WEBVTT - How Supervolcanoes Work 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:04.640 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:13.600 dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.640 --> 0:00:16.360 and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry So 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:25.279 Stuff you Should Know. Super Bowl, okay, supervolcano? Was that? 0:00:26.160 --> 0:00:30.600 What was that? Do you know what that was? Oh? Geez, 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:34.080 you and that song. I can't help it. For nine 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:40.440 years you've been Holman the Final Countdown by Europe. Not 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:43.639 every oh, I don't know, every three months or so, 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:47.640 it's the world years. It's the world's most effective earworm. 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:50.680 Do you do that to you? Me? With the final Countdown? 0:00:50.840 --> 0:00:53.840 She's like, it doesn't get to her. It bounces right off. 0:00:55.080 --> 0:01:01.520 She's like, try your worst. Um, super volcanoes. If you 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.360 listen to volcanoes, well we did that one, yeah, or 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:10.560 our Yellowstone or I guess it was Geyser's Nature's Innuendo. 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:15.560 That was a great title. Um. Then some of this 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:19.280 might seem a little bit familiar, but why not to 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:21.360 cover it as its own thing? Well, it is its 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:23.840 own thing. They're starting to figure out. Yeah, Like this 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.240 article even says don't even think of it as a 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:29.520 amped up volcano. It says stop stop. They should call 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.280 it something else, then they really should. I mean that 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.920 you can make a case that, yes, it's calling it 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.600 a super volcano. It does make sense in a way, um, 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:44.839 because it is obviously magma pushing up through the earth. Uh. 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:49.080 But that's pretty much where the comparisons end, and that 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:52.000 that's that's a pretty deep comparison between a volcano and 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:56.080 a super volcano. But there's a lot of different stuff 0:01:56.120 --> 0:01:59.400 going on. And the more we look into these things that, frankly, 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.920 the scarier they become. Yeah, I mean, right out of 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:05.000 the gate. One of the big things that is different 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:08.280 from a volcano is a volcano is usually like a 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.119 mountain that you can look at with smoke coming out 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:12.840 of it and point to you can keep an eye 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:15.239 on it. In other words, yeah, and whereas a super 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.480 volcano is usually categorized by a big depression in the 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.760 earth from a past explosion, like a crater or something. Yeah, 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:25.560 or it might be like nothing, that crater might be 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.600 fully filled in by this point, might be a forest, 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:31.200 It could be Um, it could be a hot spot 0:02:31.240 --> 0:02:33.280 like a yellow Stone as we'll see, where there are 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:36.160 is a lot of geysers and hot springs. But the 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:41.080 point is is it's a A super volcano is a 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:45.640 massive amount of magma, a chamber, a magma chamber, possibly 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:50.000 a magma reservoir feeding the magma chamber, something even bigger 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:55.760 um and it's it's connected or near a thin spot 0:02:55.880 --> 0:02:57.920 in the mantle that it may or may not have 0:02:57.960 --> 0:03:02.760 created itself in the Earth's sor this and that. Eventually 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.240 something's going like the pressure inside is going to build up, 0:03:06.240 --> 0:03:09.960 there's gonna be enough magma and then kaboom. Things are 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.040 gonna go south pretty quick. Because these things are so 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:18.200 big and so explosive that they could they can change 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:23.720 the global climate, possibly irreversibly on a human time scale. Yeah, 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.720 whenever I read about stuff like this or even your 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:32.320 garden variety natural disaster, it just feels like the Earth 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:35.760 is like, you know, one day, I'm going to kill 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.920 all the people. You realize this slowly, like all humans 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:43.920 will be gone. I want to just explode you all. Yeah, 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.440 that's so gaya guy. A hypothesis is it kind of 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:51.480 all right? But it's not gonna be anytime soon. In 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:54.800 the case of a super volcano, Well, we hope, I saw, 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:57.760 I saw. It's been calculated that they go off every 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.920 Oh no, a hundred thousand or so years. The most 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:04.400 recent one was something like um four thousand, twenty six 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:07.920 thousand years ago. It's not too bad. Yeah, and we 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:12.240 got a little time from New Zealand. Yeah, so we 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.200 should say this is spelled t a u p o. 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:19.880 Here in the States, we would typically pronounce that like 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:25.920 taupo maybe, but based on our Maori episode, I would 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:33.280 guess that it's actually pronounced Could you repeat that again? 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:41.360 So let's talk about how big these things can be. Uh, 0:04:42.320 --> 0:04:45.640 Sumatra seventy four thousand years ago. That was a super 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.880 eruption that some say, and of course we don't know 0:04:49.920 --> 0:04:51.960 because it was seventy four thousand years ago. That's all 0:04:52.000 --> 0:04:53.560 we can do is kind of make our best guess. 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.719 But some people think that that this almost was an 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:00.560 extinction level event in full. It all most wiped out 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:03.560 the entire human race. It could have jumped started a 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:08.560 ten thousand year ice age, leaving behind a crater or 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.840 a CAULDERA that was about nineteen by sixty two miles. 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:16.880 That is huge. That's a yeah, that was Mount Toba, 0:05:17.000 --> 0:05:21.720 the Toba super eruption, right, Yes, six seventy cubic miles 0:05:21.839 --> 0:05:25.200 yea of ejecta. Yeah, and that ten thousand year ice 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.400 age thing, that's noteworthy. They think that this whole thing 0:05:29.440 --> 0:05:32.320 was bad enough that it reduced humans down to several 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:35.560 thousand people, and that there were plenty more humans before then, 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:45.200 but that the the effects from shooting um gases the ejecta, 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.120 but gases that flowed up into the atmosphere and actually 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:54.279 reflect sunlight cooling the earth below it. UM really disrupted 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.359 a lot of normal processes here on Earth, cooled it 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:00.640 and made it really tough to survive. Five. That's the 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:04.520 hallmark of super volcanoes. Is there their global effect? Yeah, 0:06:04.560 --> 0:06:08.279 like a nuclear winter, basically changing the temperature of the Earth, 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:12.560 maybe not permanently, but long enough to where your s 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.279 O l right ten thousand year. I said, you're you're 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:19.800 not gonna be happy during those years. Uh, these days, UM, 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.080 North America, South American Asia are the greatest risks and 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:28.360 there's one. Um. Actually it says we're those three places 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.840 of the greatest risk. But there's one in Europe in Italy. Yeah, 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:35.360 that supposedly, and this was from Geez. Just like four 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:39.919 months ago, I read an article that said that the 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.159 one in Italy, it's in Naples, what's it called the 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:48.440 Compy Flagray or, as we say in the United States, 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:54.120 the Flagrian Fields area, the burning Fields. Yeah, that that 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.440 should give you an indication of what we're talking about. 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:00.360 Didn't get that name for nothing, No, but it's right 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:03.800 beneath Naples. Yeah. But apparently that one is based on 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.960 computer modeling and physical measurements. Uh. One of the scientists said, 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.760 we proposed that magma could be approaching the critical degassing 0:07:12.240 --> 0:07:18.200 pressure level at Camp Flegria. Uh. And basically what that 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.280 means is it's not gonna happen like next year, but 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.040 they have raised the volcano threat level from green to yellow, 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.040 which means we need to kind of really start monitoring 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:30.280 and study. Is studying this thing a lot more. The 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:34.040 thing is that they don't know like how to predict 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:36.600 like it could happen next year. They're saying it's probably 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:40.040 not going to but it could because we know so 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:45.600 little about volcanoes and supervolcanoes in particular, that like it 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.200 could just happen. Yeah, Like we don't even know for 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:52.400 sure how many there are underneath us, but they say 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.640 like six to ten maybe potentially active ones around the 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.360 globe right now, and then a total of maybe thirty 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:03.520 to forty that have ever been right. Um, but yeah, 0:08:03.520 --> 0:08:06.160 that one. I don't understand why this article overlooked that 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:12.280 one Europe, but it's it's like Europe's toast, basically, it's inevitable. 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.280 Probably the next month or two, there was one I 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.200 think the biggest ever UM happened here in the States 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:24.680 in Colorado, long before anybody called it Colorado. It was 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:29.040 twenty million years ago, and the Fish Canyon Tough Event. 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.560 So here's where super volcanoes really kind of come into 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:38.840 um their own, just the massive amount of damage and 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.960 stuff they spew out. Right, the Fish Canyon Tough event 0:08:43.920 --> 0:08:48.680 shot out twelve d cubic miles. So you know what 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:52.480 a cube is, right, It's like a three dimensional square. 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:56.560 And by Mr Rubick, you can write exactly you can 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.319 take a little like an inch by an inch by 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:02.800 an inch and create a little cubic kitch. You can 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:05.080 do that with feet, you can do that with a meter, 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:07.960 and you just keep going bigger and bigger and bigger, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:11.040 and eventually you're going to get to a cubic mile 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:16.160 or a cubic kilometer. And this Fish Canyon Tough event 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:23.040 spewed out twelve hundred cubic miles or five thousand cubic 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:28.679 kilometers of rock, of dust, of ash, of molten lava 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.800 shot it out and that nuts. That's so much stuff 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:37.360 that literally changes the geography of an entire region when 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:41.200 something like that happens, that's crazy. Um all right, I'm 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:45.600 gonna contemplate the Cube and uh, we'll be back right 0:09:45.640 --> 0:10:10.280 after this to talk a little bit more about Yellowstone. 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.560 Did you ever watch Jim Henson's The Cube? Remember when 0:10:16.559 --> 0:10:20.840 we talked about did you ever watch it? Bizarre? Yes, 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:26.559 very weird. We love our friends with the handsome company. Um, 0:10:26.600 --> 0:10:28.839 all right, well we're gonna talk about Yellowstone a little bit. 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:32.800 But defining these and when we talked about volcanoes, Defining 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.360 volcanoes and what makes a volcano or super volcano is 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:41.600 not an exact science. They don't have strict definitions, but um, 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:43.440 they do try to look at a couple of different 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:49.400 things when they're categorizing these these bad Mama jamas um 0:10:49.600 --> 0:10:53.840 Magne said, did I just say that magnitude which is 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.600 the volume of the magma or the mass of magma 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:59.640 that's erupted, and then intensity, which is the rate that 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:05.680 that happens. Um, so if you're looking at magnitude intensity um, 0:11:05.760 --> 0:11:07.439 Like I said, they don't have it like a number. 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:11.800 They say once it gets over this number. But um, 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.200 so I wonder how they do categorize it. They don't. 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:16.600 It's just up in the air, like they just do 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:20.400 not have it set out so that you can say, well, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.240 once it hits this and this, it's it's officially a 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:25.880 super volcano. That's just not laid out like that. As 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:29.320 bad as writers of articles want it to be like that, 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.680 it's just not at that point. There's just but there 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.840 are factors where it's like, yeah, I would qualify that 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:41.480 as a supervolcano. I'm Joe volcanologist or Jane volcanologists or 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:47.680 versus a volcano um. And they usually do it by comparison, right, 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:51.640 So like as far as intensity goes, that's how fast 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.320 magma erupts. Right. Yeah. And Mount Vesuvius back in seventy nine, 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:03.040 see with that very famous eruption that covers Pompeii and Herculaneum. Um. 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.880 If you believe that kind of thing, right, I've seen 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:10.079 it with my own eyes. Yeah, Um, Mountain Vesuvius shot 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:14.120 out magma uh and ojecta at a rate of a 0:12:14.280 --> 0:12:21.880 hundred thousand cubic meters a second. Wow, that's a lot, right, 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:26.199 that's some fast magma. So super volcanoes erupted it's something 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.840 like tens of millions or hundreds of millions of cubic 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:34.160 meters per second. That's a lot too. Yeah, you don't 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:36.640 want to be standing on that road. No, you don't 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:38.679 want to be anywhere near it. So that's typically how 0:12:38.679 --> 0:12:42.120 they're figuring out what constitutes a super volcano. They look 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:46.679 at this volcano and they say that's bad, and then 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:49.520 they go, but what about this, and they go, that's 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:52.880 a super volcano. There is another categorization they use, which 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:57.600 is also a great band name, Volcano explosivity index. Yeah. 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.319 See the index just kind of throws it off, you know, yeah, 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:07.200 maybe an album title, okay, ejecta not bad, not bad 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:09.880 at all. So this is when they measure ash column 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:14.120 height and the quantity of that ash promise and lava ejected. 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:19.480 So not the volume, but how high it goes. I 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:21.360 don't know why they just can't combine all that into 0:13:21.360 --> 0:13:29.319 one big formula Claven scale, but supervolcanoes there, it is 0:13:29.360 --> 0:13:32.079 a scale, and the highest of the EI category is 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:36.400 a magnitude eight, which means more than two fifty cubic 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:41.880 miles and a plume more than sixteen miles high. Sixteen miles, dude, 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:47.640 that's amazing. It is it's super It is um. So 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.360 you kind of put all this stuff together. They don't 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:52.760 have it in a single index, but if you combine 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:54.720 all the stuff, you start to get an idea of 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.920 just how much damage a supervolcano can do. Just how 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:03.320 massive in huge it is so um And again going 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:08.360 back to comparisons, Krakatoa was a very famous volcano that 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:15.679 erupted in eight three, and it created what's regarded as 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:19.120 the loudest sound ever recorded here on Earth. It traveled 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.400 around the world four times over five days. And we 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:26.000 know that it did because by three there were um 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:29.520 weather stations that had barometers all over the world and 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.680 they would record the shock wave from the sound every 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:36.320 thirty four hours like clockwork. For five days. It just 0:14:36.440 --> 0:14:40.960 kept traveling around the world from this explosion, this volcanic explosion. 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:45.080 It was heard by human ears three thousand miles away. 0:14:45.920 --> 0:14:47.760 It was one of the most as sounding events that's 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.440 ever happened in recorded history. And there's a really cool 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.680 article just about the sound it made, called the sound 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.920 so loud that it circled the Earth four times on Nautilus. 0:14:59.760 --> 0:15:01.800 So go check it out. I think everybody should read 0:15:01.800 --> 0:15:04.360 this article. It's really cool article. And didn't it killed 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.960 like thirty six thousand people? Yeah, and it just and 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:10.640 that wasn't a very populated area. No, huh, No, Krakato 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:16.280 was um in uh Java, Indonesia. Yeah, I guess Krakato 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:20.320 in the eighties was probably not you know, New York City. No, No, 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.040 it wasn't. So yeah, the idea that it killed thirty 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.160 six thousand people, Yeah, it wasn't a densely populated area 0:15:26.240 --> 0:15:28.280 right around the mountain. It killed a lot of people 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:31.680 spread out like Naples. Yeah, they're talking about I think 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:35.239 like five thousand people live in just that immediate area. 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.040 It would be just devastating. That would not be good man. 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.600 Um Alright, So we talked about it's it's kind of 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:47.080 tough two predicting these things, kind of tough to pin 0:15:47.160 --> 0:15:50.000 down where they are and to study them. And Yellowstone, 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:58.800 which we've kind of danced around a little bit, not literally, Uh, 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:02.880 Yellowstone and particular is a big deal because um of 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:07.400 just how big this thing could be Uh, they're talking 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:15.120 thirty by forty five miles underground, stretching from northern Nevada 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:19.280 through southern Idaho to northwest Wyoming. Um, it's basically a 0:16:19.360 --> 0:16:23.760 system three fifty miles long and about eighteen million years old. 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:28.920 That's just man, it's just bubbling underground. That's the trail 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:34.760 of volcanic activity that's taken place, which ends at Yellowstone, right. 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.600 And the one that's actually the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone is 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.040 like thirty miles by forty five miles, which is huge. 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.560 The one in in Europe at the Burning Fields is 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:48.600 about seven seven miles wide, which is enormous in and 0:16:48.640 --> 0:16:51.960 of itself, but you know, thirty to forty five that's 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:55.280 way bigger. I'm afraid to stay. Um. And it's made 0:16:55.360 --> 0:17:00.520 up of a magma chamber beneath the surface, few miles 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:02.960 beneath the surface. And they thought that that was the 0:17:03.000 --> 0:17:06.159 extent of super volcano. Apparently they did a survey in 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.360 two thousand and fifteen they figured out that this chamber 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:15.560 has about cubic miles worth of magma in it. There's 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:20.199 also a reservoir beneath that magma chamber, and that that 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:24.080 reservoir has eleven thousand, two hundred cubic miles all this 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:28.480 magma poised right beneath yellow Stone, and the pressure is 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:31.760 just building and building and building. And that's the other 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.120 thing about super volcanoes. They seem to erupt, not slowly 0:17:35.200 --> 0:17:38.760 where lava just spills out like and say like Hawaii 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:42.560 at Kilauea, where it's very famously just this pretty steady flow. 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:46.800 But it's not explosive. These things blow up, and when 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.640 they do, they can bury areas around them in hundreds 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:55.119 and hundreds of meters of of ash that solidifies and 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:57.920 turns into the new crust of the earth, that turns 0:17:57.960 --> 0:18:01.199 us all into statues. It does. So that was my 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:03.680 own eyes too. All right, well, let's take our final 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:06.239 break and we'll talk a little bit more about what 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:34.160 lies beneath Yellowstone Park right after this. Alright, So Yellowstone 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.760 has had um, I mean, it's had events in the past. 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:39.320 That's why they know there's going to be one in 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.840 the future. About two point one million years ago, the 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:47.600 Huckleberry Ridge event um name, I don't think they called 0:18:47.600 --> 0:18:50.800 it that two point one million years ago, but that 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:56.600 I had a five cubic mile blast and it created 0:18:56.640 --> 0:19:02.320 a crater about the size of four um Manhattan's and 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.199 I assume they mean everybody knows exactly what manhattans. Sure, 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.680 just put four New York City's side by side on 0:19:09.720 --> 0:19:11.960 top of each other. However you want to arrange them, Yeah, 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:14.679 maybe in a little spin spinning pin wheel, mush them 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:21.760 together in a ball like use soap bars remnants, you know. Yeah. Uh, 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:24.000 one point three million years ago they had one at 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:28.000 Masa Falls and that was only about sixty seven cubic 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:31.439 miles of ejecta. That was tiny, but they still consider 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:33.400 that a super volcano because no one seems to care 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:37.760 that it has no definition. Right. What else? Uh, six 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:40.680 hundred forty thousand years ago at Lava Creek, that one 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.480 spit out two hundred and forty cubic miles about a 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:48.600 thousand cubic kilometers and apparently it's ash pillar hit a 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:53.160 hundred thousand feet. That's pretty awesome, right, Yeah. So yeah, 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:56.200 they're looking at these things and they're saying, um, this 0:19:56.280 --> 0:19:58.920 is probably a pretty decent map of what's going to 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.160 happen at Yellows Owned eventually. Yeah. We have an article 0:20:02.160 --> 0:20:04.560 on our site too called what if the Yellowstone supervolcano 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.960 were erupted, and they said it could kill as many 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.960 as ninety thousand people immediately and put a ten foot 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.679 layer of molten ash as far as a thousand miles 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:20.720 around the park. Ten Yeah, that would cover your one 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:24.000 story house. Yeah, for a thousand miles. And um they 0:20:24.000 --> 0:20:27.920 said that nuclear winter would probably almost be a certainty, 0:20:28.320 --> 0:20:34.800 probably be a certainty almost probably. Uh. It would basically 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:38.560 blot out the sun and cool the earth, um, which 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:41.680 would kill our crops. It would be really really bad. 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.640 But they said, do you remember do you remember um 0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:50.399 in two thousand and fourteen fifteen when that Icelandic volcano 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:53.320 went off, to the effect that it had, was it two? 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:58.160 The effect that it had on air travel in Europe. Yeah, 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:00.400 and it was just air travel and everybody he kept 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.199 waiting for it to clear up in it for weeks, 0:21:03.200 --> 0:21:07.399 like flights were getting delayed, canceled, rerouted, like Europe was 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.880 just off the map as far as plane travel was going. 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.600 There's just plane travel. And that was a pretty small volcano. 0:21:15.000 --> 0:21:17.480 It was in no way, shape or form a super volcano. 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:23.560 So just just that one aspect of transportation being affected, 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:26.000 let alone the fact that this could like kick off 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:30.240 an ice age. There's just so many, so many factors 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:32.560 that could come into play that could get us in 0:21:32.600 --> 0:21:34.480 this way, get us in that way, get us. It 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:37.359 could affect our crops through sunlight and through temperature. It 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.680 could make as super cold, make our toes fall off. 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:43.160 There's just so many different ways it could. It could 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:47.159 affect us. Um that we just the average person is 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:49.159 not walking around thinking about this, and they should be 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.280 well true, but um not to be alarmist. They the 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:56.280 U S Geological Survey said that the probability that UM 0:21:56.520 --> 0:22:00.080 that Yellowstone will blow its top is point zero ro 0:22:00.240 --> 0:22:04.880 zero zero each year. Yeah, so one in seven hundred thousand, 0:22:05.200 --> 0:22:09.720 which is on par of any given individual UM being 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:13.320 struck by lightning. So that makes me feel better. There's 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.360 still plenty of lightning out there. Yeah, and you never 0:22:16.400 --> 0:22:19.800 know what's gonna happen. So apparently this the hot spot 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:23.720 causes the earth above it to dome once in a while, 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:26.800 and it feels like it showing off right. Yeah. I 0:22:26.800 --> 0:22:28.359 bet the park rangers of the LA Zone when they 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:31.760 see that are like, man, is this it. There was 0:22:31.800 --> 0:22:35.480 a two thousand three temperature increase just a few inches 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:37.600 below the soil and some spots that was hitting like 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:41.640 two hundred degrees fahrenheit, boiling the sap in trees nearby. 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:44.720 It was getting hot and then apparently it's already cool 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.480 down again. And what's probably going on in these processes 0:22:48.680 --> 0:22:52.200 there's a process called incubation right where they're just sitting there. 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:58.080 Because the reservoir and the chamber are they have finite space. 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:01.080 So the more magma that builds up in it, the 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:04.760 higher the pressure builds. And if that pressure starts to 0:23:04.840 --> 0:23:07.600 build and all of a sudden escapes a little bit, 0:23:08.040 --> 0:23:10.640 that magma is gonna shoot up. And as that magma 0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:14.520 shoots up, it starts to form air bubbles. Because the 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:18.360 change in elevation we're talking is traveling miles very quickly upward, 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:22.160 so bubbles start to form. As those bubbles breakup, they explode. 0:23:22.160 --> 0:23:25.239 It's very much like champagne, and it shoots out and 0:23:25.280 --> 0:23:28.320 it allows more magnet to follow behind it and follows 0:23:28.359 --> 0:23:33.200 the same process. So there's huge explosion and it can 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:37.640 actually be hastened by earthquakes, or it can also be 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:42.960 um delayed by earthquakes. Yeah, um, so there's a lot 0:23:42.960 --> 0:23:46.159 of different factors involved. But during this period where the 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:50.000 pressure is building and building and building. It's the incubation period. 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:53.040 And the reason it changes from say one year to 0:23:53.119 --> 0:23:55.760 the next is if it's not getting as much magma, 0:23:56.000 --> 0:23:59.000 then some of that magma higher up has the chance 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:01.920 to kind of cool and solidify and fall back down 0:24:02.160 --> 0:24:05.760 and pressures relieved. But we have no way of tracking that. 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:08.040 We can just be like, oh my god, the ground 0:24:08.119 --> 0:24:11.520 is bowing up. That's that's about where we're at right now. 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:14.159 But don't they generally think that dormancy is like the 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:16.320 longer it sits, the worst it's going to be when 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:18.680 it eventually does go off. That's what I read. Interesting. 0:24:18.960 --> 0:24:21.440 Do you have anything else? Yeah, apparently one other thing. 0:24:21.760 --> 0:24:25.560 Um if you were around a volcano then went off, 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:28.639 and I would guess any volcano, it would be like 0:24:28.680 --> 0:24:33.600 breathing tiny glass needles thanks to all of the um 0:24:33.840 --> 0:24:37.800 silicates that were ejected into the air. And I have 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:42.720 even one more other thing. There was a an volcano 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:47.720 that went off in eighteen fifteen, Tambora. I believe, I'm 0:24:47.720 --> 0:24:50.440 not sure exactly where that was, but the Tambora earth 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:56.639 or volcano is credited with the creation of Frankenstein. Yeah, 0:24:56.720 --> 0:25:00.280 it was the the year without a summer, and in 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:06.159 the northern and Northern Europe the summer was super super cool. 0:25:06.440 --> 0:25:09.440 Elsewhere there was basically no summer. It was no the 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:13.480 whole the whole time. Um. But because of that, Mary 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:19.320 Shelley and uh Byron Right and her husband Percy by 0:25:19.400 --> 0:25:23.760 Shelly Um all were stuck inside for during a summer vacation. 0:25:24.160 --> 0:25:26.480 And that was when she came up with Frankenstein because 0:25:26.480 --> 0:25:29.720 they had a scary story contest. There was a movie 0:25:29.760 --> 0:25:33.400 about that. Yeah, but that that contest may never have happened, 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:36.159 and Frankenstein may never have been created had it not 0:25:36.280 --> 0:25:39.560 been for that volcano going off. Yeah, that was a 0:25:39.600 --> 0:25:41.480 freaky movie. I can't remember the name of it, The 0:25:41.880 --> 0:25:44.600 Lost Summer. It wasn't that, man have been more than one. 0:25:46.160 --> 0:25:48.200 I just remember the whole time. There was a lot 0:25:48.200 --> 0:25:50.880 of drugs and Mary Shelley was like, Percy, why can't 0:25:50.880 --> 0:25:52.840 you be more like Lord Byron And he's it because 0:25:52.840 --> 0:25:57.760 I'm Percy. Who is in it? I'm just kidding? No, man, 0:25:57.920 --> 0:26:00.760 was it called Gothic? I don't know. I seem to 0:26:00.800 --> 0:26:02.960 remember that it was kind of a Why do I 0:26:03.000 --> 0:26:05.800 think Julian Sands was in it? This sounds like a 0:26:05.880 --> 0:26:09.080 Julian Sands. Movie's all very much in the very nineteenth 0:26:09.119 --> 0:26:12.640 century drugs. It's in the back of my head. We'll 0:26:12.680 --> 0:26:16.200 find out buried deep. Uh. If you want to know 0:26:16.640 --> 0:26:20.320 more about volcanoes and Frankenstein and all that stuff, type 0:26:20.359 --> 0:26:22.960 those words in the search bar how stuff works dot Com. 0:26:23.000 --> 0:26:25.160 Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. 0:26:28.040 --> 0:26:33.160