Photograph by Yomiuri Shimbun, AFP/Getty Images
A tsunami-tossed boat rests on top of a building amid a sea of debris in Otsuchi, Iwate Prefecture, on March 14—days after a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Japan, triggering a devastating tsunami.
What is it about Indonesia and globe-altering explosions? The largest volcanic lake in the world, Lake Toba was created by an explosion so large that University of Illinois professor Stanley Ambrose thinks it altered the evolution of mankind. He believes the resulting nuclear winter caused a drastic bottleneck in human evolution, reducing isolated populations so drastically that the resulting lower genetic diversity of the separate cohorts sped up the differentiation of humans into varying ethnic groups.
Like Krakatoa, Tambora is located in present-day Indonesia. Showing signs of eruption in 1813, and culminating in a giant blast in 1815, the volcano's explosion was the largest of the modern era. The eruption launched 160 cubic kilometers of debris into the sky. That’s enough detritus to cover the entire island of Manhattan in a layer of ash a mile and a half thick. The eruption lowered global temperatures by as much as three degrees, resulting in the “year without summer”. Global food shortages also occurred, as the ash blotted out the sun. That winter, brown and red snow fell around the globe, and the bitter cold of 1815 indirectly resulted in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein.
A rare photograph of a giant wave, taken by seaman Philippe Lijour off the coast of South Africa in 1980.
