All language subtitles for Raging.Planet.S01E02.1080p.DSCP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-WiLF

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After decades of lying dormant,

a volcano explodes.

Superheated rock and ash thunder
downhill with irresistible force.

This is what happens when powerful
forces deep within the Earth erupt.

New land rises
out of the Pacific Ocean.

The Earth's violent interior
pushes into the sea.

This is where lava meets the ocean

in one of the most spectacular shows
on Earth.

This is where scientists come to
witness

the power of the planet firsthand.

Geologist Ken Hon monitors landscapes
in the making.

This region is one of the few places
in the world

where you can see the world change
before your eyes.

Couple of months ago, the land
behind me wasn't here.

None of it was here, it was just
a sea cliff into the ocean.

It really is truly dynamic.

Hawaii's Kilauea is the most active
volcano on Earth.

It's created by a hot spot
of molten magma

that lies 65km below the surface.

Here, heat is constantly released

and rivers of molten rock turn
seawater to steam.

It's not like steam
you have in your kitchen.

It's coming in contact with lava
that's close to 2,000F

so the steam gets superheated.

So it's very, very explosive.

Ken is compiling a video log of
Hawaii's changing coastline.

To capture every detail
of the action,

he uses slow motion photography.

What we film out here,
most of the time,

just helps us see things that we
can't see with our own eyes.

Hawaii grows out into the Pacific

at a rate of seven and a half
hectares a year.

The volcanoes here are highly active
but not often deadly.

This is unusual.

Most volcanoes in the world can be
much more dangerous.

Volcanoes that erupt regularly

are less deadly than those that lie
quiet for centuries,

building up pressure inside.

When dormant volcanoes explode, they
can also unleash tsunamis,

mudflows, avalanches of burning rock

and superheated ash clouds.

Throughout history,
these explosive eruptions

have claimed countless lives.

Kilauea has been spewing out
superheated molten rock

for the past 26 years

but few people have been killed.

This kind of lava is largely made up
of basalt

which hardens to a black crust.

Since 1983, new lava has covered over
100km square.

By 2008,
Jack Thompson was the only one left

in the town of Royal Garden.

Oh, it was all just pristine forest.

It was green
all the way to the ocean.

It was just a wonderland.

1983, the lava started

and I got up one morning and looked
over the back of the mountain

and you could see a glow.

That's kind of a shock
ruining all your scenery,

all the sudden changes
for something totally different.

Luckily,
the lava advanced slowly enough

for people to get out of the way.

Nearly 200 homes were destroyed.

Park ranger Jay Robinson witnessed
the destruction

that's still going on today.

We've had over 200 homes
and structures now destroyed

in this eruption
we're having right now.

But no-one died
because you just walk away.

The lava only flows as fast
as a baby crawls in most cases.

Because Kilauea's flanks
are gently sloping,

the lava spreads out sideways,

cools quickly and slows down.

So Kilauea's lava may look dangerous
but it rarely kills anyone.

But when cities sit
on steep volcanic slopes,

eruptions can pose a serious threat.

Those who live on this volcano
need to know

whether the lava will cool quickly
and stop

or remain hot and keep on flowing.

Southern Italy is a region
threatened by many volcanoes.

On the island of Sicily,

Mount Etna is the biggest and most
active volcano in Europe.

Etna has erupted four times
since the year 2000.

When it blows, the lava flows destroy
everything in their path.

The lava flows usually remain on
the volcano's higher slopes.

But not always.

Sometimes, larger eruptions invade
towns lower down the mountain.

Over the past 300 years,

16 villages have been destroyed.

In this highly populated region,

the pressure is on to work out what
Mount Etna will do next.

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Europe's biggest volcano, Mount
Etna, looms over a million people.

Dr Clive Oppenheimer
is a volcanologist

In this tunnel below Mount Etna,

he's learning how the volcano's lava
has behaved in the past.

What we're looking at is the
solidified wall of a lava tunnel.

This was formed 400 years ago and
you can get an impression

of just how this lava was,

so fluid that
it dribbled off the roof.

You can see here
a little droplet of lava

and this tells us the lava was very,
very hot,

very fluid and runny.

If lava is insulated by a tunnel,

it remains hot, fluid
and extremely dangerous.

Instead of flowing
maybe five miles down Etna,

it flows ten, 15 miles down

and reaches some of the towns
on the flanks.

Clive wants to know if there are
any lava flows

hidden below the flanks of
the volcano right now.

He uses a thermal imaging camera
to detect them.

He discovers the upper slopes
are riddled with lava flows

and at over 2,000 degrees,

they're fluid enough to run down the
mountain.

These constant eruptions release
pressure

from the magma chamber below Etna.

But it's the volcanoes that don't
blow regularly

that build up pressure which prove
most dangerous.

Rising above the densely populated
city of Naples,

this is one of the most dangerous
volcanoes in the world.

When Vesuvius erupted
1,400 years ago,

it buried the town of Pompeii in ash
and claimed 2,000 lives.

In 1944, during World War Two,

the US Army faced an unexpected
adversary - Vesuvius.

An eruption killed 26 people.

Vesuvius is quiet now,

building up for the next big one.

But Dr Clive Oppenheimer is
interested

in the island volcano of Stromboli
nearly 300km away

which is constantly exploding.

It might look a relatively small
volcano.

It goes about three quarters of a
mile above sea level

but below the sea, there's another
one and a half miles of this volcano

so it's really massive.

At the foot of the volcano is the
village of Stromboli.

80km beneath it,

one of the Earth's tectonic plates is
sliding under another,

generating a series of continuous
explosions.

No other volcano on Earth is known to
erupt so often and so consistently.

Clive Oppenheimer studies volcanic
gases

to better predict eruptions.

Here on Stromboli, he has a constant
source from the magma beneath.

So one of the things I'm really
interested in

is how the gas escapes from magma

and I think we can even hear it

as this vent on the volcano is
breathing.

It's the volcano's puffing.

(PUFFING WIND)

If magma is the fuel of volcanoes,

the trigger for these eruptions is
the gas that's contained in it

and that gas, as it comes up to the
surface,

it expands really violently

and then it blows the chunks of
bubble skin,

magma bubbles flying into the air.

Like a champagne bottle,
Stromboli is full of gases.

So when it's uncorked,
the gases escape

and propel showers of lava
into the air.

When we see this kind of activity
going on,

it's impossible for me to imagine

how we could actually control
volcanoes.

But we CAN try and understand how
volcanoes work

and use that information to predict
eruptions.

Clive uses a spectrometer to analyse
the volcanic gases.

They tell him how deep within the
Earth

the explosive bubbles are formed.

Look at that. That is fantastic.

I think the vent there has got
really choked

so when the magma's trying to get
through,

it's blasting out all the rocks that
have choked the vent up

and pulverising the rocks into ash.

There's a beautiful ash cloud coming
up here

and I think it's drifting right
towards me.

It's raining ash.

A moment ago it was 2,000 degrees in
the vent of that volcano

and now it's a cooled down little
piece of ash

seconds later in my hand

and that rock was just made just
now.

That's quite an amazing thing, really.

Ooh...

There again, another instantaneous
explosion.

You can't help to feel something
emotionally

when your whole body is vibrating
with the shock wave.

But actually, this is small fry in
the deadly arsenal

of active volcanoes on planet Earth.

Stromboli's bark is worse than its
bite.

Many of the world's other volcanoes
are much more dangerous.

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When hundreds of years of built-up
pressure blasts out of the Earth,

it completely changes the landscape.

Here, in the cascade range of the
Pacific North-west,

many of the mountains are sleeping
volcanoes.

When one finally blew,

it produced one of the biggest
volcanic eruptions in living memory.

In 1980, Mount St Helens had been
dormant for over 120 years.

So when swarms of earthquakes shook
the mountain

and a small crater formed at its
summit,

scientists from the US Geological
Survey noticed straightaway.

Richard White was one of them.

There is a certain fatalism amongst
geologists

that have worked around these
volcanoes

'cause we all know that if you're
gonna work around one

that's getting ready to erupt,
there's some risk.

Richard's colleague, David Johnston,
was also on the mountain.

David Johnston was up on this ridge,

just a quarter miles from where we
are now

and he was monitoring Mount St
Helens in an official capacity.

David had parked his trailer in front
of the volcano's north flank

to keep an eye on an ominous bulge.

That same day, amateur photographer
Keith Ronnholm

made his way to a scenic spot

also overlooking the volcano's north
flank.

Bear Meadow, where I was 28 years
ago in 1980,

I was ten miles from the mountain.

It seemed like a perfectly safe
place to be.

But just after 8.30 that morning,

the last of a series of earthquakes
hit,

triggering one of the largest
landslides in recorded history.

I glanced over at the mountain and
the entire north face

was in motion, was sliding down

and it's such an unbelievable view

that I shook my head and I said,
'Am I really seeing this?'

I dove for my camera and stood there
and started taking pictures

and the very first picture

shows that the entire side of the
mountain blowing out.

It was quiet, there was no sound

so there was no big explosion, noise

or anything that would make you want
to run.

The landslide had released highly
pressurised volcanic gases.

But instead of shooting upward,
they blew out sideways.

The blast roared across the landscape
at nearly 500km per hour

and hit geologist David Johnston's
trailer.

12km away, Keith Ronnholm was still
taking these pictures.

In one of the pictures, you can see
projectiles

being ejected out with, like, trails
behind them

and those are like house-sized
objects.

You could see it coming towards me

and then it hit the most distant
ridge out there.

It began to break over like a wave
breaks over a breakwater

and curl over and churn.

You just want to watch it but on the
other hand, it's getting closer

and so there's a conflict of,
do I stay and watch or do I go?

Keith Ronnholm was lucky.

The blast tore past to the west of
him.

But fisherman Danny Balch had set up
camp beside a river

and was directly in its path.

It was a beautiful setting,

the birds and animals were totally
quiet.

It was so dead quiet.

Danny Balch was 25km away and
couldn't see the mountain.

He knew nothing of the explosion
until it thundered towards him.

As it went over the top of our
heads,

it was pitch-black and you could see
nothing.

A couple of seconds later, then it
started hitting us.

Started knocking all the trees down.

I was pressed to the ground like a
pancake,

all the air pressed out of me and
everything

but I was also at that point
starting to feel burnt.

This was just like a snap of the
fingers, it was that fast,

and I believe that if we would have
been

in an eruption that would last
longer,

we would have baked, we'd have been
dead for sure.

Danny Balch was just far enough away
from the explosion

to survive with third-degree burns.

57 others weren't so lucky.

When geologist Richard White flew
over the landscape,

everything within sight had been
obliterated.

And nearly 400km square of forest
flattened by the blast.

Richard's colleague, David Johnston,
had been killed.

We never found any trace of him, really.

The camp was over there

and there was a camp trailer,
aluminium camp trailer.

Pieces of it were much later found
scattered down slope.

We found cups and stuff out of it,
just some debris out of the trailer.

Bits of aluminium from the trailer
and so on.

So the trailer itself got shredded.

It happened to be David Johnston
over here on May 18th

but it could have been any of us.

The eruption of Mount St Helens was
150 times more powerful

than the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

It turned great sways of Washington
State Forest

into something more like the moon.

But in some parts of the world,

devastating explosions happen all the
time.

Big volcanic blasts are exterminators

but volcanoes have more than one way
to kill.

In 1995, a volcano erupted on the
Carribbean island of Montserrat.

The blast created a pyroclastic flow,

a speeding avalanche of hot rock,
dust and gas.

These deadly surges charged down the
slopes of a volcano

and across the landscape.

At temperatures of more than 800
degrees,

they race over water on a layer of
superheated steam.

Japan, 1991.

After lying dormant for almost 200
years,

the volcano Mount Unzun roared into
life.

The eruption attracted the attention
of scientists and press.

But one group made a fatal mistake

when they went into the exclusion
zone

and got caught in the path of a
pyroclastic flow.

43 people died as superheated gases
burned their lungs.

Mount Unzun is one of more than a
thousand active volcanoes

that circle the Pacific Ocean.

This chain is called The Ring Of
Fire.

The volcanoes occur above subduction
zones

where submerged oceanic plates dive
under continental land masses.

The most dangerous section of this
volatile chain is Indonesia.

There are 130 active volcanoes here,

more than any other country on Earth.

Some are less dangerous because they
release pressure constantly.

But others have produced the biggest
explosions ever known.

Out in the Sunda Strait, 72km west of
Java, lies Anak Krakatau.

In 1883, this volcano's parent
Krakatoa exploded with a force

equivalent to more than a thousand
atomic bombs.

It made the loudest bang in recorded
history.

It blasted almost the entire island
out of existence.

Tsunamis over 30m tall flooded the
coast of Java and Sumatra

up to 65km away.

Krakatoa claimed at least 36,000
lives.

In the 1920s, geologists watched

as a new volcano Anak Krakatao, the
child of Krakatoa,

rose out of the sea.

By the 1980s, this island had grown
to over 200m above sea level.

But the volcano did not stop there.

Geologist Mike Ramsey has come to
Indonesia to study Anak Krakatau,

which today is one of the world's
most violent volcanoes.

I would like to see how the
volcano's changed in the eight years

since I've last been here.

I know that it's had a lot of
activity, a lot of change.

The bay Ramsey is crossing is where
the original Krakatoa once stood.

Back in 1883, everything you see
behind me was part of one island...

...and when you can eject this much
rock and magma and water and land,

the forces are enormous.

And smack in the middle of this
crater is the current active volcano

Anak Krakatau and that's the current
hot spot

and the current active craters are
still very dangerous.

The new volcano, Anak Krakatau, has
grown over 300m

in less than a hundred years.

From the summit, the extent of the
original volcano becomes clear.

These outer islands are all that's
left of the old Krakatoa

that once filled this 8km-wide bay.

Geologist Mike Ramsey retreats to a
safe distance

to take further measurements of the
activity in the new cone.

Right now, Krakatau's erupting a
small Strombolian style eruption.

It's basically putting up ash column

somewhere between half a mile and a
mile high.

The island will continue to grow,
continue to get larger.

At some point, maybe in a hundred
years or more,

there might be another larger
eruption like there was in 1883.

Monster eruptions like Krakatoa are
rare.

But they still occur.

In 1991, another giant eruption along
The Ring Of Fire

threatened 60,000 people in the
Philippines.

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Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines
had been dormant for 600 years.

Even when it started rumbling in
1991,

few had any idea how dangerous it
was.

Geologist Andy Lockhart was part of
the team sent in to observe.

Pinatubo just didn't look like a
volcano

to anybody who wasn't a geologist.

Now, as a geologist, you'd look at
it and say,

'That's a very bad volcano'

because this volcano, when it
erupts,

this one just blows itself apart so
this is not a good place to be.

Clark Airforce Base was situated at
the foot of the volcano.

It was home to 20,000 US military
personnel and their families.

Sergeant Maree Rogers
was one of them.

The volcanologist was saying that
this was death underground

that nobody would want to mess with.

When the airbase was evacuated on
June 11,

Rogers and Lockhart was part of
the skeleton crew left behind.

One day later, Pinatubo blew its top.

But this explosion was minor compared
to what followed three days later.

I went outside the hangar and turned
around and looked

and all of a sudden it looked like,
I guess you would describe it as

the mountain range exploding from
left and right.

This was the second biggest eruption
of the 20th century.

When a column goes up like that and
it hits the stratosphere,

and you get this nuclear cloud
thing,

when you get the mushroom cloud, it
spreads out on the stratosphere.

The ash cloud turned day into night.

All it was, just dark, dark, dead
dark, dead,

hard storm in the middle of the
night, 'no lights at all' dark.

It's a feeling you can't really
describe

when the sun you can't see, you know
you're supposed to have sunlight

and everything is dark.

And yet, you're getting all this mud
and stuff on you.

I thought that, this is it.

This is it, this is the big one.

At midday, it was more like midnight
for miles around.

Ash clouds from volcanic explosions

can completely block out
all daylight.

But these terrifying phenomena

can have far-reaching
and more damaging effects.

The ash from the cataclysmic eruption
of Mount Pinatubo

shot more than 30km
into the stratosphere.

In less than a month, it circled the
globe.

Eventually, ash particles drifted
across the entire planet

and reflected so much sunlight back
into space

that it lowered global temperatures
for at least two years.

In the Philippines, millions of
tonnes of ash covered 700km square.

In some places, it was 180m deep.

Everything was grey, everything was
monochromatic and grey.

There were clouds and they were
grey,

they were the same colour as the
ground.

It's something that you will never
forget.

It makes you realise that we're
truly living on a planet

that's raging.

It drew me closer to my maker.

Volcanoes don't have to explode to be
lethal.

Some are less violent but no less
deadly.

At the Eastern tip of Java,
Indonesia,

is the active volcano of Kawah Ijen.

Dr Clive Oppenheimer travels the
world

measuring volcanic gas emissions to
help predict eruptions

and this volcano is unlike any other
in the world.

Kawah Ijen belches out tonnes of
sulphur dioxide gas.

Dr Clive Oppenheimer is interested in
the chemistry of the lake

in the volcano's crater.

The chemistry is reflecting all of
the gases coming out of the magma

and these are all very, very acidic
gases.

Sulphur dioxide is just one of the
volcanic gases

that make the lake acidic.

And even Clive is surprised by the pH
reading of the water.

That's incredibly acidic.

It's below zero - even battery acid
would give a reading of three.

Most things would rot in the crater
lake

or in the gases around the edge of
the crater.

Metal will corrode.

If you put some sensors in there,

they're probably not going to last
very long 'cause it's so acid.

As well as being acidic,
the lake is extremely hot.

To get that amount of water, 210F,

requires a phenomenal amount of
energy

coming from the deep bowels of the
volcano up to the surface.

Ijen is the hottest acid body of
water on the planet,

I'm pretty sure of that.

On the banks of the acid lake,

sulphur dioxide gas
condenses in pipes

drilled into the side of the volcano.

Local villagers mine the deposits of
pure sulphur

to sell to the sugar and cosmetic
industries.

They carry baskets weighing 70kg

up the steep sides of the volcano's
crater.

I have to say, working in this sort
of environment

is really, really harsh.

It was just horrendous down at the
bottom there.

The visibility was almost zero and
the fumes were coming across.

My eyes are really stinging now.

They feel like they've got gravel
in them.

Human teardrops react with the
sulphur dioxide fumes

to make sulphuric acid.

Life expentancy here is just 40
years.

Kawah Ijen is one of more than a
thousand active volcanoes

that together spew ten million tonnes
of sulphur dioxide

into our atmosphere every year.

Hawaii, March 2008.

An eruption of sulphur fumes punches
through Kilauea's summit crater.

Like many Hawaii residents,

ranger Jay Robinson was taken by
surprise.

One night there's a crack open up
and all the fumes coming out.

For people who've lived up here for
so long,

to look out your back door and a
couple of miles away,

see this huge fume cloud blasting
up, it's a little unnerving.

It's also toxic.

When sulphur dioxide hits the air,

it forms droplets of sulphuric acid.

And here, there's a lot of it being
released.

In the last 24 hours, we've had
around 8,000 to 9,000 cubic tonnes

of sulphur dioxide coming out of
here.

That's enough to fill 100 Goodyear
blimps every day

with sulphur dioxide gas.

In the crater next to the summit,
conditions changed in an instant.

This morning, we were hiking into
Kilauea crater

and it was great air quality -
crystal clear.

You could see through ten miles.

But within 20 minutes, you couldn't
see any more than a mile away.

The fumes were so bad and we started
smelling it, tasting it, coughing.

We got out.

These fumes may be noxious

but volcanic gases also maintain air
composition and climate

so are crucial to life on Earth.

Without volcanoes, the world would be
a very different place.

They have created much of the land
we live on.

This island in the North Atlantic was
formed from a volcanic eruption

as recently as 1963.

And in March 2009, another eruption
emerged unexpectedly

out of the South Pacific ocean off
the coast of Tonga.

With the Earth in relentless motion,

volcanoes will always have the power
to both create and destroy.

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