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Volcanoes

Prayers for Pele

Selected Letters of Pliny (by Pliny, The Younger)
Pompeii : Its Destruction and Re-Discove... (by Gell, William, Sir)
Hawaii and Its Volcanoes (by Hitchcock, Charles Henry)

In our age of nuclear armaments, one would think a holiday might be set aside for the act of eruptions. Holidays do not, of course, always celebrate joyous occasions. They also inspire solemnity, meditation, and reflection. As we remember this month the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so we should also remember the even greater forces that have loomed over us from beneath: volcanoes.

August 24th (or 25th) marks the birthday of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., one of the hottest powers the Earth has produced in recorded history.

Pliny the Younger, a poet of the time whose uncle died in the blast, reported of the eruption:

"Mount Vesuvius was blazing in several places ... A black and dreadful cloud bursting out in gusts of igneous serpentine vapor now and again yawned open to reveal long, fantastic flames, resembling flashes of lightning, but much larger ... Cinders fell ... then pumice-stones too, with stones blackened, scorched and cracked by fire."

While nuclear weapons might make us arrogant in our own power, volcanoes should make us humble. Pliny’s uncle respected the eruption too little, or too much, as once he saw the cloud jutting up from Vesuvius, he immediately moved closer for a better look. Pliny the Younger narrated in a letter to Taciturn: “This extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle’s philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me liberty, if I thought proper, to attend him.” Later, Pliny the Elder seemed to have changed his agenda from philosophical to heroic after beseeching a friend’s wife to help evacuate the town at the foot of Vesuvius. There he met death in the form of sulfur and fire.

The eruption released thermal energy 100,000 times that released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombings, over a distance of 33 km at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second. It resulted in the destruction of several Roman settlements, including Pompeii and Herculaneum.

As powerful as the eruption at Vesuvius was, it pales in comparison to other recorded eruptions. It is graded as a VEI 5 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, a grading system that extends to a VEI 8. VEI 8 eruptions are mega-colossal events that change the dynamics of the entire planet in ways not yet fully understood. The most recent eruption of this proportion is thought to be the Oruanui eruption of New Zealand’s Taupo Volcano around 25,360 years ago.

In comparison, other VEI 5 eruptions in recorded history are Mount St. Helens in 1980, Mount Hudson in 1991, and Mount Fuji in 1707. Each of these events had great impacts on their localized areas, but little global impact.

The largest eruption in recorded history is the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, categorized as VEI 7. Its explosion lowered global temperatures and caused harvest failures and extreme weather worldwide. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, also located in Indonesia, while indexed at a VEI 6, ended over 36,000 lives through a combination of explosions and tsunamis.

From time to time, this molten god of fire requires sacrifice. So, it only makes sense that the world should also set aside one day a year for a fiery celebration. Let this hot summer day be volcano day!

For more readings on volcanoes, check out Pompeii: Its Destruction and Rediscovery by Sir William Gell, and Hawaii and Its Volcanoes by Henry Hitchcock Charles.

By Thad Higa