Krakatau

The Largest nuclear device ever detonated was a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb. This bomb was so powerful that it was 1400 times more powerful then both of the bombs we dropped on Hiroshima combined. The tsar bomba was also 10 times more powerful than all the explosives used during the entire ww2 campaign. However the Tsar Bomba was only ¼ as powerful as one of the largest explosion in modern history, that title goes to the 1883 volcanic eruption of Krakatau in the Indonesian islands and a few other volcanic eruptions, all of which occurred within the Indonesian ring of fire.
The first signs of a major event happening on Krakatau occurred 3 months before the main explosion. Steam started erupting from perbuatan, which is the islands northern most of its three cones. Steam and ash had begun to erupt regularly on May 20th 1883. The ash column from this early event extended to a height of twenty thousand feet and the eruptions where heard one hundred miles away in Jakarta. All activity had died down by the end of May. Activity on the island later resumed on June 16th 1883 when large explosions were heard and a thick black cloud covered the island for five days. On august 11th H.J.G. Ferzenaar investigated the island and had noted 3 large ash columns and at least eleven others. He also noted that all vegetation had been destroyed and there was a layer of ash just under two feet thick covering the island. On august 26th at 1 pm the volcano went into its paroxysmal phase and by 2 pm observers could see and ash column 17 miles high. During this early phase eruptions where continuous and explosions could be heard every ten minutes. On august 27th four large explosions occurred at 5:30, 6:40, 10:02 and the final largest explosion at 10:41. The explosions where so powerful they were heard 2200 miles away in Perth Australia and people on the island of Rodrigues three thousand miles away thought they were under fire from ship cannons nearby. Each massive explosion also produced colossal tsunami’s which where well over 100 feet high. The town of Merak was completely destroyed by a tsunami 151 feet high.
The pressure wave generated by the final explosion from Krakatau radiated from the island at 675 mph and was recorded on barographs all over the world, and continued to be read on barographs five days after the final explosion. The final explosion was so strong that the shock wave circled the earth seven times. The combination of ash and pyroclastic flows killed all 3000 people on the island of sebesi 8 miles away. Pyroclastic flows also killed about 1000 people on the coast of Sumatra 25 miles to the north. The official death toll by the Dutch authorities was 39,417. However some people estimated the total death toll to be 120,000 or more. Some of islands where never re inhabited and reverted back to jungle, such as Java and it is now the Ujong Kulong national park.
The explosion of Krakatau had made the island almost completely disappear, only southern half of the island and a small northern rocky islet remained. What is biologically interesting is that virtually all life forms on the island where exterminated, but this also bring up what is known as “The Krakatau Problem” since there was virtually nothing known about the flora and fauna before the 1883 eruption nobody can be completely sure that the island was completely wiped clean. However when researchers first visited the island after the 1883 explosion the only thing they found was a single spider living in a crevice on the south side of the island. Later in October of 1884 Rogier Verbeeks had found the east side of the island rapidly being re-colonized by grass shoots and shrubs, likely carried in by the waves or birds droppings. Many of the small islands around Krakatau have completely reverted back to jungle, although the area around the volcanoes is extremely fragile and being continually destroyed and re-colonized due to the highly active nature of this volcano.
In the years following the Krakatau explosion the earth’s temperature dropped by 1.2 degrees Celsius and continued to remain chaotic and did not return to normal until 1888. Also because of the large amount of sulfur dioxide gas in the eruption it was said to have produced amazing red sunrises and sunsets. These Blood red sunsets continued across the world until the sulfur dioxide suspended in the atmosphere eventually fell as acid rain, unfortunately nobody studied this to see if there were any effects on the environment. Interestingly it has been suggested that Edvard munches famous painting “the scream” painted in 1893 is an accurate depiction of the sky over Norway at the time; this is disputed by the art community of course because they say he was a expressive painter rather than a descriptive painter.