The article by Mary Bagley explains that scientists that were flying around the volcano noted that the "…whole north face of the mountain was on the move," and as they passed to the east side of the mountain, "the north face collapsed, releasing superheated gases and trapped magma in a massive lateral explosion." The scientists in the plan had to put the plane into a very steep dive just to be going fast enough to "outrun the cloud of incandescent gas" (Bagley)
As a wandering expatriate writer, Lowry himself directly experienced the feeling of displacement from one's national identity - a feeling that has increasingly become the norm in a globalized and globalizing world model that is fraught with problems. In many ways, Lowry was a predecessor of the view later expressed by Hannah Arendt - that, when one is no longer a "member" of a nation-state, then that person dwells "outside the common world" (Arendt 302)
Lowry's depiction of his characters also resonates with Homi K. Bhabha's conception of national identity, of those "wandering peoples who will not be contained within the Heim of the national culture and its unisonant discourse" (Bhabha 164)
. Where your passaporte? What need for you to make disguise?" (Lowry 370)
As Miller has noted, the Consul ultimately finds himself in a position in which he proves to be as defenseless as any undocumented alien. Despite (or perhaps because of) his efforts to transcend the constraints of national identity, he becomes, in the end, a victim of the xenophobic (and extrajudicial) violence that lurks under the apparent normativity, legality, and rationality of the sovereign nation-state (Miller 5)
" The latter term implies means of control over human beings that is ultimately rooted in a hegemonic promotion of values. "Planetarity," on the other hand, attempts the address the ways in which human beings exist as "planetary subjects rather than global agents" (Spivak 73)
Tambora - a stratovolcano that last erupted in 1815, and was the largest eruption known in historic time. Another author notes the impact of the eruption, "The eruption of Tambora on the island of Sumatra in 1815 left ash deposits over 20 inches thick (51 cm) up to 30 miles away (48 km) and blew pieces of pumice 6 inches wide (15 cm) over this same distance" (Morton 62)
The Mount Toba eruption created an "evolutionary" or "genetic bottleneck" because it discharged so much fine material that scientists believe it could have speeded up the last glacial period in the Ice Age, by lowering temperatures 3 to 5 degrees centigrade for at least a year, and even more in northern Canada (as much as 10 to 12 degrees centigrade.) it actually helped more ice form on the continent, and this helped reduce genetic diversity, creating the bottleneck (Scarth 199)
From this point-of-view, both relative and radiometric means of age dating are vital. The relative method for determining age on rocks in particular follow a relative pattern in the sense that it provides the scientists with an approximate period for the respective rock based on assumptions (Hall, 2007)
Volcanic mountains or constructions usually are formed as a result of constant eruptions and sedimentation of the lava. However, their height or structure is not necessarily a robust one and most often they erode in time, leaving behind only parts of volcanoes or different other remains (Lockwood and Hazlett, 2010)
This is problematic since so many volcanic areas are well-populated. These include the Alban Hills south of Rome, Italy, the "Ring of Fire" in the Cascade Mountains of the northwest United States, and the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador (Choi, 2004; Kerr, 2003)
Mileti (1999) suggests that there are two main factors in volcanic disaster warning and prediction: "forecasting explosive events and assessing volcanic hazard" (185). Methods to detect whether there is a volcanic hazard are more accurate than methods attempting to predict an explosive event (Kerr, 2003; Mileti, 1999)
These include the Alban Hills south of Rome, Italy, the "Ring of Fire" in the Cascade Mountains of the northwest United States, and the Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador (Choi, 2004; Kerr, 2003). To make matters worse, few volcanoes around the world are monitored well or at all (Mileti, 1999)