Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. I'm Lauren vogel Bomb, and this is a
Speaker 1: classic episode from our archives. In this one, we were
Speaker 1: wondering how feasible it would actually be to outrun a
Speaker 1: volcano the way that action heroes do in movies. So
Speaker 1: we looked up some numbers and did some math. The
Speaker 1: prognosis isn't great. Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: Hi brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel Bomb. Here it's a familiar
Speaker 1: cinematic situation. A daring scientist arrives in town to study
Speaker 1: the local volcano, which has been dormant for centuries but
Speaker 1: now seems dangerously close to erupting. Despite the dire warnings
Speaker 1: of everyone around him, the intrepid volcanologist, perhaps with a
Speaker 1: trusty and attractive assistant in tow, insists on scaling the
Speaker 1: mountain to more closely examine its condition. But just as
Speaker 1: the pair arrives at the gaping crater, it blows, sending
Speaker 1: them running or possibly jeeping, hand in hand down the
Speaker 1: slope early staying ahead of the raging river of hot lava.
Speaker 1: Seeing any number of these exhilarating scenes might leave you
Speaker 1: wondering what would happen if I suddenly needed to escape
Speaker 1: from an erupting volcano. Could I outrun the lava and
Speaker 1: make it to safety? Well, technically yes. If lava were
Speaker 1: all you had to deal with while scrambling down the
Speaker 1: side of a fiery mountain, you might be in the clear.
Speaker 1: Most lava flows, especially those from shield volcanoes the less
Speaker 1: explosive type, are pretty sluggish. As long as the lava
Speaker 1: doesn't find its way into a tube or shoot shaped valley,
Speaker 1: it will probably move slower than a mile per hour.
Speaker 1: For example, the lava flow from the Mauna Lower eruption
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty was clocked at six miles per hour.
Speaker 1: That's nine kilometers per hour. You probably wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: trouble scurrying away from that. There have been examples of
Speaker 1: fast moving lava, but there are few and far between,
Speaker 1: Like when the Democratic Republic of Congo's mountaineer Gongo erupted
Speaker 1: in ninety seven, Its lava was measured going forty miles
Speaker 1: per hour that's sixty four kilometers per hour, and at
Speaker 1: least two thousand people lost their lives. The unfortunate truth, though,
Speaker 1: is that lava will be the least of your worries
Speaker 1: if you're close enough to an erupting volcano that you're
Speaker 1: thinking about running for your life. Contrary to what we
Speaker 1: might see in the movies, the dangers of a volcanic
Speaker 1: eruption are not confined to burning hot lava. Even if
Speaker 1: you could stay ahead of the lava, you'd never survived
Speaker 1: the pyroclastic flow that's the accompanying, burning hot, fast moving
Speaker 1: cloud of ash, rock, gas, and debris. Pyroclastic flows are
Speaker 1: the worst when they come from the more dramatically explosive
Speaker 1: composite volcanoes, but they generally move at speeds greater than
Speaker 1: sixty miles per hour a k a ninety six kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour and reach temperatures between about two hundred and
Speaker 1: seven hundred degrees celsius that's around four hundred hundred degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: By many estimates, the pyroclastic flow from the infamous eruption
Speaker 1: of Mount Vesuvius in seventy nine c E reached four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles per hour or seven hundred kilometers
Speaker 1: per hour. There's obviously no way anyone's out running that.
Speaker 1: And if the pyroclastic flow happens to melt snow or
Speaker 1: a glacier. This creates a lahar and extra deadly concrete
Speaker 1: thick mud slide slash avalanche combo. So, if you one
Speaker 1: day find yourself flirting with danger on the rim of
Speaker 1: an erupting volcano, we hate to say it, but your toast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Alison Cooper and produced by
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil and Tyler clang Or. More on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other explosive topics visit how stuff works dot com.
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