Richard
Final Approach
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2005
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- 9,076
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- West Coast Resistance
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Ack...city life
Imagine you are standing at the bottom of a mountain slope and that mountain rises to almost 4,000' above you. Pick a town you are familiar with over 35 miles distant from you. That place is on the opposite slope of the mountain before you.
Now imagine you are standing on the rim of a giant hole. That mountain has been replaced by a hole which extends over 4,000' below you. The hole extends from your current position to that town you picked. (37.26 sm, to be precise).
The mountain and the rock beneath it were ejected into the atmosphere in the year 1815. It is estimated over 180 million metric tons of ash and 100 million tons of magma were lofted into the air which resulted in the "year without a summer".
Natural disasters have occured before and will occur again, it's a fact of life. But it is our perspective that these 'super disasters' are relegated to the ancient past. What makes this super eruption so notable is that it transcends that barrier in our perspective; it didn't happen in those far distant primordial days, it happened in our modern history.
To grasp this new perspective it helps to put this event within a known timeline:
Newspapers were being printed. The United States had been formed as a sovereign nation. Many states had still not joined the union. The Wild West was just beginning to be settled. We look back at the achievements of the Wright brothers and think that wasn't so long ago, but they were closer in time to this eruption than to us in our time.
Click on the link, examine the pictures from the archeological dig of the 'lost' town. See the ceramic shards, they look like they could have fallen from my grandmother's table. It wasn't that long ago but it was bigger than anything ever experienced by a modern culture.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4748902.stm
Now imagine you are standing on the rim of a giant hole. That mountain has been replaced by a hole which extends over 4,000' below you. The hole extends from your current position to that town you picked. (37.26 sm, to be precise).
The mountain and the rock beneath it were ejected into the atmosphere in the year 1815. It is estimated over 180 million metric tons of ash and 100 million tons of magma were lofted into the air which resulted in the "year without a summer".
Natural disasters have occured before and will occur again, it's a fact of life. But it is our perspective that these 'super disasters' are relegated to the ancient past. What makes this super eruption so notable is that it transcends that barrier in our perspective; it didn't happen in those far distant primordial days, it happened in our modern history.
To grasp this new perspective it helps to put this event within a known timeline:
Newspapers were being printed. The United States had been formed as a sovereign nation. Many states had still not joined the union. The Wild West was just beginning to be settled. We look back at the achievements of the Wright brothers and think that wasn't so long ago, but they were closer in time to this eruption than to us in our time.
Click on the link, examine the pictures from the archeological dig of the 'lost' town. See the ceramic shards, they look like they could have fallen from my grandmother's table. It wasn't that long ago but it was bigger than anything ever experienced by a modern culture.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4748902.stm
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