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Earth’s Volcano Face
Volcanoes are like pimples that just keep popping up on a hormonally challenged teenager. The earth is covered with them, and I’m sure it must be a relief when they pop.
Magma flows around just a few kilometers underneath the earth’s crust. Once in a while, it finds a weak spot and starts oozing upwards to form a volcano. Volcanoes come in all kinds of shapes, but they typically start out as a mound (and for the sake of the pimple analogy used a few seconds ago, we’ll assume this to be true).
When we’re lucky, lava oozes out of the earth in a relatively orderly, non-rushed, fashion. When this happens we can frolic on the cooled, crunchy, hard rock while watching fresh red lava continue to ooze down the side of the hill a few feet away. We stumble along taking tons of photos and can claim to be mere inches away from death…at least that’s what the tour guide will tell us for some extra tips (he deserves them right? we’re still alive right?)
Nobody can outrun the more aggressive eruptions though, where gas and liquid, hot, rock roll down steep slopes at 100 miles per hour. One of the more surreal and morbid images associated with volcanoes are the masses of people entombed by the smoldering hot ash spit up by the infamous Mt. Vesuvius eruption in AD 79.
The ash that covered the towns and the people hardened before the bodies decomposed, creating hollow shapes in the rock-perfect molds of the victims’ last stance (creepy). Pouring plaster into these holes brings the Romans back to life as ceramic sculptures. These pieces of art are now available for your viewing pleasure in a few museums throughout the world (bring some xanax when you go).
There is no stopping an active volcano-not with sacrificial virgins, or huge boulders or mounds of antacids.
Once they start to grow, it’s just a matter of time till they need to pop.
Four thousand virgins wrapped in asbestos blankets, jammed into the throat of the volcano, might stop the eruption. Brute strength always wins.
I dont know…its kind of hard to find 4000 virgins these days….but not a bad idea…also, where am i gonna find all that asbestos??!
Robert Harris wrote a really good fictional account of the eruption at Pompeii. It’s called “Pompeii”! Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by volcanoes and tornadoes and have always secretly wished to see one in action. The price for such a spectacle would probably be death, but . . . it’s so tempting!
Hey JD! Glad you stopped by. I’m always interested in fiction books based on true events…that way i can pretend that i’m actually learning something. volcanoes are definitely scary…but I did check out a few craters a few years back. Pretty amazing stuff.