happy medium

Yet more information to stop me sleeping at night. New Zealand was home to one of the two most Violent eruptions in the World in the last 5000 years. In 181 AD, by which time the Romans had taken over most of Europe, lake Taupo in the North Island of New Zealand did not excist. Where the crater and lake now rest, was the point of explosion which sent 800 cubric kilometres of ash and fire 50 kilometres into the air, which then dumped itself over the North Island 200metres deep.

To put pespective into the risk of Volcanoes, around 70,000 years ago a Volcano called Toba in Sumatra erupted. A global 6 year volcanic winter then took place, and only a few thousand humans were left on the Planet. Everyone alive today is descended from those few thousand people.

This is a cast of one of the victims of Pompeii. He was taking shelter from the explosion, when he was covered in ash. Notice the hands covering his mouth to try and breath.

And just to put the fear of God into me, the musuem had an installation of what it would be like to experience an eruption in Auckand. They predicted that the eruption would take place just out to sea infront of Mission Bay, viewable from the balcony of my flat

At least I would get a good view…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 5:28 am and is filed under happy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.