Forget Yellowstone - These EIGHT Supervolcanoes Could Destroy The World | Answers With Joe

3 800 years ago on the island of crete the minoan civilization was one of the most powerful kingdoms in the entire bronze age in fact minoan culture was so dominant that given a few hundred more years we might be calling all of greece minoan but that's not what happened instead they disappear from the region and from the entire historical record in fact we don't really even know what they call themselves we call them minoans based off of the name of their ruler king minus and we only knew of king minus in 1878 when they discovered his palace on crete and started excavating it it was only after this discovery that they started finding more stuff in the islands around crete we got a better idea of just how extensive the civilization was what happened to the minoans is still a bit of a mystery but most experts agree it probably has something to do with this this is the greek island of thira also known by its latin name santorini today it's one of the most popular travel destinations in the world known for its distinctive architecture dramatic 300 meter tall cliffs and stunning views of the mediterranean but it didn't always look like this as you've probably already figured out thera is an active volcano in fact it had minor eruptions three times in the last hundred years but it was the eruption that occurred sometime between 1600 and 1700 bce that reshaped not just the island of thera but the entire mediterranean region it was an explosion that turned a giant mountain sticking out of the sea into this a caldera basically a sinkhole this was basically just a mountain that blew up and it blew up with a force of about a hundred atomic bombs recent estimates say that the eruption could have launched up to 60 cubic kilometers of ash and dust with samples found up to 30 kilometers away just for comparison the 1883 eruption of krakatoa and the tsunami it created killed 36 000 people thera was four to five times more powerful than that one the tsunami from thera would have wiped out the coastal settlements on crete that the minoans held and probably wiped out their navy completely not to mention putting up ash and dust in the air to lower global temperatures all around the world just like the tambora eruption in 1815. this would have caused years of poor harvests and food shortages just as the minoans were recovering from the damage that the tsunami did they didn't vanish overnight but they were weakened to the point that when the mycenean conquerors came around they just didn't stand a chance they were crushed and then within a few hundred years were culturally assimilated and then they were just completely lost to time not to mention that the knock-on effects of the theory explosion may have played a part in the entire bronze age collapse that occurred around 1177 bce the theater explosion was truly epic both in scale and significance it might be one of the most consequential volcanic eruptions in the history of western civilization and yet if you put santorini up next to the yellowstone caldera it looks like this adorable [Music] this is the difference between a volcano and a super volcano you literally can't see a super volcano from the ground the four overlapping calderas that make up the yellowstone super volcano measure about 70 kilometers by 45 kilometers which is actually twice as far as what the ejecta from the ethereal volcano traveled to so yellowstone qualifies as a super volcano because it's had two different super eruptions and to be a super eruption the volcano has to eject at least a thousand cubic kilometers of material into the air would a thousand kilometers be a mega mega mega meter magometer is it it's going to be a mega meter how come i've never heard of a mega meter is that a thing anyway whatever you call it it's about 17 times the objective thera you know arguably the most consequential volcanic eruption in human history according to jake lowenstern of the u.s geological survey yellowstone's super eruptions ejected quote enough material to bury the state of texas five feet deep when i read this quote i was curious whether or not he meant both of them together was that big no each eruption was enough to bury the entire state of texas five feet deep eruptions are rated on the volcanic explosivity index and super eruptions are rated as a vei magnitude 8 or m8 the ancient theorem and tambora eruptions which again lowered global temperatures because they were so big rated only in m7 which actually sounds pretty close but the vei index is logarithmic so the theora and tambora eruptions were only one-tenth as big as a super volcano luckily for us no super eruptions have occurred since prehistoric times but yellowstone is not alone there's several super volcanoes around the world just waiting to end that streak so exactly how bad would it be when not if that happened to answer that question it might be good to understand why super eruptions happen in the first place and the short answer is well there's a lot of long answers volcanology is a field of study that's constantly shifting and eroding itself that's a metaphor so most volcanic activity occurs along tectonic plate boundaries these are the cracks in the pie crust where the filling can come up through the surface and now i'm hungry thing is not all volcanoes are born at the edge of a tectonic plate some of them like yellowstone happen right in the middle of them so one theory involves so-called hot spots in the earth's mantle also known as large igneous provinces the hot spots melt rock into magma which eventually builds up pressure and blows up but what causes these hot spots in the first place according to geophysicist w jason morgan they're caused by mantle plumes in 1971 morgan proposed that these mantle plumes develop deep down in the earth as a ball of hot magma that then rises up kind of dragging a tail behind like a lava lamp like i wear this shirt a lot and this is normally how we see the layers of the earth depicted you know with these like concentric circles but of course they're not perfectly circular they're they're you know they've got mental plumes and bulges it's it's got curves yo but anyway that's mantle plume theory that we got these mammal plumes deep down the earth they come up they bubble up they build up pressure they explode go boom super volcano the problem is not all scientists are convinced that mantle plumes exist there is an alternative theory that's called plate theory that relies exclusively on plate tectonics according to plate theory off boundary volcanoes are the result of crustal extension which is my new favorite phrase so this states that the movement of the plates cause pressure changes far from the boundary so if local rock is already close to its to its melting point this depressurization can actually cause it to form into mantle and what happens next depends on a variety of conditions one being the composition of the water so large volcanic eruptions particularly super volcanoes are thought to be what's known as felsic felsic is a combination of feldspar and silicon and rocks with high silicon content has actually a high viscosity rate so it actually doesn't go through the the cracks in the in the surface of the earth as easily so instead of just kind of like rising through the crust like regular lava it builds up and builds up and it and it melts the rock underneath it that releases gases that builds up pressure kaboom and what makes a super volcano super is basically the amount of ejecta that winds up getting launched out and that is created by massive magma chambers underneath the surface and over the past 36 million years there's been around 42 super eruptions that we know of and that number varies because figuring out the vei of ancient volcanoes is fairly tricky but let's talk about some of the super volcanoes that we do know of so let's just start with yellowstone because i was already talking about it earlier and like i said we know of a couple of super eruptions that happened there the biggest one was the huckleberry ridge super eruption that formed the largest portion of the caldera 2.1 million years ago the second one called lava creek extended the caldera's eastern boundary some 640 thousand years ago both of these super eruptions ejected enough ash to cover what is now the western united states those two eruptions are only part of yellowstone's volcanic history there have been about 80 smaller eruptions since the last super eruption the u.s geological survey classifies these as relatively non-explosive relatively is the key word here because apparently some of them were about as big as the mount pinatubo eruption in 1991 that killed over 800 people and devastated 37 000 acres of forest thankfully nothing that destructive has happened in yellowstone for about 70 thousand years the yellowstone isn't the only super volcano in north america actually there's a surprising number of them at least seven super eruptions occurred between 36 and 18 million years ago that helped shape parts of california nevada utah and colorado this includes the lagarita caldera in colorado and utah's wawa springs caldera which happened just 2 million years apart a drop in the bucket in geologic time by the way huawei springs is kind of a funny name but it was a monster volcano it may have ejected up to 5 500 cubic kilometers of debris yeah aside from the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs wawa springs might be the single most energetic event to have happened in the history of the planet it dwarfs yellowstone's biggest eruption by a factor of five there are areas where the debris is 13 000 feet thick and believe it or not even that might be beaten by another super volcano in north america called the flat landing brook formation in canada i say might because it happened so long ago it's hard to tell if it happened in a single event or multiple events all we know is that 460 million years ago or so this formation deposited 12 000 cubic kilometers of debris over the area it's assumed that this was an ongoing process over a million years or so but if it did happen all in one event and ejected over ten thousand cubic kilometers that would break the volcanic explosivity index m8 is supposed to be the upper limit but an m9 would be 10 times an m8 which is what this would be finally stepping out of north america mount toba in indonesia is another super eruption that could break the scale i've talked about the toba explosion before it happened fairly recently about 74 000 years ago many people believed that it might have been something of an extinction event that almost wiped out human beings at the time although i've got to make sure and cover my butt here that theory has been falling in popularity lately anyway its ejecta has been given a range of between fifteen hundred and thirteen thousand cubic kilometers which is a pretty massive range but if it was at the upper end of that range it too would break the vei index then there's lake topah in new zealand whose super eruption named uruanui turned mount taupa into lake taupa about 26 500 years ago this wasn't the largest super eruption on record but it was the most recent and it had some fairly interesting features to it for one thing it happened in stages with long breaks in between and most super volcanoes don't work like this but it may have been drawing magma from a separate chamber under the kayapo fault this might have caused the pressure to build more regularly and it wound up exploding in 10 different phases and over those phases it ejected around 1770 cubic kilometers of debris now again that's kind of small on the super volcano range but it still managed to cover some islands a thousand kilometers away in 18 centimeters of ash that's a mega meter on top of all these super volcanoes i mentioned there's also a couple in south america including the cerro gaucha and bolivia and the andes central volcanic zone in chile yeah interestingly more than half of all super volcano eruptions in the world have been in north america that makes for a grand total of eight super volcanoes sites around the world none of which have gone off in quite some time which is unnerving but exactly how borked would we be if one of these bad boys blew up like would it be an extinction level event well looking into our past can give us a clue because the largest mass extinction event in history was thought to have coincided with some super volcanic activity assuming of course you don't count the anthropocene extinction event that we're living through right now in which the volcano is us be the volcano the permian triassic extinction event dated around 252 million years ago took place at about the same time as the formation of the emission traps in china and russia's siberian traps these flood basalt provinces were shaped by tens of thousands to a million years worth of eruptions and lava flows that also released massive amounts of carbon dioxide which changed the climate drastically eventually this killed 96 of marine species and 73 percent of terrestrial species again this took place over a greater length of time than our entire species has existed so a single super volcano event probably wouldn't be enough to wipe us out completely but it wouldn't be great either first of all there would be massive devastation anywhere near the super eruption site keep in mind again yellowstone could cover all of texas in five feet of ash so you can pretty much expect the western half of the united states to be pretty much uninhabitable for a while that would kill or displace around 100 to 120 million people beyond the local area we can expect to see worldwide food shortages due to lack of sunlight and acid rain which is also a byproduct of volcanic gases getting in the atmosphere now the atmospheric conditions would probably clean up itself pretty quickly in about a year or two but that's only part of the problem nature is only part of the devastation we would have to deal with the other part is societal because society will absolutely collapse and here's how you can prepare for that first of all stock up on toilet paper we know how fast that can disappear you'll also want to stock up on any shelf stable food any medicine you need or vitamin supplements gas masks are essential if you're anywhere near the super eruption site because it does release toxic chemicals but also a lot of carbon dioxide giant pockets of co2 could travel over entire towns and smother them and you could choke to death without an oxygen supply so you might want to keep a tank of oxygen nearby and once you're done hiding from gas clouds you'll be ready to hide from a much bigger danger your neighbors when the food starts going away people start getting a little crazy we saw some of this in 1816 after the tambora explosion hell just several days of darkness as the ash travels around the world will be enough to make some people go primal so it wouldn't be the worst idea to have an underground bunker with an electric generator because power plants will start to go down the electric infrastructure will probably fail pretty quickly of course the generators will only last a little while chances are transportation corridors will get clogged up and so gas won't be able to get to the gas stations so you'll want to have some source of localized power solar is good obviously but if the skies are dark and because of all the ash you'll probably want some wind power as well just be ready to defend that when the angry hordes come calling in fact some speculate that we could be seeing communities springing up around nuclear power plants because they'll continue to make power for a much longer time humanity would recover eventually maybe with our current level of technology would be able to recover a lot faster than say the minoans did luckily all these sites and large igneous provinces are being studied obsessively and none of the experts think that we're anywhere near a super eruption anytime soon and even then only the worst of the worst case scenarios would wipe out our species completely but it is possible might even be inevitable and there are other threats besides volcanoes asteroids and the like and this has led a lot of people to make that argument that this is why we need to start colonizing the solar system don't put all your eggs in one basket filled with super volcanoes we live on a dynamic and volatile planet one run by forces that we have no control over and super volcanoes are a sobering reminder of that but and i cannot stress this too much it could be thousands of years before another super volcano eruption happens and there are much bigger and more immediate threats in front of us right now so let's focus on those of course to solve all these immediate threats we're going to need smart people if you want to be one of those smart people a good place to start is brilliant brilliant isn't that wait wait wait hold up actually you know what i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna do something a little different here you guys have heard me talk about brilliant a million times they've been an awesome sponsor of this channel but i want to talk about why i've worked with them for so long all right story time so when i was a kid there were two things that you need to know about me one i wanted to be an astronaut more than anything else in this world and two i sucked at math i don't know why for the most part i was a pretty smart kid but for some reason just math i just i just couldn't make things click it's like i had number dyslexia or something well one day a teacher was trying to motivate me to work harder at math and she told me that you know if you want to be an astronaut you have to be really good at math and that was the day my dreams died and now i'm a youtuber thanks teach but the thing was i didn't like have a learning disability i just learned differently and that's why i think brilliant is so great because brilliant is a different kind of learning platform brilliant uses visual and interactive lessons to teach you by solving problems which is something we all know how to do on a certain level it kind of hacks this innate problem-solving ability and uses it to teach fundamental concepts that you can then build upon until next thing you know you're doing advanced math and science that you always thought was out of your reach there's a whole track that you can follow that starts you off at the fundamentals of math and science and work your way up or you can just jump in on a specific topic that you've always wanted to understand like gravitational physics or neural networks seriously if you've got a kid that's struggling in math and science classes this could be a life changer i know it would have saved me a whole lot of self-loathing or if you're an adult like me and you just always wish you had a better handle on this kind of stuff brilliant's great for that too it's never too late so if you've been on the fence about brilliant you can try the first few lessons of any of the courses for free if you go to brilliant.org slash answers with joe and the first 200 people that sign up at that link for the premium subscription that gives you access to all of their programs will get 20 off your subscription once again that's brilliant.org slice answers with joe link's down below big thanks to brilliant for supporting this video and a huge shout out to the answer files on patreon and the youtube members that are being an awesome community and just being really cool in the comments i can't thank you guys enough there's some new names of members i need to shout out real quick we've got jb hebner fish sandwich rob dragon greg z sessen tom ray ty helton whale edatona quince reserva x2 tim wearley and father morpheus thank you guys so much if you would like to get early access to videos or access to exclusive live streams and get a little button by your name that makes you special in the comments you can just hit the little join now button right below this video please do like and share this video if you liked it and if this is your first time here there's a little video here that youtube's been watching you they think that this might be up your alley and it might be or any of the others down here on the side that have my face on it you can check those out and if you like them i invite you to subscribe i come back with videos every monday t-shirts available at the store it answers the joe.com store we got the holidays coming up so you might want to go look around and see if there's anything good there help support the channel and they're pretty cool shirts so go check it out all right that's it for now you guys go out there have an eye opening rest of the week stay safe and i'll see you next monday love you guys take care

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 1,000,195

Keywords: answers with joe, joe scott

Id: COjk9FmCl1M

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 25 2021