I have burns and suffocation, what else?
-
Suffocation in several forms. One by breathing in the ash, having it clog up your lungs becoming cement like. It can have acidic properties that when it comes in contact with your lungs it becomes sulfuric acid. . The heat from the ash cloud can burn you up faster than a piece of bacon. the lava of course can kill you but many times it can be escaped from. Volcanoes can cause landslides, and mudslides. Many of those have killed thousands of people. If it is a large enough blast it can literally kill you with a shockwave. Many have caused tsunamis. Then there is airtravel disruptions (why when the volcano in Iceland erupted the planes were grounded). Volcanic ash has been known to clog engines and nearly take planes down, probably has in indonesia, just noone took records. Nearly made one crash several years ago in Alaska.
One volcano erupted below water in a lake in Africa, it mixed with that lake water and made a low lying cloud that killed several hundreds of people and left them burned as well, because the odorless poisonous gas was heavier than air. most that slept on the ground died, those elevated lived.
Then there is long term disruptions that can and could kill people by disrupting weather patterns. Krakatoa when it erupted dropped the average global temperature 2-3 degrees for about 2 years. destroying crops and normal migrations. care to guess how many people died of starvation because of that??
One volcano erupted below water in a lake in Africa, it mixed with that lake water and made a low lying cloud that killed several hundreds of people and left them burned as well, because the odorless poisonous gas was heavier than air. most that slept on the ground died, those elevated lived.
Then there is long term disruptions that can and could kill people by disrupting weather patterns. Krakatoa when it erupted dropped the average global temperature 2-3 degrees for about 2 years. destroying crops and normal migrations. care to guess how many people died of starvation because of that??
-
Suffocation is defiantly the most common by far, because of all the ash, people will inhale it and when it mixes with the fluids and moisture in the lungs it kind of hardens all together eventually filling the lungs. I can't really think of anything else that will kill people in an eruption
-
It depends upon the type of eruption. On the one hand, you have Hawaii, where lava reaches the surface easily. On the other hand, you have clogged vents like Mt. St. Helens where the pressure builds up to a nuclear-level explosion. In the case of Vesuvius, it buried everyone in ash.
-
Beyond suffocation from hot acidic ash, there is falling chunks of smoldering rock, debris and sometimes landslides.
-
location location location
-
projectiles, landslides, lahars, flooding, tsunami
-
It burns u!!