The 1883 Eruption of Krakatoa (Episode 65)

Relative Disasters

In the summer of 1883, the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra were rocked by a volcanic eruption more destructive than any other in recorded human history. When the tiny, uninhabited island of Krakatoa erupted, it sent a plume of ash and gas 17 miles into the sky, created a 2,500-foot-tall pyroclastic cloud, and wiped out settlements thirty miles away with a series of deadly tsunamis. The eruption was so loud it was heard 5,000 miles away, and it sent so much debris into the atmosphere that it created a four-year-long global volcanic winter.

On this episode, we're talking plate tectonics, the Dutch East Indies, disaster reporting, the B-52s, and the unsettling behavior of Krakatoa's current incarnation, Anak Krakatau.

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Sources for this episode include:

"Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded", by S. Winchester, 2003

"The Eruption of Krakatoa (also known as Krakatau) in 1883” by M. R. Morgan for BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, 2013

"Krakatau: The loudest sound in recorded history", by B. B. Johnson and D. Russell for WBUR's Endless Thread, 2022

"Krakatoa: Devastating Explosion", episode of How the Earth Was Made (S1, E3), produced for the History Channel, 2009