The Volcano That Could Wipe Out the Greek Islands

YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai follows.

join or quit
view topics
view or post blog
bookmark
post new topic
subscribe

Transcript
As the sun rises over Turkey and the shadows in the valley of the massive caldera of Nisyros retreat, the light penetrates one of the largest active volcanoes in the Mediterranean. The caldera is the beating heart of this tiny wild island, one of the smallest of the Dodecanese archipelago, home to less than a thousand people, with whitewashed stone villages, green countryside, and spectacular views over the Aegean Sea.

The Greek island of Nisyros is hard to get to. With no airport, everything comes in by ferry from roads and cars. There is no natural fresh water, and few tourists venture here to visit the incredible caldera. The abundant hot springs are a jealously guarded secret. The land here trembles constantly as Nisyros is one of Europe's most high-risk volcanoes.

Nisyros is a magic place, I think, for anybody that loves to be in a place with not a lot of people, which has not been destroyed by tourism. So the volcano is a blessing for the island, and it is very important for us to keep it the way it is. I tell people that you have to see Nisyros and the volcano from Nika through the eyes of an eagle, and it's really beautiful, and I can never get enough. Every time I see it, I want to see more. Down in the valley, as the sunlight pierces the shadows, the bubbling sulfurous waters with their distinctive stench announce that this is an active volcano. It is the second largest in the Aegean.

Inside the main caldera are a cluster of small visitable craters with exotic names: Stephanos, Alexandros, and Polyvortis. The Stephanos crater lies in the southern part of the caldera. It is the most active of the three and still emits fumes and liquids, making it one of the island's main attractions. All around it, mountains rise up to 550 m above sea level in a mosaic of colors created by the rocks and minerals deposited by eruptions of the past.

The narrow road down from the hilltop villages passes through the fertile caldera floor, the Laki plain that is also home to a farm.

George Vuyukalakis is a geologist who lives on the island. He first came here to study the geology of the volcano and then to teach. But although not a native, he has come to stay. The steep path into the caldera is slippery due to the fine volcanic dust. It takes an intrepid tourist to go down. Accompanying George are his two sons who have returned from studying in faraway Athens.

These yellow crystals are native sulfur. They are deposited by the hydrogen sulfide which is coming in the air, and so it deposits native sulfur. It was one of the materials that was used in the past to produce sulfur when they needed it for agricultural reasons.

The amazing Stephanos crater, open to anyone who dares brave the heat, emits the strong stench of hydrogen sulfide fumes, generating the smell of rotten eggs. A closer look reveals yellow sprays of sulfur crystals forming near the active fumaroles. The crater floor becomes damp with the steam the volcano pushes up through the earth's crust, but cracks up when it dries under the sun. There is no shade here during the day when temperatures soar. We are standing in Nisyros's hydrothermal crater. Hydrothermal activity is very intense in the area because the volcano is active. So we have all the caldera floor filled by different hydrothermal craters. We have explosive events in prehistory, which is, for example, Stephanos. We don't know the exact age, but it should be five, six, or seven thousand years before Christ.

The hot water inside the crater is pushed through the bedrock under pressure from the lava field that lies below. It is still boiling when it hits the surface. The mud caves are made by collapsed bubbles of gas that have worked their way up from the depths of the crater. These muds are precious. The volcano of Nisyros is truly unique. You have all kinds of volcanic products exposed in a way that you can teach to the students every phenomenon from submarine volcanism up to the large explosive events. Nisyros is a tiny island just 8 km in diameter in the center of the Dodecanese archipelago, a dozen km from Turkey. It is part of the Aegean arc of volcanoes, which includes the more famous Santorini that marks the boundary between the Anatolian and African tectonic plates.

It lies at the southern edge of a massive underwater volcanic system that stretches between here and the island of Kos, where hydrothermal waters bubble up out of the volcanic cliff face. Close by, waves crash over volcanic rocks and black sand, the visible sign of a volcano below. Seen from the beautiful beaches of Agios Stefanos and Kéfalos of southern Kos, the circular stretch of sea between here and Nisyros has the small island of Giali at its center. The tiny island is almost pure pumice with outcrops of obsidian and basalt. It is one of Nisyros's main economic resources.

The relationship of the islanders with Kos goes back 3,000 years when the founder of modern medicine, Hippocrates, created the first-ever hospital, the Asclepius of Kos, and sent some of his patients across the sea to the springs on Nisyros, which remained an important therapeutic center throughout antiquity.

Today, there are less than 1,000 people living here after at least three generations of families immigrated to Australia and the USA, fleeing postwar poverty and earthquakes. The emigrants remain fiercely loyal to their ancestral home, sending money to modernize and keep up the island, which continues to call them back.

The newly elected mayor, Christopher Corona, taught chemical engineering at Columbia University before being elected mayor of the island in 2014. One of his top priorities is reviving Nisyros's run-down spas as a tourist attraction, even if it means allowing private investors to manage them.

We are at the thermal baths of Madre Nisyros. We're in a very historic place because this was the thermal baths that were built in the beginning of the 20th century by Nisyrian Americans. I'm sitting here with my friend Tony. Hello, Tony.

Hi. Tony is a local man. He's a good friend. He was in New York for many years, like I was. He came here, built a hotel, and now he lives here. We meet very often. We drink tsipouro. This is a typical local drink made out of grapes, of course. The old building is actually the newest of the spas and theoretically still working, with local Greek visitors paying just €30 a night for a room and entrance to the baths. The line of baths still bears the marks of recent use, but it is neither promoted nor fully efficient. There is a sad but romantic air of dilapidation in the two-story building. The raw material for the spa is naturally produced steam that simply flows freely out of the hillside. The waters of these thermal baths have such a composition of chemicals that have a big impact on health problems that people face for their legs or for their skin or they have different problems they treat. So people used to come here and take baths for one week or 10 days, and then they would feel much better. That's why we had a lot of people staying here.

The eerie emptiness of the baths and the neighboring skeleton of a hotel will soon be humming with spa tourists from all over Europe, laying the ghost of decline to rest once and for all. Now, we're in the process of having this project go on to renovate the thermal baths. We give it to a private investor. We want to make it a hotel of four or five stars. So this will become again the focal point of the economy of the island. This is my dream.

The day continues in the bar of the spa where local Nisyros dishes are served in a simple but welcoming environment that is typical of the spirit that pervades the island.

The island of Nisyros has been famous for its spas since the time of Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine. He turned the Theani spring into a therapeutic center, and it was later used by the Romans who built the baths near the chapel Panagia Theani. Nisyros was the most important and popular place for spas in the last period of the 19th century, 1870-1890. It was the most famous center for people coming here from Kos, from Istanbul, and from Egypt to take thermal baths because here is the place that Hippocrates had the first thermal baths for his patients.

Further down the coastline lies this massive thermal complex, which was one of the pearls of the Mediterranean from the 1800s to the 1930s, drawing wealthy clientele from as far away as Constantinople, Cairo, and Alexandria before the later municipal baths. It has been partially restored, but the work has been blocked by central government bureaucracy. The whole economy was based on thermal baths until the 1950s when we had the pumice factory in Yali. This continued until the 1980s. In the 1980s, they started deteriorating, and you can see the shape it is today. This cave close to the village of Emporio is still used today for rheumatism and arthritis. It's a homemade natural sauna, but nonetheless effective for that.

Aphrodite Blou is the owner of one of the island's hotels with a sea view. She, her friends, and clients enjoy not only direct access to the sea but also her own private swimming pool, which she fills with thermal water. When she and her husband dug into the ground hoping to find seawater, they found natural hot springs, an unexpected blessing for the hotel and for the business. We didn't know that before we had behind our hotel a spring with geothermic waters. So we found it; we tried to find the seawater, and we found this, and it's perfect. We have our own spring.

Nisyros is a hydrothermal volcano with two aquifers at 500 and 900 m depth under pressure from a 3 km deep lava field under a central caldera that collapsed after a catastrophic eruption. There have been 13 phreatic eruptions in known history, and the volcano still causes the land to tear open. In 2001, a rift appeared in the caldera floor known as the Laki plain, caused by this constant movement of earth and water.

In the first geothermal drilling, which ended down to 1,850 m below sea level, we touched one hypothesis of the magma chamber. So we had a little bit of glass, which means that the magma chamber should be at a depth of 3, 4, or 5 kilometers below our position here. The structure of the volcano is unusual. The eruptions are mainly phreatic mud flows. The earth underfoot is sandy rather than rocky. The sulfur in the mud lends it a yellow shade. The magma chamber is very shallow.

Nisyros is our youngest big volcano. It appeared overseas about 150,000 years before present. We have a first period that builds up the volcano itself, the whole Nisyros island, for a period of about 100,000 years. Then we have two large explosive events that deposit all the pumice that is around here and create the caldera. This was in an age about 50,000 years before present. Then we have the volcanic activity that tries to refill the caldera. We have the domes that are below these hills, which were built up between 30,000 years before present and 15,000 years before present, and that was the main volcanic activity here.

Like all active volcanoes, Nisyros also offers potential for geothermal power, an idea that has divided the islanders. Studies up to now estimate that we could produce something like 20 megawatts from this field and electric power. It should be economic with such production, and it could probably be enough for the islands around. There were two drillings that took place inside the caldera, which I believe should never have happened environmentally because it may create a problem. What they found is that in one geothermal area, the temperatures reach about 350° maximum centigrade, which is quite a lot. It is very difficult in the world to have such high temperatures, and the pressures reach 30 atmospheres, which is like an atomic bomb.

If local people decide that this is friendly, we have to fix the area outside the caldera, most probably in the south part of the island. If everything is planned in the proper way, you could not create any problems inside the volcano. Their objective was to create 20 megawatts, and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of fluid coming out. All of this would have gone to the sea, creating a big problem. From the beginning, when we ran for office, my colleagues and I have been against this project, and I'm against it not for any other reason but scientific reasons.

Geothermalism is a form of energy generation using the heat and pressure of the volcano to turn turbines to create electricity. While this seems a logical and safe form of energy, there are several drawbacks, mainly involving the disposal of the slurry that is pushed up through the artificial vents. I am a chemical engineer. My area of research is renewable energy and environmental management. So I know very well the problems we will have on the environment, not only on the water but also on the air.

Mayor Corona has focused much of his mandate on preserving the wild, undeveloped beauty of Nisyros, which remains a well-kept secret in part because it is difficult to get to. This is Mandraki, the capital and only harbor of the island. It is a quaint maze of white houses that nestle below the imposing rock where the monastery of the Panagia Spilani stands. The ferries from Kos are small and run at irregular intervals. You have to get to the port of Kamari early to be sure to get on with a car. Everything that goes to the island, from bottled water to the daily newspaper, comes in via ferry. During the winter months, the ferry runs just once a day, if that.

A month ago, I came from New York. Just like that, I was in Athens. Then I had to come to Kos. Then I had to sleep over and wait the next day around 1:00 to get to Nisyros. From Kos to Nisyros, it took me longer than it took me to get from New York to Kos. The 6 p.m. ferry crosses the stretch of sea between Kos and Nisyros in just over an hour and passes by the islands of Giali, the island of Pumice, and one of the main sources of income for the municipality of Nisyros.

Aphrodite Blo opens her shop only when tourists have arrived with the ferry. The volcano's life for us without it. I don't know what we will be. We will not be here. It brings everything to us. We can say the natural horror, how the green, the trees, the animals, the place where we are, it's beautiful, it's panoramic, everything. It's rich; it's very, very rich like an island, and the volcano brings trees. We have businesses like that, so it's life.

Darkness falls. The tourists have left. All is quiet again on Nisyros. The caldera is the main tourist attraction of the island. The beautiful setting is still uncontaminated by shops and bars. Just one refreshment kiosk offers mainly coffee and a special almond drink made here called Sumada. The volcano is part of life here. I see this as a big asset because from a geological point of view and from an economic point of view, a lot of people come here to see the volcano. This is a great source of income for the local people, for the restaurants, and for the businesses here.

A number of factors have miraculously saved the island from the mass tourism common on other Greek islands. It is not easy to get here with only a few daily ferries from nearby Kos and limited roads. There is also no drinkable water except what is collected in systems during the rainy season and distilled in a desalination plant.

Aphrodite Bloy not only owns a hotel with its own geothermal spring but also a shop just by the port of Mandraki, the island's tiny capital. This is where Aphrodite sells local products such as an almond drink and other fruit extracts, as well as an invention of her husband based on volcanic mud. Miraculous, she says, in combating skin disease. My husband has a very old prescription. In the old days, they used some of the stuff from the volcano to heal skin problems of the animals. He decided to make it better. So, except for the sulfur, the bentonite, he put elite inside, a bit of bitter almond and water, but geothermal water. This type of mask can help people who have problems with eczema, allergies, and scars, of course, with acne. You have to clean well the mud deposited to be able to use it for skin purposes.

My husband goes and selects; it must pass a few weeks of raining to clean, and he knows when he's going straight there. They start to take it out of the volcano, and then he cleans it because like that, where they selected, they have to clean it later slowly by hand and put it all together. They put the geothermal water and let it sit for a few weeks. The miraculous mud and almond mix comes from the Nisyros crater, where hydrogen sulfide fumes are pushed up daily and deposit sulfur on the surface. Maybe it is the type of ingredients that exist in the volcano of Nisyros. It's a unique volcano already, and the mask is unique. Volcanoes are always the more fertile. Volcanic soils are the most fertile. So also at Nisyros, if you see, there is a wealth of flora of different kinds, and it's also very productive. In the past, they produced here; lucky area, they produced all the vegetables and fruits that they needed for Nisyros. Land use is for animals, unfortunately. So we have a lot of farmers grazing in the land, which is good and bad because it's bad because you kill a lot of problems. It's good because we have an economy; you know we export meat.

The oldest route we came up with, according to the local people, should be dated at least 60 to 70 years ago. Among the returning New York immigrants is Michael Andreotis, who spent 12 years in New York before moving back to the island where he and his five brothers were born. Today, he makes wine from a rare indigenous variety of black grape known as Mavrolico that he discovered on the island. Thanks to the volcano and the island's isolation, the vine survived the phylloxera parasite plague that wiped out many of Europe's native grape varieties.

Mavro is the female. Madro is the black, and because the women used to prefer that kind of wine and grape because it's sweet and soft, they call it Mavrolico, black female. Michael bottles it for his family and friends. He created the label, which features a needlepoint design of his mother and tells the story of Nisyros. It is a wine you cannot find anywhere else in the world. My brother, my other brother Ted, had the passion. The one who lives also in the States and has a restaurant in New York. He has the passion, and it was given to me. But at the beginning, it was difficult for me. Now I'm in love with this kind of work. I prefer this to other things I do.

The sun-drenched white stone villages are nearly all located on the eastern side of the hills to protect them from pirates and harsh westerly winds, especially in the winter. The island is also dotted with monasteries, as Nisyros was an important hub on the commercial routes between Asia Minor and mainland Greece during the Byzantine period, which made it a place for rich but weary traders to rest. A peaceful atmosphere reigns over the towns and villages of the island of Nisyros, which is also enveloped in an invisible cloud of volcanic vapors, including sulfur, carbon dioxide, methane, and lithium gases.

We have calcium, we have magnesium, we have sodium, we have calcium, we have barium, we have lithium, zirconium. All these elements have effects on health problems that one faces. The mayor's drive to deliver only clean energy to the island is supported by another source of revenue that is close at hand: a pure volcanic product. Pumice was deposited between Kos and Nisyros in massive quantities over the millennia, creating the incredible island of Giali. The island is just a 15-minute boat ride from Nisyros over the clearest transparent sea and dark black volcanic boulders.

The island is actually two pumice outcrops divided by a low isthmus. The first exports of pumice started in 1956. Since then, this pumice factory has been a great wealth for the island because it has been employing people there. It also provides money to the municipality. We have a certain percentage of the sales that they have for the pumice. Pumice is put to use worldwide in a variety of areas as different as construction and toothpaste. More than 500,000 tons are exported from here each year, with ships loading the white powder from this hopper before departing for their distant destinations.

The ships come to the island, they are loaded. It is produced on the island. People work there to produce it, and then they load it on the ship and go to New York, Virginia, Israel, France, Germany.

The crystalline water around Nisyros and Giali blends shades of Caribbean turquoise produced by the white pumice seafloor with black obsidian and red and yellow ferric volcanic rock. On Sundays, when the pumice mine is closed, an eerie silence only enhances the stark beauty of the limpid waters, white stone cliffs, and the black obsidian and basalt boulders.

Anything we need, I ask them for help for anything we need for the island. As a matter of fact, I was able to study because my father was the first manager there. This is how I was able to go to school and be what I am here. This little-known volcano is everywhere in the sea, on the land, and in the minds and hearts of the inhabitants.

The island of Nisyros is inhabited by fewer than a thousand people. Once it was more populous, but before the pumice factory and with the decline of the first spa, poverty was endemic. These terraces were once all cultivated with olive trees and vines.

Foreign immigration of Nisyrans began after the Greek Revolution of 1832, which left the Greek islands like Kos as part of the Ottoman Empire where Islam continued to hold sway. A century later, in 1922, when the Italians took control of Kos and Nisyros, the island's population peaked at nearly 5,000. But a massive earthquake in 1953 destroyed many buildings, including almost all of the town of Emporio, and precipitated mass immigration.

In 1910, the population was about 5,000. Today, we're close to thousands, and the biggest, as I said, was the immigration in the 1950s and 60s. A lot of people left, and now they have families abroad, especially in the US. We have about 3,000 to 4,000 missions living there. Many of them live in Athens, in Rhodes, in Canada, and in Australia.

Christopher Coronos has been mayor since 2014, a New York professor of chemical engineering. The bond with New York is stronger than ever. You can see here, um, this is the NASDAQ in New York. See, you see what it says there? You can imagine that we have a lot of power in New York, the Syrians. So, um, I mean, this is in Times Square, and this was, uh, on the board of the billboard of Times Square.

This tiny volcanic island punches far above its weight in the financial circles of Wall Street. One of our cabriots is in the Forbes list, Mr. Katy Matis. He's, I saw the Forbes, he's worth, I think, 4 billion.

Now, some of the terraces are being restored by the children and grandchildren of people who left in the 1950s. One of the restored terraces still has its own wine press and distillery. They step on the grapes, and all the wine will come right in here, and then they will take it from here and put it in the big, uh, clay pots. This structure, there is no concrete here, no cement, nothing. Everything is by stone.

The dry stone constructions have survived for hundreds of years despite decades of neglect and dozens of earthquakes. This was a rocky distillery where the grape must was boiled and alcohol extracted by condensation.

[Music] This plot looks exactly the same today as it did 100 years ago. The olive trees would have been accompanied by short vines that Nasrians made their raki distillate from. The original owner of this plot watches over it in the form of a rock painting made by his grandson.

[Music] This is Nicholas Jakovasilis. He was born in 1867 here in Nisyros. He used this land to make wine and raki and also to grow the vegetables to sustain his family. And now, only recently, after so many years, his grandson Costas Lahos came to Nisyros and he's restoring the land to the original condition.

Most of the third-generation children from the United States do come back here in Nisyros, and they restore their houses, their grandfathers' or great-grandfathers' houses and the land. They work on the land, and they do spend a lot of money, and they love this place. Once it gets under your skin, it never leaves you. I promised my father that before the end of the millennium, before the new millennium, I would be back, and my father could not believe it. This was back in 1994, and in 1995, when my father died from a sudden heart attack, I had to keep my promise. So, on July 2nd, 1999, I took my family and came back to Nisyros. All four siblings, all born in that room.

[Music] The narrow streets of Nikia have been brought back to life by the New Yorkers who left and came back. The church even used to have a New York parish priest.

[Music] The houses are built into the rock and overlook the dramatic landscape of the caldera, the heart of this earthly paradise.

[Music] It's a great view of the volcano of the caldera. The stark beauty of this perch, the hot winds that blow up from the caldera, and the dramatic panorama of the sea and volcano keep a strong grip on all the native Nisyrans who choose to leave it for schooling or opportunity abroad.

[Music] Mike Zahariadis remembers the day he left at age 13 like it was yesterday. So, we left Nisyros and, uh, we went to Athens and spent a few weeks in Athens to go through doctors and background checks from the embassy, and then we flew to New York. We landed in New York on January 22nd, 1970. My brother, my mother, and I. As soon as we got out of the airport, we saw so much snow. I had never seen so much snow in my life. I saw some dust here back in 1963, but compared to what I saw in New York, it was nothing. We went to our uncle's house, uh, my aunt handed me a shovel and said to me, "Welcome to New York."

The last eruptions of the Nisyros volcano were mainly of mud, and in the 1880s, it threw up these two craters, but the volcano is active, and there are earth tremors nearly daily. In 1996, we had 5.6 on the Richter scale, and it was an incredible movement of the house. But the houses here, my mother's house, like every wall is a meter and a half and it's stone, so it's very flexible. So nothing happened. I tried to get out of bed to help my son, and I couldn't get out of bed. I mean, the movement was so violent. And I remember the noise from the mountains of the rocks falling. And when I came to the same spot to look, there was dust all over the place from rocks falling from the top of the mountains. Mike, like all Nisyrans, loves his volcano, although it still poses a threat. Between 1996 and 1998, there were no less than 1,600 earthquakes.

[Music] The reality of living on top of a volcano is never far from the minds of Nisyrans, whether native or from New York. No fear whatsoever. No, not at all. When the time comes, it comes. But nobody believes it will come. Not in our time.

An earthly paradise, Nisyros is blessed with crystal clear sea, healing baths, and a restful pace of life. It lies on the very edges of Europe, unknown to all but a few intrepid travelers and men and women with roots set deep in this volcanic island.

I just read that Greece has between 1200 and 6000 separate islands. It would take a huge and vast tsunami wave to wipe them all out. But when it comes to Nature, we very likely have not seen full capability yet and never will.

Some of those islands are just small peaks sticking up out of the sea, with no trees or anything else. Greece has more earthquakes I think, Italy has the most active volcanoes. More islands for sale in Greece, and in recent years foreign ownership became permitted.

Islands For Sale!
(occupy @ your own risk)

* The Southern Whitebreasted Hedgehogs are rumored to live on several such islands. Might be good eatin’.

Wake me up when there’s a volcano that could wipe out all leftists. Thanks!

Better visit before it blows. Long winded article. I’ll read it afterwards.

I started watching the video last night, I will finish watching it today.

Darned whitebreasted hedgehog supremacists! Ruined those islands!

It’s a long one. I small’ed the text just to shrink the transcript a bit. A good bit about the island’s history and what it’s like to live there.

Given the proximity, I’d imagine his one emerged as the current active cone of the flow that built the island of Kos. 10s of 1000s of years ago.

Oh, okay, while looking up the age in the Brave browser, it hit me with this [snip] Kos Volcano is part of a large, ancient volcanic system in the Dodecanese Islands, with its most significant activity occurring around 161,000 years ago during the eruption of the Kos Plateau Tuff, one of the largest explosive eruptions in the eastern Mediterranean. This event, which formed a massive caldera extending from Kos to Nisyros, ejected approximately 110 cubic kilometers of material and had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 7. The eruption was primarily submarine, originating from a now-submerged stratovolcano between Kos and Nisyros, and dramatically reshaped the region—uniting the islands of Kefalos and Dikeos into modern-day Kos. [/snip]

Thanks for the info. It’s numero uno on my watch list. I saw your post on the other volcano, too. Things are getting warmer….😬

https://search.brave.com/search?q=ruins+on+Nisyros&&summary=1

Paleokastro is the most prominent ruin on Nisyros, the ancient acropolis and fortress dating back to the 5th century BC. It features massive volcanic basaltic andesite walls, some up to 3.8 meters high and 3.5 meters wide, covering an area of about 130,000 square meters. The site includes six tall towers, a monumental gateway, and well-preserved bastions, making it one of the best-preserved ancient fortifications in Greece. It overlooks Mandraki and offers panoramic views of the island and Aegean Sea.

Castle of Pantoniki (Emporios) is a medieval fortress located in the village of Emporios, built by the Knights of St. John in the 14th century on the site of an older Byzantine fortress. It includes the Byzantine Church of Taxiarches, known for its rich frescoes, and provides stunning views over the caldera and surrounding islands.

Other notable ruins include:

Cyclopean Walls in Tafies, Vathia, and Messes.
Remnants of ancient temples and public buildings near Agios Savvas.
Ruins of an ancient temple outside the gate of Paleokastro.
Ancient tombs and structures in the region of Hellinika.
Abandoned medieval structures in the village of Palloi.
These ruins reflect Nisyros’s layered history from prehistoric times through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and medieval periods.

AI-generated answer. Please verify critical facts.

Lol!

Geeeeet reeaady toooo rummmmmbllllllle!

I think Ithaca and Corfu are probably safe from any damage from the explosion, which is good because Prince Philip’s birthplace on Corfu is now a museum.

The nearest mainland to Nisyros is a long peninsula at the end of which is the site of the ancient city-state of Knidos (Cnidus). The naval battle of Knidos (394 B.C.) seems to have been fought in the sea south of the peninsula and east of Nisyros. The battle was won by the Athenian Konon, fighting on the side of the Persians, and ended Sparta’s naval domination of the Aegean in the years following the Peloponnesian War.

Those two islands must be set at high altitudes.
I recall being in Athens, while I was in the Navy.
I was overwhelmed at

#1. The beauty of that water. I guess the base color would be Cerulean Blue, with several ever-changing overlays and crystalline transparencies.

#2. The immensity of the mountains!! I never felt so small as when I gazed at the surrounding mountainside. I felt like a molecule’s shadow on the surface of Jupiter.

I’ve been to Corfu, Crete, Aegina, Salamis, Kea, Euboea, Delos, Mykonos, Paros and maybe one or two other islands. Haven’t been to Thera, Nisyros, or Rhodes, which all sound like interesting places to visit.

There’s always an Arquillian battle cruiser out there