupted violently. It had an ash cloud blotting out
the sun for miles, and that ash cloud climbed almost
about th fet into the atmosphere. It is a classic
(10:49):
example of the erupting volcano fire mountain ash all the
all the bells and whistles you'd expect. Yeah, we're talking
seven million tons of rock and ash rejected. But good news.
Nobody was killed, at least initially, and at least not
within sixty miles of the volcano. In the cities of
Auckland and Hamilton's, however, which I located hundreds of miles
from Ruape, who something strange started to happen. There are
(11:12):
no warnings sounded, and the skies mostly appeared normal. But um,
a lot of people started showing up at hospitals, and
a lot of them started dying of aggravated respiratory diseases.
In fact, about sixty nine people in the two cities
died from unexplained respiratory illness that July, according to public
health statistics. So you could have surmised that perhaps it
(11:33):
was undiagnosed flu or something else, But a bunch of
researchers that just published a study in the journal Atmospheric
Environment I think no. They think it was invisible particles
of acid coated volcanic ash wafting into the cities. I mean,
you don't want that stuff in your lungs. Over in Hawaii,
Kilauea has been erupting since nineteen eighty three, using streams
(11:54):
of lava in you know, relatively peaceful volcanic way. And
this is where we get this is where we get
the term vog, right, because it's volcanic fog or fog.
Little portmanteau going on there, right. I wonder how Hawaiians
feel about their vog versus you know, the Los Angeles
folks with their fog. Which would you rather have Los
Angeles fog smog? Oh? Right, right, right? Los Angeles have smog.
(12:21):
San Franciscans have fog, and Hawaiians have vog. Yeah, I
think vog is definitely more exciting. Yeah, vog is pretty
much more exciting. So, like I said, Kilauea has been
erupting since but these are, you know, pretty mellow eruptions
as far as eruptions go, and the gas from the
eruption is rich and sulfur. Diack said. What happens is
(12:43):
that trade winds regularly waffed it towards small communities on
the southern part of the island. Along the way, some
of the gas can morph into these hazy sulfate particles,
and together this is what makes up Hawaii's much maligned
volcanic smock a k talk and they looked at they
started looking at it was affecting people. Between two thousand
(13:05):
and four and two thousand nine, they found that the
high exposure to VOG nearly doubled the risk of coming
down with sore throat or asthma attack. Uh. And it
also elevated bronchitis risk and adults by actually yeah, and
of course children proved pretty susceptible to VOG related diseases,
with risks of upper respiratory infections nearly doubling, and the
likelihood of an asthma attack rose by a factor of five.
(13:28):
And also bronchitis, as you just were talking about, the
risk for bronchitis was six times higher. So vo poses
a serious public health threat. Yeah, and they've started, they've
gotten to where they're they're doing a lot more real
time air quality monitoring. Just make sure that they're on
top of it. And yeah, they're aware of this situation. Yeah.
And it's a sparsely populated area by the name of
(13:49):
Ku that's by far the most grievously affected. Yeah, I guess,
I guess. We drove through Ku when we were when
we were there, did you did you know that? Um who?
I also boast the niest place on Earth. I seem
like I have hear that. Well, that's why the they
have so many rainbows and thens. You know they have
the rainbow and the license plate at all. M Yeah,
(14:11):
it's amazing. You go to vote the Volcano National Parking.
You can see complete rainbows inside a crater. Like I
walked under a rainbow and then look back and saw it.
And at one point we're on top looking down into
a crater looking down complete rainbow underneath this. It's crazy.
I didn't even think it's possible. Um. So yeah, our
next method that a volcano might use to a tempera
kill you. Um, it's actually this is a kind of
(14:33):
a double pyrocrasts pyroclastic flows and lahars. All right, these
are pretty pretty awesome unless you're, you know, in their path.
A pyroclastic flow is a cloud of hot volcanic gas, ash,
and volcanic bombs that sweet down the volcano sides and
other steep hills. It speeds approaching a hundred miles. That's fast.
(14:54):
That's a heck of a lot faster in this one
is really more of a far are more of a
killer than than just lava flows. When a volcano erupts finolently,
it's coming for large volumes of rock to just pulverize
in the explosion, and they were reduced to these tiny particles,
and these mixed with high temperature gases ash larger pieces
of rock and it all forms together into this big
(15:15):
hot cloud. Um. Like imagine like opening your you know,
when you open your oven, check on the cookies or whatever,
and that blast comes out, like you just imagine that
just a huge blasts like that, except just intensely hot um.
And it doesn't smell like cookies, right, does not smell
like cookies though, and none of your cooking pork. I
guess you know that might be accurate because of all
the burning flesh. Because this is a great example. Well
(15:40):
we're talking about ways it would kill you. Um. So
like the classic example is this is when Mount Vesuvius
erupted in Italy back August seventy nine. It was on
the twenty five though, that the pyroclastic flow came down
and hit Pompeii. So it damaged the walls of the buildings,
it ripped roofs off, and it killed every in their path.
(16:00):
They found about two thousand bodies UM in the in
the later when they were excavated the site. And and
this is what's really weird and grotesque is that they
discovered all these fractured skulls among the Pompeian dead signs
of basically the pyroclastic flow like heated them up so
(16:21):
fast that it boiled their brains and their skull and
shattered their heads like eggshells. Again a very nice image.
The the other um thing to worry about is the lahar,
all right, and this is this is actually caused by
the pyroclastic flow. UM. When the pyroclastic flow mixes with water,
(16:41):
then the ashtional water mix can form into a type
of mud. It sets like concrete. The incident stops, so
think of it as like a pyroclastic mud flow. Really,
this happened with Mountain St. Helen's pyroclastic flow melted the
snow and the ice and the upper slopes and it
formed this All this fast flowing mud swept down the
mountain uh into the river and UH and and instantly
(17:02):
heated the river up. The mud flows UM and you
ended up going through houses, picked up trucks, cars, et cetera.
And they once it settled into into into place, it
just sets. Yeah, it's like a moment in time of destruction,
just frozen forever. Like when when Mount Vesuvius went off,
the town of Herculaneum was hit by the lahar and
(17:23):
so they've been digging around in that for for a
while now. It's just you know, everything was just sealed
up in it, in this concrete. So this is one
of those ways to die that if you're looking to
die fast stuff, I would think that this would be
the way to go. Yeah. The pyroclastic flows definitely gonna
hit you hard. Um, just instant death. Yeah. So the
(17:44):
next one is a volcanic winter. Do you've ever sat
the campfire, and I know you guys probably have. Um,
you've probably noticed the smoke and the bits of ash
that are rising from the flames. These are the product
of combustion. The smoke you see it sending out of
an erupting volcano, on the other hand, and consists mostly
of these tiny mineral particles formed by the explosive release
(18:04):
of gases. One's volcanic ashes airborne. Three factors determine how
far it will travel before falling back to the Earth.
Can you guess one of the factors particles, right, The
larger the particle, the closer it's going to fall to
the volcano. Smaller the particle, the farther the winds are
gonna be able to carry it and drift it into
a town near you. Another factor that determines how far
(18:25):
it's going to fall from the volcano is the wind
speed in direction you know, I mean, what kind of
winds do we have blowing. If if it's just a
strong direct wind, then it's just the volcanic ash is
going to blow in a relatively straight line. But for
some storm type winds into the mix, and they're going
to be much more effective at distributing volcanic ash in
many different directions. Eruption type also determines how far away
the ash is going to fall um and there are
(18:47):
several different kinds of volcanic eruptions, and their severity plays
into both of the above factors. So if you have
um a particularly powerful eruption, then that's going to be
able to blast particles perhaps into the upper levels of
the planet's atmosphere. If you have kind of a nondescript
front of the mill explosion, then you know, the volcanic
ash won't be blasted quite as high into the atmosphere.
(19:09):
So once in the air, the volcanic ash kind of
mills around and it joins other dush particles, and UH,
it forms what's called condensation nuclei, which water vapor condenses
around form clouds. Some violent eruptions can even add volcanic
ash cloud cover to the atmosphere to drop global temperatures
by several degrees. So this is sort of like your
nuclear winter. UM. So back in three the eruption of
(19:33):
Krakatoa lowered global temperatures by two point two degrees fahrenheit.
And in fact, some of these are cases that scientists
point to UM when making arguments and calculations about nuclear winter.
So there's one theory called the Turba catastrophe theory UM
so named for Lake Tobin, Indonesia. And according to this theory, UM,
(19:55):
modern human evolution was affected by a recent large volcanic event.
That's the thought, and by recently means seventy to seventy
five thousand years ago, but it's still pretty recent geologic terms. UH,
and the event that they point to they think there's
a category eight or what's called the Mega colossal eruption
on the Volcanic Explicitty Index. Yeah, this was a six
(20:16):
year A six year long volcanic winner followed this, and
that was followed by an estimated thousand year long instant
ice age. Yeah, and of course also followed by a
decimation of humanity. Yeah. And by recent we mean seventy
to seventy five thousand years ago. Yeah, the Toba Caldera
in Indonesia underwent a category eight UM eruption on the
(20:39):
Volcanic Explicity Index. So this is the mega the mega colossal,
as so dubbed. That's the actual term. No wonder what's over?
Is it like like mega awesome? After that? Um, And
there's some pretty serious ramifications after this particular eruption. There
was a six year long volcanic winter and pretty much
(21:00):
in a thousand year long instant ice age that followed
Mount Toba's eruption, and of course modern man uh was decimated.
The population of modern man just you know, plummeted. Yeah,
I felt it. They think to around ten thousand adults
between and this was between fifty and a hundred thousand
years ago. The survivors they think would have found a
refuge in isolated tropical pockets mainly in equatorial Africa. Meanwhile,
(21:24):
populations living in Europe and northern China would have been
basically wiped out. Um, So just a twelve twelve degree
change in temperature can have just catastrophic effects. Right, So
that's volcanic winter. Why don't you talk to us about
tsunamis and earthquakes? Yeah, well, earthquake earthquakes are related to
volcanic activity. Can produce hazards which include ground cracks, ground deformation,
(21:48):
and and damage demand made structures. Obviously, um. And there
are two categories of volcanic earthquakes volcano tectonic earthquakes and
long period earthquakes. Alright, volcanic earthquakes there are pretty pretty
simple to imagine. Um Right, Volcano volcano erupts, and this
creates all these stress changes in the solid rock due
(22:08):
to either the injection or withdrawal of magma. So you
have like all this liquid rock moving around. Suddenly there's uh,
it's you know, areas that used to have you know,
rock under them, um end up falling in other areas,
blast out, um and produce all these large ground groundcracks.
The earthquake can occur as rock is moving in to
(22:30):
fill the spaces where magma is no longer present. Um
and uh, and then they just happened. They're just a
part of the volcanic eruption. The other category are long
period earthquakes, and these are produced by the injection of
magma into the surrounding rock. All right. These are are
the result of pressure changes during the unsteady transport of magma.
So this is the type of These are the type
(22:50):
of seismic activities that scientists will study and sit and
and and be able to say, like, oh, well, this
the seismic activity is increasing around this particular of polcano
eruption exactly, yeah, whereas the other type just is a
part of the eruption and like a byproduct of the
eruption see yeah. And then of course, um, if volcano
volcanoes are producing seismic waves, this can also um produce tsunamis,
(23:16):
especially in the case mainly in the case with like
sub submarine volcanoes. UM it quickly collapsed downwards few fourth
lava which heats the surrounding water quickly, which generates these
massive waves which which can be catastrophic so Krakatoa. The
explosion in um actually had a pretty large impact on
the population due to a crazy tsunami um. The tsunami
(23:39):
in that instance killed about thirty people. So yeah, I
think out of all the ones that we've mentioned, I
think the way to go is falling off of the
mountain into a volcano. No, I disagree. I think that
I would much rather be gone in one of those
paraclastic flows instantly. You'd rather your skull explode? Yeah, yeah,
I would rabber. That's what I want to go, I think.
All right. If you want to find out more about
(24:00):
volcanoes and other topics, you can also check out our blogs,
which you can reach via the homepage. You can send
us some email and tell us about your volcanic experiences
at science stuff at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is a
(24:21):
how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
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