How fast does lava kill you how close can you get to it?

Answer 1

As much as we hate to say, it depends on several factors, including the type of lava and the wind. Pahoehoe lava, a ropey form where a insulating skin forms almost instantly, can be approached quite closely, if the wind is at your back, you can even reach in with your hammer and take samples. A'a lava, on the other hand, is extremely hot with no skin to speak of and if you're getting close to it, you'd better have an asbestos suit! Truthfully very few people are injured by lava. It's just not very subtle stuff. The radiant heat off of it gets much too hot for comfort and unless you either A) have a serious death wish or B) are a geologist, there just isn't any way to get close enough to it to suffer serious injury before self preservation instincts kick in. If you're around lava, the thing to keep in mind is the wind. Standing downwind of lava for any length of time will almost always get you singed. As for falling into lava, two geologists in Hawaii have done it and lived to tell the story. They were both badly burned and fortunately for them, the lava wasn't that deep, but it was enough to give them some serious burns. Getting splashed with the stuff can give you third degree burns pretty fast. Long story short, it's dangerous stuff but unless you're a professional or one of the folks in Hawaii struggling to save their house with a garden hose, you're not likely to get close enough to the stuff for it to make a difference. Leave the lava to the pros, if your town is in its way, move. Lahars, pyroclastic flows, toxic gasses, and even ash falls (in fact, *especially* ash falls from roofs caving in) are more likely to kill you in the case of a large eruption, but don't trifle with the stuff. Don't assume that you know how it is going to act. Lava can be as hot as 1600 degrees celcius.