We’ve all heard that apocalypses such as volcanic eruptions can happen at any time and all humans can go extinct - thanks to Hollywood.
But is this really possible?
A supervolcano can kill millions or even billions of people, and some of them can make our planet uninhabitable for decades.
The Yellowstone Caldera is one of many volcanoes, which if erupted, can induce a threat of humanity’s mass extinction.
Yellowstone is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States.
The caldera and most of the park is located in the northwest corner of Wyoming.
It measures 70 by 45 kilometers or 43 by 28 miles, and it can spill out lava at a significant distance beyond its boundaries.
The Yellowstone supervolcano which is thousands of times more powerful than a regular volcano — has only had three truly enormous eruptions in the past two million years.
And if we go by the calculation, the next giant eruption should happen anytime in the next 100,000 years which is a ridiculous timeframe to begin with.
But for the sake of science fiction, let’s say the eruption begins right now.
What will happen?
Well, that’s the start of an extremely bad day for humankind.
Everything within 100s of kilometers of range will be completely destroyed.
A September 2004 paper in Geochemistry explored what a Yellowstone super-eruption might actually look like.
They found the volcano was capable of burying states like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Colorado in three feet of harmful volcanic ash — a mix of splintered rock and glass — and blanket the Midwest.
That much ash could kill plants and animals, crushing roofs, and short all sorts of electrical equipment.
You will start breathing ash because plenty of them will be around in the environment and that would kill you in a very short time frame.
Now let’s say you are not in North America.
So, you won’t get affected by this eruption right?
Wrong!
As the eruption will spew, lots of ash that will block out the sun.
There will also be a minimum temperature drop of 10 degrees celsius and these effects might last longer than a decade.
Volcanoes can emit sulfur aerosols that reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere which can cool the climate, while these are short-lived, hence a temporary effect.
This means that you will still get affected by this supervolcanic eruption even if you are not in the United States or Canada.
When Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it cooled the planet by about 1°C (1.8°F) for a few years.
The Tambora eruption in 1815 cooled the planet enough to damage crops around the world - possibly leading to famines in some areas.
And those were relatively tiny eruptions compared to what a supervolcano is, in theory, capable of.
As this was the worst-case scenario, this probably won’t happen anytime soon.
The most common ones are small eruptions, those too are pretty rare.
Lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park is a reservoir of hot magma five miles deep, fed by a gigantic plume of molten rock welling up from hundreds of miles below.
That heat is responsible for many of the park's famous geysers and hot springs.
And as magma rises up into the chamber and cools, the ground above periodically rises and falls.
On rare occasions throughout history, that magma chamber has erupted.
The vast, vast majority of those eruptions in Yellowstone have been smaller lava flows - with the last occurring at Pitchstone Plateau some 70,000 years ago.
But the reason why Yellowstone gets so much attention is the remote possibility of catastrophic "super-eruptions."
A super-eruption is anything that measures magnitude 8 or more on the Volcano Explosivity Index, in which at least 1,000 cubic kilometers or 240 cubic miles of material gets ejected.
That's enough to bury Texas five feet deep.
It's worth noting that Yellowstone is hardly the only supervolcano out there - geologists have found evidence of at least 47 super-eruptions in Earth's history.
The most recent occurred in New Zealand's Lake Taupo some 26,000 years ago.
More dramatically, there was the gargantuan Toba eruption 74,000 years ago, caused by shifting tectonic plates.
That triggered a dramatic 6- to 10-year global winter, and according to some, may have nearly wiped out the nascent human race.
On average, the Earth has seen roughly one super-eruption about every 100,000 years, although that's average and not some sort of law.
So, what are the odds of a Yellowstone super-eruption?
Extremely low.
In fact, it might not even be a possibility.
Yellowstone might never erupt again.
Right now, there's no sign of a pending eruption.
Yellowstone Park does continue to get earthquakes, and the ground continues to rise and fall, but that's nothing out of the ordinary.
USGS or United States Geological Survey pointed out that Yellowstone is behaving as it has for the past 140 years and also odds are very high that Yellowstone will be eruption-free for the upcoming centuries.
Volcanoes, after all, do die out.
The magma chamber below Yellowstone is being affected by two opposing forces - the heat welling up from below and the relative cold from the surface.
If less heat comes in from below, then the chamber could conceivably freeze, eventually turning into a solid granite body.
So it is more likely for Yellowstone to simply die out than erupt and kill millions or billions of living beings.
Now let’s talk about “What If All The Permafrost on Earth Melted?”.
Well, that sounds like a different scenario to speculate and investigate on DiscoverZen.