At least 1,000 people living in the largely rural Lumajang District of Indonesia’s island of Java fled their homes Thursday, having been warned by government elites that a natural phenomenon called “pyroclastic flows” was putting them in danger of suffocation and incineration, Sky News reports.
Granted, the existence of what geologists who were educated almost exclusively at very group-think-intensive educational institutions describe as “superheated clouds of ash and gas” appears to be at least partially supported by photographic and video footage from various locations around the globe over the past two centuries. However the establishment’s repeated warnings of the extreme dangers of these clouds are so emphatic and intense that one may start to perceive them as hyperbolic – and perhaps even agenda-driven. It doesn’t take an extreme fringe conspiracy theorist to look at the volumes of peer-reviewed literature on pyroclastic flows – all dreadfully repetitious in content – and come away wondering what it is they are not telling you about them.
Viewed from a distance, these pyroclastic flows appear as benign white clouds of dust tumbling speedily yet gently down slopes, almost like baby powder, about as stark of a contrast one can get with red hot basaltic lava setting aflame everything and anything combustible in its path. What if the clouds have some sort of healing properties or pleasant hallucinogenic effects? Now let’s be clear, no one is saying that they do. They could very well be as lethal and destructive as the establishment science community says they are. But again, there hasn’t been any serious consideration of alternative viewpoints or outside research into the effects of pyroclastic flows is troubling.
Even more troubling is that none of these PhDs in geology have stood in the path of a pyroclastic flow and published a detailed report on the experience. We know from reliably-supported accounts what an earthquake’s tremors feel like, how fierce a hurricane’s winds are, how snow can drift higher than a two-story home in a heavy blizzard, but apparently no true first-hand retelling of a pyroclastic flow suddenly coming out of nowhere and enveloping witnesses who’d been out for a morning walk or sitting at a picnic table enjoying lunch. That paucity matters and automatically raises questions about the motives of those who would tell you they’re an unremittingly deadly force of nature.
For all us unsophisticated rabble know it could indeed be what they say: A fiery horror whose only mercy is the swiftness of death. But there’s really only one way to find out if it’s true.
National Zero will resume our regular news coverage after this important examination of the establishment narrative on pyroclastic flows. We encourage the Joe Rogan Experience fans in our audience travel to Indonesia to investigate this matter further and with even more rigor.