Page 89 - The Truth of the Life of This World

The intention is to remind people that their ultimate purpose in life is to
be servants of Allah, that they are but impotent against Allah's might and
that they will be judged on the day of judgement.

Volcanoes

As well as the vibration or shaking of the ground caused by sudden
movement or rupture of large masses of rock within the earth's crust or
upper mantle, volcanic eruptions are another spectacular form of natural
disaster. There are about 1,500 active volcanoes around the world today;
4
550 of them exist on land while the remainder are under the oceans.
These volcanoes can erupt at any time in extremely destructive ways that
no-one can anticipate in advance. When they erupt, they can kill the resi-
dents of nearby cities in addition to destroying crops and covering farm-
land with ash.
Some catastrophic eruptions that took place in this century as well as
earlier in history made indelible impressions on the human mind. These
eruptions wiped many cities off the map and killed numerous communi-
ties.
There are certainly lessons to be drawn from the volcanic eruptions
witnessed in history. Mount Vesuvius in Italy, for instance, buried
Pompeii, a city whose residents led a life of total debauchery, under a
storm of hot lava. It is striking that 20,000 inhabitants of this prosperous
city were asphyxiated mostly by the pyroclastic flows that swept through
it on the 24th August 79 CE.
In our own day, however, the dormancy of volcanoes can often end
abruptly and they can explode at unexpected times shooting steam and
ash thousands of feet into the air. In the meantime, pyroclastic flows sweep
through areas causing irrecoverable damage to whatever they encounter.
Another adverse effect of eruptions is the harmful clouds of gases and ash
carried by winds into populated areas. These terrifying winds, sometimes
about 90 miles per hour, set everything on fire and engulf cities like sun-
extinguishing canopies.
One of history's worst disasters occurred in 1883 when Krakatau, in the
East Indies, erupted explosively, generating a sound-wave heard 3,000

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