We all know how dangerous
climbing Mount Everest can be.
Historically, over 300 people died
attempting to reach the summit.
In 2019 alone,
it claimed the lives of 11 people.
Yet despite the risk,
its sheer magnitude and beauty
inspires around 800 climbers a year
to flock to the mountain.
But what if we stepped it up a notch
and made Everest even more dangerous?
Imagine this peaceful giant
was an angry volcano
waiting to burst.
How's that for an adrenaline rush?
This is WHAT IF and here's what would happen
There are 1,500 active volcanoes
around the world,
and many of them found deep in the ocean.
Yet, there are only 20 supervolcanoes on Earth.
If Everest was one of them,
and happened to be sitting on a giant pool of magma
ready to explode,
we'd be in serious trouble.
To put this into perspective,
the largest eruption on record,
happened in 1815
on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.
At only half the size of Mount Everest,
it was once a 4,000 meter (13,123 foot) tall stratovolcano
which melted down to a 1109 meter (3,640 foot) deep caldera.
This classifies it as a supervolcano,
as it initially erupted over 1,000 cubic meters (240 cubic miles) of material
around 43,000 years ago.
the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora
earned the highest ranking ever recorded
The most catastrophic eruptions
happened thousands and millions of years ago.
The explosion of Mt. Tambora
sent volcanic ash
kilometers up into the sky,
destroying crops and burying entire villages.
It triggered earthquakes and possibly large tsunamis.
The release of ash and aerosols
in the stratosphere blocked the sun
causing nearby temperatures to drop.
This made food and oxygen scarce,
killing over 100,000 people. Yikes.
So if Everest happened to be a volcano ready to burst,
what would happen?
in the world of volcanoes,
and relationships,
size doesn't always matter.
It's what's inside that counts.
Deep below a volcano, beneath the Earth's mantle,
is a magma chamber waiting to blow skyward.
It's hard to say how big Everest's magma chamber might be,
but it would have to be pretty large
to send magma high enough to reach the surface.
If you happened to summit Everest on this fateful day,
you would be vaporised in seconds.
Giant chunks of burning rock,
would be flung outward crushing villages
and smothering them with ash.
A flaming hot avalanche
would decimate everything in its path.
All five countries circling Everest,
including Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bhutan,
and The People's Republic of China,
would be absolutely devastated.
Many earthquakes would trigger
along the Indo-Australian and Eurasian fault lines.
Essentially, this would be very bad news for everyone.
But it gets worse.
To add insult to injury,
the release of ash into the stratosphere
would block the Sun,
triggering a volcanic winter
that could last for several years.
This would destroy crops
and the United Nations estimates Earth
would run out of food in just over 2 months.
If there were any survivors,
they would probably be deep
in a bomb shelter somewhere,
hoarding a lifetime supply of food
and toilet paper.
There is some light at the end of this tunnel though.
After about a hundred years,
all these gases
would actually start to warm the climate again.
But that's a long wait for a volcanic summer.
If anybody actually survived this,
climbing Everest would be a whole new experience,
and probably a lot easier to accomplish
as a much smaller and hollowed out caldera.
You could finally check that off your bucket list.
But let's rewind.
What if we knew Everest was going to explode?
What could we do?
As it turns out, scientists at NASA
have an almost $4 billion solution.
It would involve drilling a series of wells
around the perimeter of the volcano
to send ice-cold water
down to the magma chamber.
This, in turn, would form a protective ring of cool rock
to help prevent a cataclysmic burst.
As the water heats up,
NASA would extract it at the surface
for electric power generation.
Talk about a win-win!
Mind you, if they happened to drill in a sensitive area,
there's a chance they could actually trigger an eruption,
which would be the biggest facepalm in the history of humanity.
Just to put you at ease,
Everest is not a volcano and will never erupt.
Sherpas and climbers will stay in business for a long time.
Yet, there are a number of supervolcanoes on Earth building pressure.
These eruptions are extremely rare,
as pressure building isn't always
what triggers a volcanic event.
Unlike earthquakes,
volcanoes are much harder to predict.
With that said, Yellowstone,
America's supervolcano,
is supposedly overdue.
But that's a story for another WHAT IF.