On This Day in History: August 27

Krakatoa goes boom

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Lush Rimjob, I mean Rush Limbaugh, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Trump for nothing other than being a far-right fuckwipe. I first encountered him while channel surfing in the early 90s and I saw him blame global warming on volcanoes rather than humans. Turns out, like about most other things, he was full of shit. Krakatoa actually cooled the planet.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: August 27, 1883--

It wasn’t quite Bugs Bunny levels of Earth-shattering kaboom, but it was a big one, and lots of people died. Seismic activity began years before, and steam and ash were coming out a few months beforehand. Explosions could be heard 100 miles away in the two months previous. The Indonesian island of Krakatoa was letting those nearby know it was time to pack up their shit and GTFO.

Anyone who didn’t listen had a bad day on August 27, 1883, when the Krakatoa volcano achieved critical fuck this and blew her stack with a force approximated at 200 megatons. For explodey-pow comparison, the largest-ever detonated nuclear device, which was a ridiculous Russian experiment to see just how big a nuke they could detonate, was only a quarter of that. The eruption was roughly 10,000 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Over two-thirds of the island was obliterated in the eruption. It was heard 3,000 miles away. At a distance of 100 miles the volume was 180 decibels. FYI, 150 dB is enough to burst your eardrums, and sounds over 185 dB can actually fucking kill you. It wasn’t just one explosion, but four, and each of them launched a tsunami 100 feet high. Coupled with the ash and pyroclastic flows, over 36,000 people died from the event.

The eruption sent a large amount of sulfur dioxide into the air, reflecting back incoming sunlight and causing a 0.72 F (0.4 C) global decrease in temperature the following year. The sky was darkened for years afterward, but the sunsets for the next few months were spectacular. Speaking of which, it is hypothesized that the explosion and the sunsets it created were the inspiration for Edward Munch’s painting “The Scream” a decade later.

In conclusion, fuck Rush Limbaugh.

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