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Weekend Economists Go Out with a Boom August 24-26, 2012
In AD 79 on this date...
After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.
The ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum thrived near the base of Mount Vesuvius at the Bay of Naples. In the time of the early Roman Empire, 20,000 people lived in Pompeii, including merchants, manufacturers, and farmers who exploited the rich soil of the region with numerous vineyards and orchards. None suspected that the black fertile earth was the legacy of earlier eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. Herculaneum was a city of 5,000 and a favorite summer destination for rich Romans. Named for the mythic hero Hercules, Herculaneum housed opulent villas and grand Roman baths. Gambling artifacts found in Herculaneum and a brothel unearthed in Pompeii attest to the decadent nature of the cities. There were smaller resort communities in the area as well, such as the quiet little town of Stabiae.
At noon on August 24, 79 A.D., this pleasure and prosperity came to an end when the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city's occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.
A westerly wind protected Herculaneum from the initial stage of the eruption, but then a giant cloud of hot ash and gas surged down the western flank of Vesuvius, engulfing the city and burning or asphyxiating all who remained. This lethal cloud was followed by a flood of volcanic mud and rock, burying the city.
The people who remained in Pompeii were killed on the morning of August 25 when a cloud of toxic gas poured into the city, suffocating all that remained. A flow of rock and ash followed, collapsing roofs and walls and burying the dead.
Much of what we know about the eruption comes from an account by Pliny the Younger, who was staying west along the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius exploded. In two letters to the historian Tacitus, he told of how "people covered their heads with pillows, the only defense against a shower of stones," and of how "a dark and horrible cloud charged with combustible matter suddenly broke and set forth. Some bewailed their own fate. Others prayed to die." Pliny, only 17 at the time, escaped the catastrophe and later became a noted Roman writer and administrator. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, was less lucky. Pliny the Elder, a celebrated naturalist, at the time of the eruption was the commander of the Roman fleet in the Bay of Naples. After Vesuvius exploded, he took his boats across the bay to Stabiae, to investigate the eruption and reassure terrified citizens. After going ashore, he was overcome by toxic gas and died.
According to Pliny the Younger's account, the eruption lasted 18 hours. Pompeii was buried under 14 to 17 feet of ash and pumice, and the nearby seacoast was drastically changed. Herculaneum was buried under more than 60 feet of mud and volcanic material. Some residents of Pompeii later returned to dig out their destroyed homes and salvage their valuables, but many treasures were left and then forgotten.
In the 18th century, a well digger unearthed a marble statue on the site of Herculaneum. The local government excavated some other valuable art objects, but the project was abandoned. In 1748, a farmer found traces of Pompeii beneath his vineyard. Since then, excavations have gone on nearly without interruption until the present. In 1927, the Italian government resumed the excavation of Herculaneum, retrieving numerous art treasures, including bronze and marble statues and paintings.
The remains of 2,000 men, women, and children were found at Pompeii. After perishing from asphyxiation, their bodies were covered with ash that hardened and preserved the outline of their bodies. Later, their bodies decomposed to skeletal remains, leaving a kind of plaster mold behind. Archaeologists who found these molds filled the hollows with plaster, revealing in grim detail the death pose of the victims of Vesuvius. The rest of the city is likewise frozen in time, and ordinary objects that tell the story of everyday life in Pompeii are as valuable to archaeologists as the great unearthed statues and frescoes. It was not until 1982 that the first human remains were found at Herculaneum, and these hundreds of skeletons bear ghastly burn marks that testifies to horrifying deaths.
Today, Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland. Its last eruption was in 1944 and its last major eruption was in 1631. Another eruption is expected in the near future, would could be devastating for the 700,000 people who live in the "death zones" around Vesuvius.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
It all looks peaceful and calm. Oh, sometimes there's a little rumbling, a burst of steam, or even a shower of ash. But we're just going about our lives, just like the citizens of Pompeii and Herculaneum did. Until the volcano of financial fraud and abuse blows the top off the global economy.
Then we will see who lives, who dies, and who gets to tell the tale...
Post your rumbles and seismic data below.
74 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-wall-street-scheme-is-hatched
Martin Siegel meets Ivan Boesky at the Harvard Club in New York City to discuss his mounting financial pressures. Arbitrageur Boesky offered Siegel, a mergers-and-acquisitions executive at Kidder, Peabody & Co., a job, but Siegel, who was looking for some kind of consulting arrangement, declined. Boesky then suggested that if Siegel would supply him with early inside information on upcoming mergers there would be something in it for him.
In January 1983, although little information had been exchanged, Boesky sent a courier with a secret code and a briefcase containing $150,000 in $100 bills to be delivered to Siegel at the Plaza Hotel.
Over the next couple of years, Siegel passed inside information to Boesky on several occasions. With Siegel's inside tips, Boesky made $28 million dollars investing in Carnation stock before its takeover. But his success began to fuel investigative inquiries by both the press and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rumors that Siegel and Kidder, Peabody & Co. were involved in illegal activities began floating around.
Despite the pressure, Siegel and Boesky met at a deli in January 1985, where Siegel demanded $400,000. This time, the cash drop-off was made at a phone booth. Siegel, who was apprehensive about his relationship with Boesky, decided to put an end to it after he had received his money. Still, he continued to trade inside information with other Wall Street executives.
In 1986, the illegal schemes, which by then included many of the biggest traders in the country, came crashing down. Arrests were made up and down Wall Street, and Boesky and Michael Milken, the junk bond king charged with violating federal securities laws, were no exception.
Siegel turned out to be one of the few cooperative witnesses for the government and virtually the only one who showed remorse for his role in the fraud, causing him to be ostracized on Wall Street. Nevertheless, he did fare better than the others: Milken received a 10-year sentence and Boesky received 3 years, but Siegel was only required to return the $9 million he had obtained illegally. The entire incident came to symbolize the era of unfettered greed on Wall Street in the mid-1980s.
Martin Siegel meets Ivan Boesky at the Harvard Club in New York City to discuss his mounting financial pressures. Arbitrageur Boesky offered Siegel, a mergers-and-acquisitions executive at Kidder, Peabody & Co., a job, but Siegel, who was looking for some kind of consulting arrangement, declined. Boesky then suggested that if Siegel would supply him with early inside information on upcoming mergers there would be something in it for him.
In January 1983, although little information had been exchanged, Boesky sent a courier with a secret code and a briefcase containing $150,000 in $100 bills to be delivered to Siegel at the Plaza Hotel.
Over the next couple of years, Siegel passed inside information to Boesky on several occasions. With Siegel's inside tips, Boesky made $28 million dollars investing in Carnation stock before its takeover. But his success began to fuel investigative inquiries by both the press and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Rumors that Siegel and Kidder, Peabody & Co. were involved in illegal activities began floating around.
Despite the pressure, Siegel and Boesky met at a deli in January 1985, where Siegel demanded $400,000. This time, the cash drop-off was made at a phone booth. Siegel, who was apprehensive about his relationship with Boesky, decided to put an end to it after he had received his money. Still, he continued to trade inside information with other Wall Street executives.
In 1986, the illegal schemes, which by then included many of the biggest traders in the country, came crashing down. Arrests were made up and down Wall Street, and Boesky and Michael Milken, the junk bond king charged with violating federal securities laws, were no exception.
Siegel turned out to be one of the few cooperative witnesses for the government and virtually the only one who showed remorse for his role in the fraud, causing him to be ostracized on Wall Street. Nevertheless, he did fare better than the others: Milken received a 10-year sentence and Boesky received 3 years, but Siegel was only required to return the $9 million he had obtained illegally. The entire incident came to symbolize the era of unfettered greed on Wall Street in the mid-1980s.
&feature=related
July 2007
When reporter Anne Maria Nicholson was inside the crater of Mt Vesuvius in Naples, she was less alarmed by the smoking fumeroles that were expelling clouds of gas around her than the ground giving away beneath her.
"I was there with a scientist from Naples University, Professor Benedetto de Vivo. He was so intent on pointing out the intricacies of the inside of the crater that he wasn't looking at the ground beneath him. There was an enormous drop in front of us and the ground wasn't that stable. He told me there's a lake of magma about 12 kilometres beneath us but at that point, my main concern was falling rather than the thought of a massive eruption."
Nicholson and cameraman Louie Eroglu filmed the mountain from all sides, including the towns in the so-called red zone that are at risk.
"They say a volcano is only dangerous if there are people around it. In this case there are three million people and the major problem is that it so congested that if there is an eruption with little warning, it will be impossible for people to escape.
"Unfortunately, there's a major disagreement among scientists with some saying there will be several weeks warning while others say it could be as little as a day. In spite of this, the authorities have allowed lots of high rise buildings and have now given permission to build the biggest hospital in southern Italy, right in the path of the last lava flow from Vesuvius.
"We've looked at what might happen if there is an eruption with a pyroclastic flow like the one that killed everyone in the Roman town of Pompeii in 79 AD. It's a terrifying proposition."
July 2007
When reporter Anne Maria Nicholson was inside the crater of Mt Vesuvius in Naples, she was less alarmed by the smoking fumeroles that were expelling clouds of gas around her than the ground giving away beneath her.
"I was there with a scientist from Naples University, Professor Benedetto de Vivo. He was so intent on pointing out the intricacies of the inside of the crater that he wasn't looking at the ground beneath him. There was an enormous drop in front of us and the ground wasn't that stable. He told me there's a lake of magma about 12 kilometres beneath us but at that point, my main concern was falling rather than the thought of a massive eruption."
Nicholson and cameraman Louie Eroglu filmed the mountain from all sides, including the towns in the so-called red zone that are at risk.
"They say a volcano is only dangerous if there are people around it. In this case there are three million people and the major problem is that it so congested that if there is an eruption with little warning, it will be impossible for people to escape.
"Unfortunately, there's a major disagreement among scientists with some saying there will be several weeks warning while others say it could be as little as a day. In spite of this, the authorities have allowed lots of high rise buildings and have now given permission to build the biggest hospital in southern Italy, right in the path of the last lava flow from Vesuvius.
"We've looked at what might happen if there is an eruption with a pyroclastic flow like the one that killed everyone in the Roman town of Pompeii in 79 AD. It's a terrifying proposition."
http://geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/
Bay of Naples--highly urban, far too close for safety
They call it the Garden of Fugitives
Vesuvius erupting in 1944
SEE THE WEBPAGE, READ THE TEXT
About the Author of the webpage
Jessica Ball is a graduate student in the Department of Geology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her concentration is in volcanology, and she is currently researching lava dome collapses and pyroclastic flows. Jessica earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the College of William and Mary, and worked for a year at the American Geological Institute in the Education/Outreach Program. She also writes the Magma Cum Laude blog, and in what spare time she has left, she enjoys rock climbing and playing various stringed instruments.
Bay of Naples--highly urban, far too close for safety
They call it the Garden of Fugitives
Vesuvius erupting in 1944
SEE THE WEBPAGE, READ THE TEXT
About the Author of the webpage
Jessica Ball is a graduate student in the Department of Geology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her concentration is in volcanology, and she is currently researching lava dome collapses and pyroclastic flows. Jessica earned her Bachelor of Science degree from the College of William and Mary, and worked for a year at the American Geological Institute in the Education/Outreach Program. She also writes the Magma Cum Laude blog, and in what spare time she has left, she enjoys rock climbing and playing various stringed instruments.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/21/whats-keeping-unemployment-up-its-the-demand-stupid/
Why is unemployment still so high? Are people still just not spending enough? Or is there a structural problem at work?
Most economists think it’s the former. They will argue that the unemployment crisis is all about “aggregate demand” — that is, people just aren’t buying enough stuff. Consumers aren’t spending and businesses aren’t buying from each other, so businesses don’t have money to hire people and mass unemployment persists. This explanation was first put forth by John Maynard Keynes in “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” and continues to be accepted by current Keynesians like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers. Yet even monetarists, the Keynesians’ main critics, agree that most recessions are due to a lack of demand.
Other economists, however, have challenged this picture, arguing that even if the underlying recession is due to insufficient demand, structural factors are also keeping unemployment high. Nobel laureate Michael Spence is the most prominent advocate of this view. The real problem, Spence argues, is that too many of America’s jobs are in ”non-tradable” sectors like nursing or construction. That leaves our “tradable” sector, which produces goods and services for export, at a disadvantage at a time when other countries’ tradable sectors are growing. We need to invest heavily in education to make our tradable sector more productive and increase employment there, Spence argues. Sachs agrees that increasing the workforce’s education and skill level is more important than spurring greater demand.
If this theory is true, then current unemployment is due to a skills mismatch — people don’t just have the skills to do the jobs we need them to do. The solution to this is to increase education so that people can handle those jobs, rather than to increase demand. There’s one problem: This isn’t the main reason unemployment is high now. A new paper (pdf) from New York Fed economists Aysegul Sahin, Joseph Song, Giorgio Topa and Giovanni L. Violante finds that a skills mismatch is responsible for at most a 1.5 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate during the recession. Given that unemployment shot up by about 5 points, that leaves the other 3.5 percentage points explained by a shortfall in demand. What’s more, the effects of skill mismatch only really appear during the recession:
Both lines show the increase in unemployment for each period caused by a skills mismatch. The red dotted line adjusts for differences between economic sectors, while the black line doesn’t. In either case, both measures find that skills mismatches have a very large effect only in the aftermath of the 2001 and 2008 recessions, whereas in 2007 mismatches only increased unemployment by about 0.2 percentage points. This suggests that addressing the underlying lack of demand would prevent mismatches from hurting unemployment. This makes intuitive sense. When there are a lot of jobs due to healthy demand, the likelihood that a given person can find a job that matches their skill set is much higher. When there’s low demand and jobs are scarce anyway, chances of finding a job matching one’s skill set are low.
All of which suggests that the best response to the jobs crisis is one that spurs aggregate demand, through looser monetary policy, fiscal stimulus or another means, rather than one that tries to build up skills for workers. The latter policy may be desirable for other reasons, but it’s really neither here nor there on the jobs crisis.
PROVING ONCE AGAIN THAT KEYNES LIVES
Why is unemployment still so high? Are people still just not spending enough? Or is there a structural problem at work?
Most economists think it’s the former. They will argue that the unemployment crisis is all about “aggregate demand” — that is, people just aren’t buying enough stuff. Consumers aren’t spending and businesses aren’t buying from each other, so businesses don’t have money to hire people and mass unemployment persists. This explanation was first put forth by John Maynard Keynes in “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” and continues to be accepted by current Keynesians like Paul Krugman and Larry Summers. Yet even monetarists, the Keynesians’ main critics, agree that most recessions are due to a lack of demand.
Other economists, however, have challenged this picture, arguing that even if the underlying recession is due to insufficient demand, structural factors are also keeping unemployment high. Nobel laureate Michael Spence is the most prominent advocate of this view. The real problem, Spence argues, is that too many of America’s jobs are in ”non-tradable” sectors like nursing or construction. That leaves our “tradable” sector, which produces goods and services for export, at a disadvantage at a time when other countries’ tradable sectors are growing. We need to invest heavily in education to make our tradable sector more productive and increase employment there, Spence argues. Sachs agrees that increasing the workforce’s education and skill level is more important than spurring greater demand.
If this theory is true, then current unemployment is due to a skills mismatch — people don’t just have the skills to do the jobs we need them to do. The solution to this is to increase education so that people can handle those jobs, rather than to increase demand. There’s one problem: This isn’t the main reason unemployment is high now. A new paper (pdf) from New York Fed economists Aysegul Sahin, Joseph Song, Giorgio Topa and Giovanni L. Violante finds that a skills mismatch is responsible for at most a 1.5 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate during the recession. Given that unemployment shot up by about 5 points, that leaves the other 3.5 percentage points explained by a shortfall in demand. What’s more, the effects of skill mismatch only really appear during the recession:
Both lines show the increase in unemployment for each period caused by a skills mismatch. The red dotted line adjusts for differences between economic sectors, while the black line doesn’t. In either case, both measures find that skills mismatches have a very large effect only in the aftermath of the 2001 and 2008 recessions, whereas in 2007 mismatches only increased unemployment by about 0.2 percentage points. This suggests that addressing the underlying lack of demand would prevent mismatches from hurting unemployment. This makes intuitive sense. When there are a lot of jobs due to healthy demand, the likelihood that a given person can find a job that matches their skill set is much higher. When there’s low demand and jobs are scarce anyway, chances of finding a job matching one’s skill set are low.
All of which suggests that the best response to the jobs crisis is one that spurs aggregate demand, through looser monetary policy, fiscal stimulus or another means, rather than one that tries to build up skills for workers. The latter policy may be desirable for other reasons, but it’s really neither here nor there on the jobs crisis.
PROVING ONCE AGAIN THAT KEYNES LIVES
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/24/anchovy-price-leap-food-industry-chain
Rising anchovy prices are affecting the world's fishing industry. Photograph: Kevin Schafer/Getty Images
"If you like anchovies on your pizza you'd better be careful," warns Mark Livingston, investment director of Fidelity Worldwide Investment.
You would not expect the head of a global asset fund managing £138bn of pensions and investments to care about the cost of pizza toppings. But the global nature of the food chain means severe storms off the coast of Peru have led to a dramatic jump in the price of the oily fish – which will in turn lead to a spike in Scottish farmed fish, Chinese pigs and even Omega 3 tablets in Holland & Barratt.
"That's the nature of today's food business – everything's connected," Livingston says. "If you can catch some anchovies you'll make some serious money."
And that's why Livingston cares about this silvery-coloured fish. Three years ago Fidelity spotted the growing importance of the "forgotten fish" and invested in Copeinca, a Norwegian company that owns a fleet of 30 Peruvian anchovy fishing boats and five processing plants across the country.
Rising anchovy prices are affecting the world's fishing industry. Photograph: Kevin Schafer/Getty Images
"If you like anchovies on your pizza you'd better be careful," warns Mark Livingston, investment director of Fidelity Worldwide Investment.
You would not expect the head of a global asset fund managing £138bn of pensions and investments to care about the cost of pizza toppings. But the global nature of the food chain means severe storms off the coast of Peru have led to a dramatic jump in the price of the oily fish – which will in turn lead to a spike in Scottish farmed fish, Chinese pigs and even Omega 3 tablets in Holland & Barratt.
"That's the nature of today's food business – everything's connected," Livingston says. "If you can catch some anchovies you'll make some serious money."
And that's why Livingston cares about this silvery-coloured fish. Three years ago Fidelity spotted the growing importance of the "forgotten fish" and invested in Copeinca, a Norwegian company that owns a fleet of 30 Peruvian anchovy fishing boats and five processing plants across the country.
But, with Isaac getting ready to pop, it's probably a madhouse.
I love it! All the pukes, from Idaho, and Indiana they're interviewing on TV say, "Bring it on, we're here to spend some time on the beach". 
They've obviously never seen a tropical storm or hurricane before. The beaches will be closed by tomorrow evening, morans. And by Wed. they'll be gone. The beaches.
And, you're all staying on the Pinellas County beaches, across the bay from the convention center. When it hits, they close all the bridges, because they're flooded. So, you'll be stuck in the hotel bar for three days. Fuck all you ignorant baggers. You deserve it!
And, if you do get a chance to take a dip, it's hammerhead and bull shark mating season in the gulf. Have fun!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa
While seismic activity around the volcano was intense in the years preceding the cataclysmic 1883 eruption, a series of lesser eruptions began on May 10, 1883. The volcano released huge plumes of steam and ash lasting until late August.[13] On August 27 a series of four huge explosions almost entirely destroyed the island. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,500 km (2,200 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away.[4] The pressure wave from the final explosion was recorded on barographs around the world, which continued to register it up to 5 days after the explosion. The recordings show that the shock wave from the final explosion reverberated around the globe seven times.[12] Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (50 mi). The sound of the eruption was so loud it was said that if anyone was within ten miles (16 km), he would go deaf.
The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes, and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region. The death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at more than 120,000. There are numerous documented reports of groups of human skeletons floating across the Indian Ocean on rafts of volcanic pumice and washing up on the east coast of Africa up to a year after the eruption
http://discover-indo.tierranet.com/volcano02.htm
The event: Monday, August 27, 1883 at 10:02 am. At that very moment came the culminating and terrifying main eruption of the Krakatoa. Krakatoa's final twenty hours and fity-minutes were marked by a number of phases. It started by a series of explosions on Sunday at about 7 p.m. The explosion was so huge that most of the volcano's mountain (or island) desapeared under the level of the sea. A new smalest volcano island was formed later on, and called Anak Krakatoa.
This eruption of August 1883 was the largest recorded in Java, and is considered as one the world's biggest volcano explosion recorded by human in the last centuries, with the Tambora Volcano in Sumbawa on April 1815, an other Indonesian island. Coming back to the Krakatao eruption, the sound was so loud that it was heard in Thailand and in Australia. Some studies are also pointing out thet the smoke was so important that it propagated in the atmosphere for months, generating climate modification in an extended portion of the globe.
On August 27, 1883 the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history took place on the Krakatoa Islands. Located between Java and Sumatra, the islands themselves owed their existence to a massive eruption early in the 5th century AD. In the wake of the 1883 eruption over 36,000 lay dead and the entire island detonated with a force unknown in the pre-atomic age. Krakatoa, which stood some 6000 feet above sea level on August 26th, had simply ceased to exist twenty-four hours later. Some three-quarters of the island had been blasted away or sank beneath the ocean into the crater where the volcano once stood. The eruption bundled together a catalogue of individual disasters: massive explosions, earthquakes, toxic clouds of superheated ash and gasses, and a tsunami whose 140 foot waves decimated 165 villages in the region. A ship in a nearby bay was lifted by the ensuing tidal wave and deposited two miles inland. A volcanic hail of stones rained from the sky while shrouds of ash turned the daytime sky pitch black.
* * *
Krakatoa's eruption generated a shockwave that traveled the earth seven times. The tons of ash propelled into the sky generated climactic changes as particles blocked sunlight and reduced temperatures. Created by volcanic eruption, the island was destroyed by the same geological forces. For a half-century the ravaged remnant of the island stood as a testament to the volcano's explosive fury. But the cycle does not end here. In 1927 a volcanic peak began to rise from the ocean where part of Rakata Island had once been. It now stands 2600 feet above sea level.
Its name: Anak Krakatoa. The child of Krakatoa.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/discovery/index_krakatoa.html
While seismic activity around the volcano was intense in the years preceding the cataclysmic 1883 eruption, a series of lesser eruptions began on May 10, 1883. The volcano released huge plumes of steam and ash lasting until late August.[13] On August 27 a series of four huge explosions almost entirely destroyed the island. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,500 km (2,200 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away.[4] The pressure wave from the final explosion was recorded on barographs around the world, which continued to register it up to 5 days after the explosion. The recordings show that the shock wave from the final explosion reverberated around the globe seven times.[12] Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (50 mi). The sound of the eruption was so loud it was said that if anyone was within ten miles (16 km), he would go deaf.
The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes, and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region. The death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at more than 120,000. There are numerous documented reports of groups of human skeletons floating across the Indian Ocean on rafts of volcanic pumice and washing up on the east coast of Africa up to a year after the eruption
http://discover-indo.tierranet.com/volcano02.htm
The event: Monday, August 27, 1883 at 10:02 am. At that very moment came the culminating and terrifying main eruption of the Krakatoa. Krakatoa's final twenty hours and fity-minutes were marked by a number of phases. It started by a series of explosions on Sunday at about 7 p.m. The explosion was so huge that most of the volcano's mountain (or island) desapeared under the level of the sea. A new smalest volcano island was formed later on, and called Anak Krakatoa.
This eruption of August 1883 was the largest recorded in Java, and is considered as one the world's biggest volcano explosion recorded by human in the last centuries, with the Tambora Volcano in Sumbawa on April 1815, an other Indonesian island. Coming back to the Krakatao eruption, the sound was so loud that it was heard in Thailand and in Australia. Some studies are also pointing out thet the smoke was so important that it propagated in the atmosphere for months, generating climate modification in an extended portion of the globe.
On August 27, 1883 the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history took place on the Krakatoa Islands. Located between Java and Sumatra, the islands themselves owed their existence to a massive eruption early in the 5th century AD. In the wake of the 1883 eruption over 36,000 lay dead and the entire island detonated with a force unknown in the pre-atomic age. Krakatoa, which stood some 6000 feet above sea level on August 26th, had simply ceased to exist twenty-four hours later. Some three-quarters of the island had been blasted away or sank beneath the ocean into the crater where the volcano once stood. The eruption bundled together a catalogue of individual disasters: massive explosions, earthquakes, toxic clouds of superheated ash and gasses, and a tsunami whose 140 foot waves decimated 165 villages in the region. A ship in a nearby bay was lifted by the ensuing tidal wave and deposited two miles inland. A volcanic hail of stones rained from the sky while shrouds of ash turned the daytime sky pitch black.
* * *
Krakatoa's eruption generated a shockwave that traveled the earth seven times. The tons of ash propelled into the sky generated climactic changes as particles blocked sunlight and reduced temperatures. Created by volcanic eruption, the island was destroyed by the same geological forces. For a half-century the ravaged remnant of the island stood as a testament to the volcano's explosive fury. But the cycle does not end here. In 1927 a volcanic peak began to rise from the ocean where part of Rakata Island had once been. It now stands 2600 feet above sea level.
Its name: Anak Krakatoa. The child of Krakatoa.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/discovery/index_krakatoa.html
(Since DU is acting squirrelly and won't let me edit the above post) The photos in Post #25 are all of Anak Krakatau, or "Child of Krakatau," the "new" island formed in 1927. The following is shows the size of the islands prior to the 1883 eruption.
