Krakatoa Trivia
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49 free Krakatoa trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Krakatoa trivia quiz covers the Indonesian volcano whose 1883 eruption remains one of the most violent events in recorded history. The easy questions handle the basics: where it is, when it blew, how loud it was, the child volcano that rose from the caldera in 1927 and the painting some think shows its sunsets. From there it moves through the pre-1883 record, the name's disputed origins, the eleven explosions of 27 August, the tsunamis that erased Merak and Sebesi, and the pressure wave that circled the Earth three and a half times. The harder half is for geology and history buffs: the three original cones, Verbeek's survey, the spider that greeted the first scientists back, the pumice miner who brought the black rat, the Burning Ashes of Ketimbang, the first sighting of the jet stream and noctilucent clouds, and the 2018 collapse of Anak Krakatau. If you have played our volcanoes or Indonesia quizzes, this is the deep dive on one mountain. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for Krakatoa, the 1883 eruption and Anak Krakatau before publishing.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Krakatoa lies in a strait between which two Indonesian islands?
Java and Sumatra
Java and Sumatra. The strait between them is a busy sea lane, which is why so many of the first reports of the 1883 eruption came from the decks of passing ships.
Q 02News of Krakatoa's 1883 eruption reached the world within days thanks to which new network?
Undersea telegraph cables
Undersea telegraph cables. The newly laid worldwide network flashed out the news at once, which is why Krakatoa is often called the first catastrophe the whole world followed as it happened.
Q 03Krakatoa rates a 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, about ten times the size of which 1980 eruption rated a 5?
Mount St. Helens
Mount St. Helens. Each step up the index means roughly ten times more erupted material, so the blast that flattened forests across Washington State was about a tenth of Krakatoa's size.
Q 04Krakatoa's climactic blast is put at about 200 megatons, four times the yield of which nuclear device?
Tsar Bomba
Tsar Bomba. The largest device ever detonated, the 1961 Soviet test yielded about 50 megatons, and only because its builders had halved its design to limit the fallout.
Q 05Krakatoa's biggest blast was heard thousands of kilometres away on Rodrigues, an island belonging to which Indian Ocean nation?
Mauritius
Mauritius. Rodrigues lies some 3,000 miles from the volcano, so the sound its people heard had already been travelling for about four hours.
Q 06Krakatoa's official toll was 36,417 dead, yet which Indonesian eruption of 1815 is the only modern one rated bigger?
Tambora
Tambora. Its 1815 blast is the only modern eruption to rate a 7 on the explosivity index, and it chilled the globe so badly that 1816 became the 'year without a summer'.
Q 07The 1883 collapse that swallowed two-thirds of Krakatoa island left what kind of sea-filled volcanic basin?
A caldera
A caldera. Geologists think most of the island was not blown sky-high but sank into its own emptied magma chamber, leaving only the southern third above the waves.
Q 08What does Anak Krakatau, the name of the island that began to rise from the sea at Krakatoa in 1927, mean?
Child of Krakatoa
Child of Krakatoa. Steam and debris began spewing from the sea there in late 1927, forty-four years after the catastrophe, and within months the rim of a new cone broke the surface.
Q 09No earthquake caused the 2018 tsunami that killed over 400 people; what did Anak Krakatau do instead?
Its flank slid into the sea
Its flank slid into the sea. More than two-thirds of the cone's volume went at night, and the wave struck without warning because Indonesia's alarms were built for earthquakes.
Q 10Krakatoa's first explosions in May 1883 were heard 160 km away in Batavia, the city now known as what?
Jakarta
Jakarta. The rumbling died down within days and the volcano seemed to settle, three months before the catastrophe that killed tens of thousands.
Q 11The jungle that reclaimed a coast emptied by Krakatoa's tsunamis now shelters the last wild population of which animal?
Javan rhinoceros
Javan rhinoceros. The villages wiped out there in 1883 were never fully rebuilt, forest took their place, and the peninsula became the species' last stronghold.
Q 12A 1968 disaster film famously put Krakatoa on the wrong side of Java; which side is it really on?
West
West. The volcano lies in the strait at that end of Java, yet the Cinerama epic went out as 'Krakatoa, East of Java' and still earned an Oscar nomination for its special effects.
Q 13Krakatoa and the chain of volcanoes around it sit above the sinking edge of which tectonic plate?
Indo-Australian Plate
Q 21Krakatoa shares its 1991 UNESCO World Heritage listing with which Indonesian national park?
Ujung Kulon
Ujung Kulon. The volcano's islands earned their place as a natural laboratory, where scientists have watched plants and animals recolonise sterilised rock since the 1880s.
Q 22When Krakatoa first stirred in May 1883, three months before the catastrophe, how did many locals respond?
With sightseeing trips
With sightseeing trips. Steamers were chartered to view the eruption and islanders held festivals under the natural fireworks, until the explosions of late August ended the party.
Q 23The four great explosions that destroyed Krakatoa island in August 1883 all came within roughly what span?
A single morning
Indo-Australian Plate. It grinds north and dives beneath the two islands, and the rock it drags down melts and rises to feed the chain of volcanoes above.
Q 14Before 1883, which was the tallest of Krakatoa's three volcanic cones?
Rakata
Rakata. The southern cone was also the only one to outlast 1883, sliced open so that a sheer cliff now faces the water where the rest of the island used to be.
Q 15Krakatoa's 1883 outburst is classed as Plinian, a type named after the Roman who described which eruption?
Vesuvius
Vesuvius. Pliny the Younger watched its towering column of ash in AD 79 and described it in a letter about his uncle's death, giving volcanologists their word for such eruptions.
Q 16Which European country ruled the East Indies when Krakatoa erupted, and so compiled the official death toll?
Netherlands
Netherlands. Its colonial officials counted the dead and the 165 villages destroyed, and the governor-general ordered a full scientific account of the eruption.
Q 17Crews of which two ships stopped at Krakatoa in 1780 on their way home after Captain Cook's death?
Resolution and Discovery
Resolution and Discovery. Sailing home after Cook was killed in Hawaii, their crews found a friendly village, fresh water and a hot spring on what was then a quiet, inhabited island.
Q 18Krakatoa's biggest explosion was heard in which Australian state capital, more than 3,000 km from the volcano?
Perth
Perth. Oddly, blasts heard that far away were muffled or even inaudible near the volcano itself, perhaps because the sound was thrown upward and came back down far off.
Q 19When a French expedition landed on Krakatoa in May 1884, what was the only living thing it found?
A spider
A spider. Its finder wrote of a solitary pioneer already spinning its web, while every other trace of life lay buried under a thick layer of sterile ash.
Q 20Viral footage of the 2018 Anak Krakatau tsunami showed the wave crashing into what at a beach resort?
A rock band on stage
A rock band on stage. The Indonesian group Seventeen was mid-concert at Tanjung Lesung when the wave smashed into the tent and swept the stage away, killing its bassist and road manager among others.
A single morning. Four blasts between dawn and mid-morning on 27 August finished what three months of lesser eruptions had begun, and the island's northern two-thirds were gone by lunchtime.
Q 24What did listeners thousands of kilometres away take the sound of Krakatoa's biggest explosion for?
Distant gunfire
Distant gunfire. After crossing up to 3,000 miles the blast had faded to dull booms like far-off artillery, yet it is still reckoned the loudest sound in recorded history.
Q 25Which instruments around the world recorded Krakatoa's air wave passing again and again for five days?
Barographs
Barographs. These recording barometers caught the pulse as many as seven times, strong enough to be traced on both its outward and its returning trips around the planet.
Q 26What did Krakatoa's biggest blast do to many of the crew of a British ship some 64 km away?
Burst their eardrums
Burst their eardrums. More than half the crew of the Norham Castle were injured that way, by a pressure pulse that also drove a gasworks gauge 160 km away off the top of its scale.
Q 27Where did Krakatoa's tsunami dump the steamship Berouw?
About a mile inland
About a mile inland. All 28 of her crew were killed, by waves that reached some 120 feet and wiped out 165 coastal villages.
Q 28How did the steamship Loudon survive the tsunami that erased the port of Telok Betong?
By turning into the wave
By turning into the wave. Captain Lindemann swung the bow to meet it, the ship climbed over the crest, and those aboard looked back to find the town they had been anchored off gone.
Q 29What happened to the roughly 3,000 people of Sebesi, an island close to Krakatoa, in 1883?
Not one survived
Not one survived. The waves stripped Sebesi of its trees and houses and carried its people out to sea, leaving no sign that anyone had lived there.
Q 30Thousands of Krakatoa's victims were burned rather than drowned; what crossed 40 km of sea to reach them?
Pyroclastic flows
Pyroclastic flows. The avalanches of hot gas and ash skimmed across the strait on a cushion of steam and scorched villages on the far shore.