On August 27, 1883, the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia erupted and made the loudest sound humans ever heard. A petrifying roar which released sound waves around the world. It was so loud that it could be heard on the island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean which is located more than 3,000 miles away.
The Impact
A British ship which was 40 miles from the explosion had its sailors suffer ruptured eardrums. “It was so terrifying that the captain believed it was Judgement Day”. They added
A gas works barometer in Batavia (now Jakarta) rose to an equivalent of 172 decibels which meant the sound was still many times louder than a jet engine even though it was 100 miles from its origin.
“This is so astonishingly loud, that it’s inching up against the limits of what we mean by ‘sound,’” writer Aatish Bhatia noted in a Discover magazine post, noting that the sound of a jet engine is 150 decibels.
According to a study by Great Britain’s Royal Society in the year 1888, the sound could be heard across roughly a thirteenth of the earth’s surface.
10,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs
The devastation caused by the explosion made the Krakatoa eruption one of history’s deadliest natural disasters. The explosion was equal to 10,000 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs.
Racing at 60 miles per hour, the lava flows killed more than 36,400 people. The tsunamis caused by the eruption reached a height of 120 feet. wiping out some 165 coastal villages.
In the year after the eruption, the global temperature fell by 1.2 degrees Celsius on average, and the planet was unnaturally cool for about the next five years.
Child of Krakatoa
Little to nothing remained of Krakatoa after the explosion. However, in the year 1927, a volcanic island surfaced from the crater left behind. It is known as Anak Krakatoa (child of Krakatoa) and currently an active volcano. In December 2018, more than 400 people were killed by a tsunami caused by an eruption.
