there are so few people in iceland i think it's important to preserve them all if possible, even the ones without any survival instinct. like that guy is the human equivalent of a giant panda.
probably not, covid travel restrictions there were pretty strict the first half of 2021 so there were unusually few foreign tourists around. restrictions were eased on july 1 and when i arrived on july 4 there were very few tourists and accommodation was affordable and plentiful, no crowds anywhere.
I remember when we were lucky enough to go to Iceland many yrs ago there were ropes clearly delineating the danger zones around geysers etc. If you stepped over them, you were on your own. Of course, many of the Brits ignored them🙄 Sorry but if you go into v clear danger it's Darwin awards time!
they're probably mostly icelandic. this was winter 2021 and travel restrictions were still in effect, so there were few foreign tourists in iceland at the time. this was quite close to the capital and just a few miles walk from the road, so it was an unusually accessible eruption.
found a picture from a different angle showing the big lava pool that could have breached and caused a disaster at any time. that didn't happen, but nobody in this picture could have known for sure that it wouldn't happen. it does look like fun, but risky.
I’ve been to Hawaii when a branch of Kilauea was erupting into the sea, and I took the NPS warnings VERY seriously, there if you get too close you can fall through the crust and fall into a pool of lava, and that’s bad
I think the same is true in Iceland. The part about falling into a pool of lava, not the part about following regs. I think Icelanders know enough to stay away from volcanoes. The idiots who push their luck are tourists.
like i understand the appeal, i went to see that eruption in person myself, but i stayed well out of the path of the lava and stuck to the higher ridges around the volcano where any sudden unexpected emission of toxic gas would be most diluted and least likely to harm me.
lmao when i arrived at keflavik a few months after this, someone actally took my suitcase from the luggage carousel before i could get it and took it home with him to the town a few miles from this volcano (it was an honest mistake, he returned it). it's not impossible it was this exact same guy.
like how many guys with no situational awareness could there be in that neighbourhood?
i feel a bit bad for the suitcase guy, he didn't mean to take the wrong suitcase and his town was badly damaged by an earthquake swarm in november 2023 and is now threatened by new eruptions every few months.
he never stops. i'm in norway and at work we get so many weird emails from florida man. usually he's mistaken jupiter for a UFO.
but one of them was really sweet and just wanted to visit an observatory before he died so i made him a list of every observatory in florida that'd let him visit.
i'm pretty sure this guy survived. there have been a few accidents, people who got lost and suffered hypothermia, and i think one person had a heart attack(?) and died. one worker fell into a crack in the ground and died. but i haven't heard of anyone killed or seriously injured by the lava itself.
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i feel a bit bad for the suitcase guy, he didn't mean to take the wrong suitcase and his town was badly damaged by an earthquake swarm in november 2023 and is now threatened by new eruptions every few months.
but one of them was really sweet and just wanted to visit an observatory before he died so i made him a list of every observatory in florida that'd let him visit.
(posted a similar thing on twitter mentioning rand paul and that's how my account there got suspended)