How fast would lava kill you

Stepping on it will make an indentation—right before the flames start and thing starts really bubbling up. A German researcher confirmed that by chucking what was basically a pound bag of leftovers into a volcano in , the Huffington Post reported.

But please, don't step on the lava in Hawaii. It's not just for safety reasons. Flow front is center, silver-black mass with rising fume. Buildings and lagoon in this photograph were completely buried within one month. Fluid basalt flows can extend tens of kilometers from an erupting vent. Viscous andesite flows move only a few kilometers per hour couple feet per second and rarely extend more than 8 km 5 mi from their vents.

Viscous dacite and rhyolite flows often form steep-sided mounds called lava domes over an erupting vent. Such flows will overlap one another and typically move less than a few meters per hour. Everything in the path of an advancing lava flow will be knocked over, surrounded, buried, or ignited by the extremely hot temperature of lava. When lava erupts beneath a glacier or flows over snow and ice, meltwater from the ice and snow can result in far-reaching lahars.

With prolonged contact, the amount of lava "coverage" and the length of time it was in contact with your skin would be important factors in how severe your injuries would be! The health of the individual, the amount of time before care can be given and the quality of that care would also be important.

In fact there have been 2 cases at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory where a geologist fell into lava. Fortunately in both instances the lava was not very deep and they were able to get out quickly. Both ended up in the hospital and it was a scary and painful experience. Both recovered fine. Blong points out that little research has been done on injuries caused by lava. People have been killed by very fast moving lava flows. A recent example was the eruption at Nyiragongo.

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