The Mountain Exploded

August 27, 1883

Boom.

The sound was heard around the world seven times.

And 5 cubic miles of volcanic ash and rock were propelled 50 miles into the upper atmosphere.

It was the late morning of August 27, 1883, on an uninhabited island directly between Java and Sumatra, on the edge of the South China Sea.

But the island didn’t need to be inhabited to cause damage. Local tsunamis in Java would kill 30,000 people, and were recorded as far away as Hawaii and South America.

In New York and London, concerned citizens called the fire department in a panic, believing that the brilliantly red tinted sky was caused by fire, rather than by volcanic ash from halfway around the world. The climate around the world dropped several degrees and would continue to generate spectacular red sunsets for almost a year. ¹

The 1883 explosion of Krakatoa is not the largest volcanic eruption, but it was the first global catastrophe the whole world was aware of.

It’s striking that in an age of progress, in which new inventions were revolutionizing the way man lived, thought, and communicated with his neighbors, he was forcefully and suddenly reminded of nature’s immense and incalculable power.

Krakatoa sank into the sea with a spectacular display of ash and pumice, but its annihilation was not caused by man’s activity in the South China Sea. The Dutch settlers, who first recorded the event, were both helpless and completely guiltless. Instead, it was caused by the routine, yet invisible, movements of tectonic plates far beneath the sea.

The ideas of the 19th century “Age of Progress” can be traced to our current notion of climate change. It was during that century that we began to develop the concept that man could, in some sense, influence, and even control, nature.

Volcanoes have a tendency to shatter those dreams with a resounding boom.

Suddenly, the whole globe is caught up in a chain of reactions. Sunsets light up the sky like fire, temperatures drop, and crops fail to grow.

Mankind is simply along for the ride.

1. Gerard Manley Hopkins, living in England, wrote about those sunsets, saying:

“… [they were] more like inflamed flesh than the lucid reds of ordinary sunsets … the glow is intense; that is what strikes everyone; it has prolonged the daylight, and optically changed the season; it bathes the whole sky, it is mistaken for the reflection of a great fire.”