Which volcano has done the worst damage to land, people and weather?
If found what type of volcano was it?
Coleman
Hi Coleman,
That is kind of a difficult question to answer. There have been lots of
eruptions that have been really terrible for the folks who happened to
live near them. For example a big eruption in Indonesia might not really
matter to the folks living in Peru. Another thing that makes answering
this question difficult is that as we go back in history the records of
volcanic effects get more and more hazy.
There was a huge eruption from the island of Santorini (in the
Mediterranean) back in Minoan times. This explosive eruption converted
an island into an arc-shaped skeleton of its former self when the volcano
collapsed during the eruption into a caldera. This would have generated
large tsunami which might have devastated many nearby and far
Mediterranean coastlines. Lots of folks think that the
destruction of either the civilization that was living on Santorini
itself or one nearby gave rise to the legends of "lost" cities of
Atlantis.
There are some folks who think that perhaps there was enough pre-cursory
earthquake activity that the folks on Santorini itself would have moved
away. Either way their society was destroyed, and for that part of the
world that was the worst eruption. The effects on far-away parts of the
world, however, might have been barely noticeable.
If I had to pick one relatively recent bad eruption I would have to say
the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815. It was a huge eruption
that sent ash into the stratosphere that then spread around the world.
World climate was noticeably cooler the following year, and in places it
was called "the year without a summer". Closer to the eruption itself
thousands of people were killed, and due to the destruction of crops,
disease, contamination of water, etc., tens of thousands more died in the
next few following years. Back in 1815 there wasn't too much news coming
out of Indonesia to the western world but if it were to happen today it
would definitely have been a big deal.
Sincerely,
Scott Rowland
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