Krakatoa Quotes

“The scientific world of the time was in the midst of a terrible ferment, with discoveries and realizations coming at an unseemly rate. To many in the ranks of the conservative and the devout, the new theories of geology and biology were delivering a series of hammer blows to mankind's self-regard. Geologists in particular seemed to have gone berserk, to have thrown off all sense of proper obeisance to their Maker... Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly rather – dare one say it? – insignificant. He may not have been, as he had eternally supposed, specially created.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded [August 27, 1883]

“In the aftermath of Krakatoa’s eruption, 165 villages were devastated, 36,417 people died, and uncountable thousands were injured—and almost all of them, villages and inhabitants, were victims not of the eruption directly but of the immense sea-waves* that were propelled outward from the volcano by that last night of detonations.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“The death throes of Krakatoa lasted for exactly twenty hours and fifty-six minutes, culminating in the gigantic explosion that all observers now agree happened at 10:02 A.M. on Monday, August 27, 1883.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“The eruption of Krakatoa was, indeed, the first true catastrophe in the world to take place after the establishment of a worldwide network of telegraph cables—a network that allowed news of disaster to be flashed around the planet in double-quick time.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“The explosion itself was terrific, a monstrous thing that still attracts an endless procession of superlatives. It was the greatest detonation, the loudest sound, the most devastating volcanic event in modern recorded human history, and it killed more than thirty-six thousand people.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“by 1328 the guild had been formally registered as an importer of spices in large, or gross, amounts: its members were called grossarii, from which comes the modern word grocer.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“His reputation is based largely on his thirty-seven-volume Natural History, an immense masterpiece in which, among countless other delights, is the first use of the word from which we derive today’s encyclopedia. It was during the late summer of A.D. 79, while pursuing his official task of investigating piracy in the Bay of Naples, that Pliny was persuaded to explore a peculiar cloud formation that appeared to be coming from the summit of the local mountain, Vesuvius. He was duly rowed ashore, visited a local village to calm the panicked inhabitants—and was promptly caught up in a massive eruption. He died of asphyxiation by volcanic gases on August 24, leaving behind him a vast reputation and, as memorial, a single word in the lexicon of modern vulcanology, Plinian. A Plinian eruption is now defined as an almighty, explosive eruption that all but destroys the entire volcano from which it emanates. And the most devastating Plinian event of the modern era occurred 1,804 years, almost to the day, after Pliny the Elder’s death: at Krakatoa.) Pepper has a confused reputation.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“at exactly two minutes past ten on the morning of Monday, August 27, 1883. The explosion itself was terrific, a monstrous thing that still attracts an endless procession of superlatives. It was the greatest detonation, the loudest sound, the most devastating volcanic event in modern recorded human history, and it killed more than thirty-six thousand people.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“But these were all eruptions quite lost in antiquity, with rather little direct effect on human society.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“The story of Krakatoa had a small beginning—seven newsworthy words, buried well down in the pages of a single London newspaper. As the summer of 1883 wore on, it was to become a very much greater story indeed. And when it was over, three months later, it was to have implications for society—for the laying of the foundations of McLuhan’s “global village”—that have reverberated in a far more important way, and for far, far longer, than anyone at the time could ever have supposed.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“Such a series of hammer blows! Mankind, it seemed, was now suddenly really rather—dare one say it?—insignificant. He may not after all have been, as he had eternally supposed, specially created. The Book of Genesis, believed by so many to be Holy Writ, was perhaps no more than the stuff of myth and ancient legend. And now even the continents themselves, long supposed to be the most reliable and unshifting bedrock of our very existence, had become mobile.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“Pliny was persuaded to explore a peculiar cloud formation that appeared to be coming from the summit of the local mountain, Vesuvius. He was duly rowed ashore, visited a local village to calm the panicked inhabitants—and was promptly caught up in a massive eruption. He died of asphyxiation by volcanic gases on August 24, leaving behind him a vast reputation and, as memorial, a single word in the lexicon of modern vulcanology, Plinian. A Plinian eruption is now defined as an almighty, explosive eruption that all but destroys the entire volcano from which it emanates. And the most devastating Plinian event of the modern era occurred 1,804 years, almost to the day, after Pliny the Elder’s death: at Krakatoa.)”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“Now, seen from a palm plantation high on a green hillside, Krakatoa looks peaceful and serene, with just a thin column of white or gray or on occasion black smoke easing up from its summit. But looks are deceptive: All the while the child-mountain is growing steadily and rapidly, as the elemental fires that created the world rage deep inside.”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883

“Sophisticated human beings were on hand to see this volcano's convulsions, they were able to investigate the event, and they were able to attempt to understand the processes that had caused such dreadful violence...their observations, painstaking and precise as science demanded, collided head-on with a most discomfiting reality: that while in 1883 the world was becoming ever more scientifically advanced, it was in part because of these same advances that its people found themselves in a strangely febrile and delicately balanced condition...”
― Simon Winchester, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded [August 27, 1883]