In 535 AD, a great natural disaster struck. A huge volcanic explosion in Indonesia, a landmark event today is called Proto-Krakatoa. Until then, the islands of Java and Sumatra were one. A gigantic volcanic explosion created a strait between them. 77 cubic kilometers of solid rock were released into the atmosphere.
As David Case writes in his book Catastrophe: An Investigation of the Origins of the Modern World, dense clouds of fine dust thrown into the upper layers of the air ocean plunged the planet into twilight for almost a year and a half. Both Chinese and Byzantine sources speak about this. In the atmosphere, as shown by the data of computer simulations, huge volumes of water also fell - from 19 to 38 cubic kilometers. They, together with volcanic ash, formed clouds in the stratosphere. The Earth's climate became colder for some time and became rainy. Abundant rainfall irrigated both the Eurasian steppes and the Arabian desert. Heavy rains destroyed at the same time the civilization of the pyramid builders in Mexico.
The consequences were most unexpected. First, the old food chains in the steppe collapsed - and the burrowing animals of the tarbagans multiplied. Plague-carrying gophers. It was during these years, during the reign of Emperor Justinian in the Eastern Roman Empire, that the beginning of a half-century series of plague epidemics began. It raged in Asia Minor, the Middle East, the Balkans and Europe. It is believed that the number of its victims is not inferior to the losses from the Black Death, which devastated Europe in the fourteenth century (about a quarter of Europe's population died). The plague severely undermined the strength of the Eastern Byzantine Romans. After all, at the same time they had to wage difficult wars in Italy and Spain.
At the same time, the onslaught on Byzantium from the Slavs and Avar nomads is intensifying. From the east, the Sassanid Persians begin to press. An acute social crisis begins in Byzantium itself. Humidification of the desert leads to the growth of Arab tribes, which later gave birth to Islam and rushed to conquer half the world.
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To imagine the scale of the impact on the planet's climate of that volcanic explosion (77 cubic kilometers of solid rock ejection), let us compare it with the eruption of the Laki volcanic chain (southern Iceland) in June 1783 - January 1784. Then the emission was only 5 cubic kilometers. Volcanic gases and ash, having penetrated into the stratosphere, lowered the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere by 1 degree Celsius. Dry fog was observed from Iceland to Syria. In Iceland itself, cattle began to fall in mass, eating grass poisoned by volcanic ash. The eruption also released 80 million tons of sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Acid rains set in, destroying the crops - and a quarter of the island's population died of hunger. Non-scattering "dry" fogs stood over Europe and North America. The summer of 1783 turned out to be very cold for Europeans,and the subsequent winter - early and extremely frosty (John Savino. Mary D. Jones. "Supervolcano" - Moscow, RIPOL-Classic, 2008, pp. 74-77).
But this eruption was very small in comparison with the explosion of Proto-Krakatoa: 5 cubic kilometers of emissions against seventy seven.
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You know, reader, there is a little-studied and, frankly, unpleasant phenomenon: natural disasters tend to "pull together" to the moments of acute crises in the human world. Professor Fursov is not without reason afraid that the current Global Troubled Crisis will be accompanied by natural disasters. And some fears are already justified. Climatic "breaking" is a fact. The disastrous tsunami in South Asia in December 2004 and the mass casualties are still fresh in our minds. California with its San Andreas Fault is waiting for the catastrophic earthquake all the time. What if some volcanic catastrophe happens again?
By the way, the option is quite real. The authors of the Supervolcano study, Savino and Jones, point out that there are potential points of such super-eruptions in the world. Much larger than Proto-Krakatoa. So, 74 thousand years ago, the eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Sumatra threw more than a thousand cubic kilometers of dust into the atmosphere. Today, there are large dormant volcanoes at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea (40 km south of Sicily), and in the United States - in Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming), there are three large dormant volcanoes with calderas. There have already been prehistoric super-eruptions. In the center of California, there is the dormant Long Valley volcano with a large caldera. On the northern island of New Zealand - another candidate for a fucking eruption, the Taupo volcano.
For example, a massive, multi-day eruption in California's Long Valley could plunge the United States into national disaster. A huge number of people, breathing in small glass-like volcanic emissions, will simply die. According to Savino and Jones, the consequences of the liberal privatization of healthcare in the United States will make matters worse: during those "reforms," many hospitals and emergency rooms were closed as "unprofitable", especially in low-income areas. Ashes will poison 20% of the United States. Millions of people will find themselves locked in their homes. The movement of ground and air transport will be disrupted. The supply of food will be disrupted - hunger riots will break out in the neighboring areas of the eruption. Crop failure awaits the states of the US Grain Belt. And this is already global consequences, global panic in food markets. A sharp cold snap will set in the world. The American economy will collapse, and the dollar will collapse. A new fight for leadership will begin on the globe as the United States recovers for at least ten years. A cold snap that will last for several years will cause crop failures in the main agricultural regions of the Earth. This means that world hunger will come …
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A note from today: thus, the global crisis in the human world today begins to be accompanied by natural disasters. The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull in April 2010, which paralyzed air traffic, is just the beginning. Wait for the continuation - and new formidable natural phenomena.
The current eruption has shown the fragility of the modern globalized world, dependent on communications.
And one more thing: I dug it up on Wikipedia …
“There is an accident on KLM flight 867 on December 15, 1989. A Boeing 747-406, registration number PH-BFC, flying from Amsterdam to Tokyo, was preparing for a stopover at Anchorage International Airport. While descending, the plane flew through a dense cloud of volcanic ash erupted by the Redout volcano. All four engines failed, the plane remained on backup power supply. After losing more than four thousand meters in height, the PIC Karl van der Elst managed to start the engines and land the plane safely …"
“… On June 24, 1982, Boeing 747-236B, registration number G-BDXH, bearing the name City of Edinburgh, at an altitude of about 11000 m, at night flew into a column of volcanic ash ejected by the Galunggung volcano. Neither the crew nor the passengers knew about this, which influenced further events …
At approximately 1:42 pm UTC (20:42 Jakarta time), engine # 4 stalled and a flame went off. The co-pilot and flight engineer immediately began to perform the engine shutdown procedure, shutting off the fuel and activating the fire extinguishers, while the commander added rudder correction to cope with asymmetrical thrust. Passengers also noticed a long yellow glow emanating from the remaining engines. Less than a minute after engine no. 4 was turned off, the flame in engine no. 2 broke off and died out. Before the team had time to start the procedure for shutting down the engine, almost simultaneously there was a flame out in the remaining engines, Nos. 1 and 3, and the windshield lost its transparency. The flight engineer exclaimed: "I can't believe - all the engines have stalled!" The captain then made the following announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen,the captain is talking to you. We had a little problem on board. All four engines were shut down. We do our best to control the situation. I hope this event will not disturb you."
The aircraft was deployed to Jakarta, with the expectation that at least one engine could be started in order to land it there.
The plane became a glider. With the engines turned off, this aircraft is capable of gliding 15 kilometers for every kilometer lost. Commander Moody calculated that from a height of about 11 km, the plane could fly 23 minutes and cover a distance of 169 kilometers.
However, the captain had to lower the plane at a faster pace, as the air pressure in the plane's cabin dropped: the compressors that maintained the pressure were powered by the engines, and the engines stalled. In this scenario, the plane would not be able to fly over the mountains to land in Jakarta. In this case, the crew would have to make a very risky landing on the water.
The aircraft exited the ash cloud at 13:56 UTC (20:56 Jakarta), approximately 13 minutes after gliding began. At this time, he was at an altitude of 12 thousand feet (3700 meters). At this altitude, one engine was started, followed by three others (although one later stalled again when the plane began to climb and again hit the cloud), and the plane was able to successfully land in Jakarta …
Kalashnikov Maxim 20.04.2010 An excerpt from the book "Global Trouble Crisis" (2009)
