Krakatoa

When Krakatoa exploded, it sent so much stuff into the air that sunsets were weird world wide for upwards of two years.

The explosion was so loud they heard it on Mauritius, 3000 miles away. Winchester analogizes that to being in San Francisco and hearing an explosion in Philadelphia.

Winchester points to one theory that says Krakatoa also exploded somewhere in the 6th century, causing so much atmospheric interference that it affected political situations the world over.

Similarly, the Islamic uprisings of the late 1880s in Indonesia were sparked by the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. Immediately after the eruption, Krakatoa was gone, leaving a water-filled caldera harbor between two parentheses-shaped islands.

Now, 125 years later, Anak Krakatoa (”son of…”) is 1500 feet high and growing yearly. Winchester does a good job describing the science behind the eruption, but the evocative descriptions that peppered A Crack in the Edge of the World are not as prevalent.

The islands around Krakatoa have been particularly interesting to biologists, as we have had the opportunity to see how life populates new land.

The first animal spotted on the reviving islands? Spiders. The U.S. helped Indonesia install and support a permanent facility to watch Anak Krakatoa.

There’s a 24-hour watch on it from the mainland, a guy in a yellow hut who sits next to a seismometer all day.

Today Anak Krakatoa is 2 km in diameter, and rises more than 150 meters out of the ocean. It has grown an average of 13 cm (5 inches) per week in the last sixty years.

It's an active - very active - volcano with multiple episodes of volcanic activity since 1963, the most recent having started in 1994. Since then Anak Krakatoa quiet periods have been measured in days, punctuated with explosions and eruptions.

Reports from 2005 indicate that volcanic activity at Anak Krakatoa is increasing. Thus far the eruptions of Anak Krakatoa have been mild, especially as compared to the father.

Nonetheless, given its illustrious ancestry, the awe with which many view it seems amply justified.