Krakatoa: The First Disaster of the Modern Era

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people were dead yet it wasn't just the devastation krakatoa awards that made it so fascinating taking place at the dawn of global communications the krakatoa eruption was the first truly modern disaster the first to capture the world's attention even as it was unfolding in doing so it would set the template for disaster reporting one we're still living with to this very day in the middle of the sunday strait in modern indonesia between the islands of sumatra and java lies the still smoldering remains of a once great volcano known as krakatoa it once dominated the skyline an 800-meter monster rising out of the waters but it wouldn't be its height or location that made krakatoa world famous it would be what happened when it finally erupted although it ended with one hell of a bang the story of krakatoa started slowly when a volcano began to form on the seabed at some point in the last million years for the region our story takes place in this was far from unusual indonesia lies in something known as the ring of fire a gigantic horseshoe of explody death surrounding the pacific where nearly all of the world's great volcanoes are found for this you can thank plate tectonics the constant crashing and grinding of vast bits of planetary crust deep below the earth's surface in krakatoa's case it sits atop the point where the gigantic indo-australian plate crashes into the even gigantic eurasian plate creating something called a subduction zone in layman's terms this means the indo-australian plate is sliding beneath the eurasian plate causing a whole ton of magma to come bubbling up as the insane pressure causes rock to melt it's this magma that many many eons ago began forming the volcano we'd one day call krakatoa it was a slow process krakatoa's base is 300 meters below sea level meaning it took uncountable years for the growing volcano to even just peek above the waves even then it suffered setbacks around 475 a.d this proto-krakatoa quite literally blew its top leaving a vast depression where there had once been a peak these broken remains in turn grew into a new volcano one with three separate cones all varying in size and their comparative ability to well super kill you the smallest but most active was per boat and standing at around 121 meters by comparison the largest rakata towered at nearly 800 meters above sea level between the two sat the goldilocks of volcanic peaks danon neither too big nor too small despite being active for its entire life krakatoa was quieter than its reputation today would suggest the only recorded eruption came in 1680 and while it was big it wasn't big big more of a that's impressive rather than a oh my god run for your goddamn lives in fact the volcano was so lacking in impressive pyrotechnics that by the time the netherlands formerly incorporated the region into its colony of the dutch east indies most assumed krakatoa was extinct but this is indonesia remember one of the most volcanically active countries in the world the sort of place where if it can explode well it probably will and the new colony was about to get a taste of what krakatoa had in store in 1815 a separate supposedly extinct volcano exploded on the other side of java known as mount tambora it was the biggest eruption in modern history far deadlier than krakatoa with climactic effects that were felt across the globe yet because of when it happened in the decades before global communications it passed almost unnoticed by the wider world the same would not be true for krakatoa 35 years after tembora went up the first undersea telegraph cable was successfully laid between england and france making communications between the countries near instantaneous it was the dawn of a new globally connected era over the next few decades undersea telegraph cables would snake out across the world connecting western countries first to one another and then to their far-flung colonies suddenly information that used to take weeks to arrive could be relayed in a handful of hours never before had the rest of the world felt closer than it did now and that meant that when disaster struck death and carnage happening on the other side of the planet would feel more personal than ever before now if you want your new web project to feel more personal than ever then of course you've got to get sorted out with our friends over at squarespace you know what's great about the summer holidays vacation time off a little bit of r r it's the perfect time to spend lying on the beach or in the park daydreaming about that next project that you want to start fortunately squarespace gives you every possible tool you might want to make your dream into a reality whether it's a small business a sports blog a creative portfolio or just a page full of dank memes it does not matter if you can dream it you can build it with squarespace you're looking to get in and out quick without thinking too much about what your website should look like or use one of 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forward slash geographics and you'll save 10 off your first purchase of a website or a domain and let's get back to krakatoa [Music] in may 1883 krakatoa gave its first warning out of nowhere a sudden rumbling started a faint tremor that was just about noticeable it was just there on the edge of your hearing persistent ominous not long after people on java began to record hearing distant explosions sumatra followed shortly after but it wasn't until a german warship passed through the sun to stray to one morning that it became clear what was happening a gigantic cloud of ash was rising high above the uninhabited krakatoa island the volcano had at long last awoken over the next two months sightseeing ships would take european colonists out close to the island to watch the sparks flickering and witness the ash clouds rising for those who'd grown up in the netherlands england or germany this was a spectacle beyond anything they'd ever imagined scientists launched expedition's private boats headed out to take a closer look but the europeans weren't the only ones fascinated with the volcano on the nearby shores of sumatra and java locals took the eruption as a chance to celebrate festivals were held great religious parties took place in short everyone in the area treated krakatoa's return to life not just as the geological equivalent of a fire alarm but has a reason to not evacuate to stay close and see what happened next what did happen of course was the end of their little world at 1pm on august 26th the mother of all blasts rocked the public peak debris shot 24 kilometers into the air while the bang was heard hundreds of kilometers away and this was just the beginning over the next 21 hours a succession of explosions hit krakatoa varying in intensity but all big enough to trigger spontaneous pants crapping in whoever heard them finally at 6am on august 27 1883 the volcano reached its terrifying climax over a few short hours four explosions rang out each bigger than the last finally at just after 10 am the volcano gave its final loudest draw the detonation that hit kraken tour was simply beyond anything you could possibly imagine the volcano went up with over ten thousand times the force of the hiroshima bomb hurling debris 80 kilometers into the sky burning hot pyroclastic flows swept across the island at 150 kilometers an hour when they reached the sea water they just kept right on rolling obliterating nearby islands and anything in their past today it's estimated some 4 500 people were killed as these jets of superheated gas shot out to distances of 65 kilometers yet this brutal death toll over double that of hurricane katrina would just be a tiny fraction of all of those killed in krakatoa's chaos as an ash cloud spread through the atmosphere plunging parts of sumatra and java into days of darkness and lightning flickered above the rim burning chunks of rock rained down over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers but it's what was happening at the volcano itself that would spell doom for so many the force of the eruption caused 23 square kilometers of the island to collapse plunging it into the ocean this caused seawater to mix with the lava creating an eruption of steam that sent burning gases shooting out over ever greater distances more importantly the collapse of the island displaced a cubic heck ton of sea water picture yourself throwing a heavy rock into a still lake seeing the way the ripples spread out sweeping away from the point of impact well now imagine if each of those ripples is capable of rising 21 or even 41 meters into the air a wall of water many times taller than a human now racing towards the shores of draba and sumatra krakatoa's eruption had triggered an annihilating tsunami one capable of destroying anything in its path when it made landfall the island's coastal communities wouldn't know what hit them a common misconception about tsunamis is that they're all like that famous japanese painting a lone apocalyptic wave that rushes in and does its damage in a single strike but the reality is more like a series of waves a series of vast waves the second third or even fourth of which may turn out to be the most destructive it was this little-known factor that helped make krakatoa so unbelievably deadly the tsunami started as you might expect with one big wave battering the coasts in telugu tong it came careening in at a height of nearly 22 meters washing away the entire town and killing somewhere in the region of 2200 people at tangerang the wave inundated surrounding farmland drowning uncountable numbers of animals but when it hit the port town of merak things were different the wave came in did a little damage then retreated again but rather than use this opportunity to flee the townsfolk assumed they'd survived whatever catastrophe had just occurred and that everything was fine it was only when the second wave started barreling down the narrow bay getting larger and larger and larger that they discovered just how truly screwed they were the second wave that swept into merak reached a dizzying 40 meters in height so tall that almost nothing could hope to survive in the seconds before it hit marac was home to some 2700 souls by the time the wave had surged inland its population had been reduced to two everyone else all 2600 of them drowned and so the story unfolded along the coasts of the dutch east indies in towns and villages that survived the first wave people returned to the shoreline to survey the damage only to be killed when the strongest second surge hit it's thought today that over 300 towns were annihilated in the tsunamis the waves alone killing an additional 32 000 people those who witnessed that awful sight they'd never forget it americ one of the two survivors was a colonial accountant who just happened to be fast enough and close enough to the hillside to run to safety just before the war could get him in anger a dutch pilot managed to grab hold of a palm tree and haul himself to safety yet he would spend the rest of his life haunted by the images of his dead friends swept past on the unceasing current however not all survivor accounts were quite so grim one german quarry manager swore blind he survived by leaping onto a crocodile's back and basically surfing it all the way to safety no records exist as to whether this totally not made up story ever successfully got him laid of course europeans were not the only ones to witness the kakatoa disaster the vast majority of eyewitnesses and the dead were locals but this was colonial times the newspapers were way more interested in dead and traumatized white people so most non-european accounts were simply never recorded by the time an hour had passed since krakatoa exploded muddy rain had begun to fall on batavia now jakarta an hour later the tsunami at last came roaring in while the city survived over a thousand boats were destroyed in the harbor some of them were carried far inland becoming heavy wrecks abandoned in the jungle by that night the waves would have rushed into calcutta some 3000 kilometers away sinking river boats and causing noticeable water level rises in south africa's eastern ports when the tsunami's effects at last died away they'd been felt as far away as hawaii that's 11 000 kilometers away but it wouldn't be the strange waves that first alerted the world to the eruption in asia no it would be something even more darkly impressive an area in which to this date krakatoa has never been equaled sound [Music] the same morning that indonesia was being inundated with tsunamis sheepherders working just outside alice springs australia had a strange experience around mid-morning two sharp loud cracks like gunshots startled their sheep but when they looked for the stupid gala who'd fired his rifle they couldn't find him in fact those two cracks had been the distant sound of krakatoa erupting and boy do we mean distant alice springs was roughly 3 600 kilometers from the site of the eruption by way of comparison the gigantic explosion that devastated beirut in 2020 was thought to be audible a mere 200 kilometers away imagine a noise so loud it could travel more than 18 times that distance the sort of sound where it to happen in new york could be mistaken for a close gunshot in las vegas that was the sound krakatoa unleashed to this day it's the loudest sound ever recorded the first people to both hear this noise and survive were likely those on the british ship norm castle when krakoter went up the castle was 65 kilometers away still the sound was loud enough to burst the eardrums of almost the entire crew the captain recorded in his log i am convinced that the day of judgment has come he was barely exaggerating in this era a whole ton of places around the world had barometers to monitor air pressure and hopefully thus predict storms since sound causes changes in air pressure the krakatoa eruption was noted and logged all over the planet using readings that we can easily convert to decibels to measure how loud it was the conclusion well it was really goddamn loud at batavia over 160 kilometers from the volcano a barometer endured over 172 decibels of sound pressure standing next to a jet engine is equivalent to about 152 decibels a rocket launch is around 180. that means that some 160 kilometers from the eruption people who heard krakatoa felt like they were standing beside a launch pad at cape canaveral but i guess even crazier than that in the bay of bengal over 2000 kilometers away people thought artillery was firing just over the horizon in alice springs as we mentioned earlier it sounded like extremely close rifle shots when the sound wave reached rodriguez island near mauritius it was still loud enough for people to be like is some damn idiot over the hill doing target practice rodriguez island is 5 000 kilometers from krakatoa imagine something in dublin exploding with enough force to be audible in new york city or a blast in bogota making people in winnipeg go that was loud eh overall it's thought 10 of the entire human population heard krakatoa explode the remaining 90 percent well they could still see the effects even after the krakatoa eruption dropped below the level of human hearing it could still be measured on barometers eight hours after the volcano detonated like an angry bomb weather stations in sydney australia measured the spike in pressure four hours later it was noted in some petersburg shortly after vienna berlin and paris all recorded it 18 hours after the eruption it was still going strong enough to be detected in new york city and toronto it would remain detectable for another five days all the way to september 1 1883 global weather stations registered an observable spike every 34 hours that means that the sound wave from krakatoa ultimately circled the entire planet four times before fading away leading scientists to christen it the great airwave incredible as it is to think about though it wouldn't just be air pressure from the volcano's mega boom that had noticeable global effects krakatoa you see was about to go viral victorian style [Music] if you'd been an english gentleman reading his newspaper the day after mount tambora erupted in 1815 you'd have noticed well nothing the front page would have been full of tales of that pesky napoleon fellow and metalnick's plan to rebuild europe it wouldn't have been until months later that you sat down for your crumpets and learned about the volcano in the east indies that was simply the speed news traveled back then as fast as a handy sea captain was willing to take it sure if you're prepared to lose this time by contrast if you'd been an english gentleman reading his morning paper the day after krakatoa your monocle would have immediately popped out and fallen in your tea as you learned about the fiery death mountain the 1883 krakatoa eruption was the first truly global disaster all those newly laid undersea telegraph cables got the news out at unprecedented speed spreading reports of the eruption across the world almost as fast as the sound wave in london the newspapers carried the story the very next morning in america the time difference meant the new york times could carry the story in its august 27th edition the same day albeit in a different time zone that krakatoa went up never before had the mass media been able to react to an event so far away so quickly the modern media playbook for a distant catastrophe was basically born with krakatoa the daily updates the lurid eyewitness accounts sure today our updates come second by second via social media but the basic template is still the same before krakatoa the idea of every literate person on the planet talking about a disaster the very next day would have seemed impossible afterwards it was accepted as normal still it wasn't just the news of the eruption that spread far and wide krakatoa stood at a six on the volcanic explosivity index a scale explained in depth on our lake toba video but for today you just need to know that this means it spewed out so much more stuff than mounts and helens that the two are nearly incomparable all these gases affected the skies around the world through fall 1883 all the way to spring 1884 some of the craziest atmospheric phenomena were recorded in new york the sun sets that november was such a fiery red that people thought a huge fire really had broken out in england the poet gerhard manley hopkins wrote of clouds that shimmered green purple and gold in the evenings in norway the effects were perhaps even more dramatic one november evening that year 19 year old edward monk was walking through what is now oslo at sunset when as he later wrote all at once the sky became blood red clouds like blood and tongues of fire hung above the blue black forward in the city my friends went on and i stood alone trembling with anxiety i felt a great unending scream piercing through nature ten years later monk would channel that strange sunset and awful feeling into one of modern art's most iconic works in all the krakatoa eruption has been cited as the cause of everything from the worst rainstorms ever recorded in los angeles to the establishment of islam as indonesia's dominant religion as traumatized survivors looking for answers turn their backs on their old gods but perhaps the most eye-watering fact about krakatoa is the most sobering when all was said and done estimates for the dead stood at 36 000 people by most counts that makes it the second deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history behind only its cousin mount tambora chillingly krakatoa's record-breaking didn't stop there though although krakatoa itself was destroyed by the blast the forces that created it weren't in 1927 the ruined caldera began producing steam and debris again eventually forming a small volcanic island known as anak krakatoa or the sun of krakatoa after decades of minor eruptions krakatoa jr finally went up on december 22 2018 there was another partial collapse another tsunami despite being a mere fraction of the size of its 1883 counterpart it still killed over 426 people making anak krakatoa the deadliest volcano to erupt in the 21st century with numbers like that who knows what it might be capable of in the future although it happened nearly 140 years ago the eruption of krakatoa is an event that still affects us today a moment when the earth exploded and in doing so gave rise to parts of our modern world so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Geographics

Views: 892,788

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Id: 8q1Ur3Z6dT0

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021