All About The Lava

Today, over Dim Sum, conversation between I and the two friends I was with, turned down a familiar lane. Well, a familiar lane for our group, anyways. What had started off as a chat about vacation resorts soon touched on tourist caves. This led to springs heated by volcanoes. Eventually a question was posed about a person's morality concerning his own well being over that of his beloved. After some debate, my friend decided to poll a few close friends on the subject. This was the question he posed.


You and your significant other are wading in the middle of a shallow pool/lake on an island in the Pacific. All of a sudden you look over to the horizon and you see a stream of MOLTEN lava heading towards the pool at an incredible rate. The lava reaches the water and the temperature of the water begins to rise slightly. You and your significant other start swimming towards land but the lava is right behind you. Your significant other is not as good a swimmer as you and has fallen behind and the lava is catching up to him or her.

What do you do?

Here are some possible actions.




You get between the lava and the other person even though you know that you’ll be 100% dead meat and more then likely so will your significant other. At least you two will die together.

You go back and try to help the other person move faster even though that’s pretty much impossible. But you’ll stay by their side until they’re swallowed by the lava and then take your chances. Your chance of survival is 50% and your significant other is 25%.

You swim for land first and hope that you can help them once they get closer to land. Your chance of survival is 100% and your significant other is 25%.

So what do you do?

Yes, readers, what do you do?