1996 VHS • Eyewitness Volcano 60 FPS

About

Eyewitness Volcano is a documentary program from the BBC Eyewitness series, narrated in the series' characteristic style and structured around the Eyewitness Volcano book.

The program covers the geological forces driving volcanoes and earthquakes through plate tectonics, opening with the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum as witnessed and recorded by Pliny the Younger. It traces the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, the 1984 Krafla lava flows in Iceland, and the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan, explaining the mechanics of magma chambers, plate collision, subduction zones, and hotspot volcanism including the Hawaiian island chain and the emerging undersea volcano Loihi. Topics include undersea volcanoes and black smoker hydrothermal vents supporting chemosynthetic life, tsunamis and a theory linking the parting of the Red Sea to seismic wave mechanics, the agricultural and mineral wealth produced by volcanic activity including rubies, gold, and sulfur, Japanese hot spring therapy and macaque bathing, geysers, fumaroles and heat-resistant bacteria, the extreme rarity of volcano rabbits living on four active Mexican volcanoes, earthquake prediction and animal behavior as early warning, the Richter scale, laser-based ground movement detection, volcanologist Thomas Jaggar, Katia and Maurice Krafft who were killed during a 1991 eruption, the Dante robot's 1994 descent into Mount Spur in Alaska, radar imaging of the Latina volcano, and comparative imagery of volcanic landscapes on Mars and Venus. Cultural and mythological coverage includes Maori legends, Indonesian Hindu worship of Shiva, Aztec creation myths, Irish famine linked to distant Icelandic eruptions, and tree ring records of past volcanic cooling.

The behind-the-scenes segment describes slow-motion filming of a vase shattering using a vibrating motor, exploding a glass of orange juice with a small charge, and building a scale model Roman courtyard for motion-controlled earthquake simulation that required two weeks of preparation to produce a few seconds of footage.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

The Vista Group®

Language

English

Subtitles

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed