National Geographic continues to be the coolest most relevant magazine to what's actually going on in our world. I swear, news and TV shows just seem flip and meaningless compared to the soulful exploration of National Geographic. Growing up, I was fascinated by it because it took me to distance lands that I wanted to visit, to the highest peaks and the lowest depths of the ocean, places that I could never visit. Then starting in the nineties, it seemed like every article was about pollution, over-population and other plights of our time. It made me sad and I felt our beautiful world was coming to an end and realized, I had only enjoyed it on paper.
I still wish I had chosen a career that enabled or required worldwide travel as I am still fascinated by other cultures and countries. But I have been pleased to discover that National Geographic is again inspiring me although, and maybe this says more about me than the magazine, it's a more mature relationship. The articles still celebrate the human spirit and beauty of nature within the context of a modern world - but in a less abrasive way - as if we're all better suited to digest these complex issues.
Last month, I read that Hurricane Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history and that not even a "massive and endless national commitment" to the safety of New Orleans is enough to secure it. The area has always been environmentally vulnerable, it is put under water about every eleven years. The letter from the editor suggests that it's foolish for anyone to live there, foolish for the government to spend money trying to keep people there and wouldn't we all be better off if they paid people to start anew somewhere else and let nature reclaim the wetlands?
This month, the magazine ran an awesome article about Naples and the area surrounding Mt. Vesuvius, home to about the same number of people as the New Orleans area. There have been seven eruptions over the last 25,000 years, a frequency far less than that of devastating hurricanes in New Orleans, but each blast has destroyed all life in the area for several hundred years.
Scientists say the area should expect another blast any day. There is no way to predict it before it happens. There is no way for an area of that size to be evacuated safely. There is no way to survive it. And yet a thriving population continues to live in the shadow of and on the slopes of the deadliest volcano in the world with the faith that they will survive. The article is worth reading for the description of how a blast like that will unfold, a cataclysmic event equal to a nuclear explosion. Here the government, instead of spending money to build artificial protections, pays people to leave.
The pressure building from below will blow a hole in the mountain that will hurl "100,000 tons a second of superheated rock, cinders, and ash into the stratosphere," breaking the sound barrier and causing a sonic boom. This liquid rock will shoot 22 miles in the air, far higher than cruising altitude for commercial jets, and spreading out like an umbrella before flying back to earth at 95 miles an hour.
Then an avalanche of debris will explode sideways from the volcano sending a cloud of powder and ash outward, a "hot, choking wind, advancing at about 240 miles (386 kilometers) an hour" at a temperature of 900°F (482°C). If it passes quickly, and your clothing and flesh aren't vaporized, you can survive the heat for a few seconds. But you'll certainly suffocate on the fine powder in the air which will accumulate up to "65 feet (20 meters) deep at a distance of three miles (five kilometers) from the crater to about ten inches (25 centimeters) thick at a distance of 15 miles (24 kilometers). Eight inches (20 centimeters) of ash is enough to cause modern roofs to collapse."
Anyone or anything left will be washed away by the rivers of mud created by liquid ash and thunderstorms. Volcanologists estimate that an eruption nearly four thousand years ago unleashed that cycle of destruction six times in a 24-hour period. I don't know, it kind of makes me laugh to think that we spend so much time devising ways to inflict that kind of damage on each other when nature is happy to do it for us.
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