Word: blowup
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Unlike earthquakes, which often happen without warning, impending volcanic eruptions generally signal their arrival. Before a blowup, instruments can detect a series of tremors in the mountain, which indicate that molten rock, called magma, is coming up from deep inside the earth. The magma rises gradually, opening fissures that serve as its pipelines to the surface. What happens next depends on the composition of the magma. If it is fairly liquid, it generally produces a stately lava flow that poses more of a threat to property than to humans. Hawaiian volcanoes tend to follow this pattern...
...resonate through the magma itself. While their origin remains a mystery, these vibrations may result from small surges of gas and molten rock. Large numbers of such signals preceded Mount St. Helens' 1980 blast. They also appeared before the unexpected explosion of Mexico's El Chichon in 1982, the blowup of Colombia's Nevado del Ruiz in 1985 and 1987 and multiple eruptions of Alaska's Redoubt. Seismometers positioned at Pinatubo have recorded similar seismic patterns...
There are other distress signals as well. Interest in food or sex often flags, while indulgence in alcohol or drugs deepens. People may be jumpy and their tempers short. In the first seven months after the Mount St. Helens blowup, reports of domestic violence in Othello, Wash., increased 45%, and criminal arrests went up 22%, according to one study. The most profound impact is a new sense of vulnerability. Victims wonder when disaster will strike again and conjure up fresh calamities. "Disasters like earthquakes challenge a fundamental fantasy that we live with: that we're immortal," explains psychiatrist David Spiegel...
...Underneath, though, the town seethes. Even the silence is telling. Herded by their supervisors to the military museum's "True Story of Tiananmen Square" exhibit, those I see viewing it are stone-faced. Politically reliable cadres are everywhere, but so are wry smiles, especially when people see a giant blowup photograph of the man who defied a column of tanks, with a caption saying he had been spared because of the army's humanity...
...hard-line U.S. position was prompted by the trade bill passed by Congress last year, which compels the Trade Representative to battle foreign protectionist barriers aggressively. Japan's willingness to give ground last week was an encouraging sign that the country is determined to avoid a major blowup in forthcoming rounds of barrier-bashing talks required...