What Happens If A Super Volcano Erupts? | The Yellowstone Super Volcano

[Music] Yellowstone Wyoming in Spring 2003 strange things began happening in America's most famous National Park the tallest Geyser in the world which can go 50 years without erupting burst into life spraying Columns of superheated water hundreds of feet into the air there were new cracks in the ground the ground heated up to the point where the National Park Service had to close some Trails not long after a group of Bison collapsed and died victims of poisonous fumes from below the ground satellite pictures revealed that something ominous was happening beneath the Earth on the internet unfounded rumors spread that a super volcano an eruption so large that it only occurs on average every 700,000 years was about to blow these things happen you can you can look at the Earth and see the scars uh they happen and they're going to happen again now naked science asks if Yellowstone experiences another Super eruption could the United States [Music] survive [Music] the last Super volcanic eruption occurred 74,000 years ago an explosion so large that it could wipe out a civilization but what makes a super volcano super volcano generates the biggest explosive eruptions that we've ever seen a single super volcano explosion is a million times bigger than Hiroshima No Ordinary volcano comes close regular volcanoes eject millions of cubic feet of Ash and debris super volcanoes eject billions regular volcanoes can throw Ash over an entire State the ash from a super volcano could blanket half the United States super volcanoes are real events over 20 have been recorded in the history of the earth and over half of these happened in North America imagine a situation with Worldwide famine people will be literally burnt to a cinder the results will be catastrophic we could be seeing a billion people dead we could be seeing uh the start of a breakdown in in the social fabric of of the planet but where will the next super volcano erupt many scientists now believe that an active super volcano exists under Yellowstone National Park prompting this not so trivial question if Yellowstone erupted today could we [Music] survive there's no technology that I can CA that could stop a super eruption it would be very difficult for the United States to survive as it is [Music] now Yellowstone National Park 3,400 squ miles of protected wilderness situated mostly in Northwest Wyoming the hot springs and geysers have attracted tourists for over a hundred years unknown to them deep Beneath The beautiful landscape lies a hidden Terror to find out what makes Yellowstone so potentially dangerous naked science brought in geologist Bob Christensen he has spent decades climbing over Yellowstone's rocks uncovering its secret past Yellowstone is a unique place in the world it's best known for its hydrothermal features which is the name we give to Hot Springs and geysers and steam vents or ferals all of these features are indicative of the great amount of heat that is pouring out from the interior of the earth to its surface 30 times more heat pours out of the ground in Yellowstone than anywhere else in the Rockies scientists had always assumed that the heat came from an extinct volcano that died long before the last ice age then on August 17th 1959 a major earthquake changed that view forever the Quake triggered a giant Landslide at heban Lake to the west of the park 80 million tons of rock broke off a mountain and crashed down onto a campsite the Quake killed 28 campers 19 of their bodies were never found it was the deadliest earthquake to hit the mainland United States since 1933 since then Yellowstone has become a laboratory geologists covered the park in seismometers when they examined their data they found Yellowstone averaged over 25 earthquakes a week it was the most seismically active area of the United States outside California but no one knew exactly why the US Geological Survey commissioned a huge study of the area the man they chose for the job was Bob Christensen his investigations first alerted people to the threat lying underground Christensen and his team quickly realized that Stone was the sight of a large volcanic eruption a thick layer of Ash and debris covered the Bedrock it must have come from a [Music] volcano so all of these materials erupted together in a volume count accumulating to about 250 cubic miles now that's an inconceivably large volume that's enough material to bury the whole of Texas under 5 ft of Ash but Bob wanted to know where was The Smoking Gun the enormous volcano the ash had come [Music] from ordinary volcanoes are easily recognized from their distinctive cone shape but Bob couldn't find any sign of a cone in Yellowstone over the next 5 years he carefully M the terrain what he found was not a cone but something more a astonishing a crater so large that it was impossible to see it all even from the air here was the sight of a super volcano but how had it Formed several miles beneath every volcano is a magma chamber an area of molten rock in the case of a super volcano the magma chamber is huge tens of miles in diameter when the pressure in the chamber gets too great The magma erupts and the ground above collapses into the partially empty chamber creating a giant depression in the earth a Caldera dimensions of the magma chamber were at least 50 Mi long by about 25 M across the Caldera was enormous the whole Center of Yellowstone Park had once blown out and up this was the sight of an incredible eruption one so large that it must have affected the whole planet to understand just how big this eruption was we compared it to the United States biggest volcanic eruption in living memory Mount St Helens erupted in May 1980 blasting 7 billion tons of rock from the side of the mountain enough debris to bury Manhattan to a depth of 55 ft the eruption was equal to 500 heroshima nuclear bombs it flattened an area of forest three times the size of Washington DC and sent Ash 15 mil into the Sky by any measurement it was big but the eruption that created the Yellowstone Caldera was much much bigger an astonishing 1,000 times G G than the Mount St Helen's blast but there was another surprise from analyzing the layers of Ash Bob found two other giant calderas one was even bigger 60 Mi long by 30 Mi wide the eruption that caused it was 2 and 1/ 12,000 times the size of Mount St Helens this is the spot where we first recognized the distinction between these two two volcanic units and realized that Yellowstone has had a much longer more complicated history of evolution and was appreciated at first Bob had discovered three enormous eruptions right in the heart of the United States Yellowstone gave birth to several super volcanoes which raises the unnerving thought could Yellowstone erupt again geologist Bob Smith has been trying to answer that question Bob Smith grew up with Yellowstone he had his first job in the park 50 years ago he's gathered evidence that suggests that our worst nightmares about Yellowstone could be true in the 1970s he was revisiting Yellowstone Lake when he noticed that the landscape had changed since he was last there trees just at the edge of the lake seemed to have water in the root systems and been inundated by a few inches of water strangely this only occurred at the South End of the lake Bob came up with an extraordinary theory he suggested that the whole North End of the lake had risen pushing the water to the South to check his theory he organized a new survey of the land which hadn't been surveyed since the 1920s went to the old benchmarks that were set up along the highways by the original Road surveyors the surveyor said to me well these people really have made a big error these people in 1923 cuz I'm off from them some like 18 in to 2 ft a thorough check revealed that the original survey was correct this meant that between 1923 and 1977 the center of the Calera had risen over 2 ft but that wasn't all new surveys in the last 10 years revealed a further surprise oh and behold the ground was going down between basically 1995 and 2000 so we were pretty excited because it gave us this idea that it's Dynamic and it's truly alive this is really kind of a living breathing C era it looked like the volcano was still active but could this amazing Discovery be true naked science track down a scientist who has crucial evidence that supports Bob's theory that evidence comes from people who died centuries ago for over 11,000 years Native Americans lived around the lake hunting the Bison that came here to drink the Primitive weapons they left behind reveal the position of their settlements archaeologists have collected these arroe heads and mapped their locations the arrowheads show that the native Villages moved back and forth six times over the last 15,000 years as the edge of the lake Rose and fell the rise and fall of the Caldera shows that the volcano is active that makes it a massive ticking Time Bomb if it erupts it could be the biggest blast in the history of mankind For the First Time naked science can show you what will happen if Yellowstone erupts it's a dramatic spectacle and the result would be no fun at [Music] all Yellowstone National Park is sitting on a time bomb a super volcano so large that it could throw debris 15 Mi high trigger monster avalanches and generally wreak havoc to see if the United States could survive a Yellowstone super eruption naked science needed to know just how big that eruption would be we traveled to London to meet Bill Maguire one of the world's leading experts on [Music] volcanoes a super volcano generates the biggest explosive eruptions that we've ever seen geologists measure eruptions using the volcanic explosivity index it's a little bit like a volcanic rter scale and it runs from zero up to 8 at level one are tiny eruptions throwing 350,000 cubic feet of Ash into the air level two eruptions are slightly bigger like this Blast from Mount Etna in Sicily this volcano in New Zealand ejecting enough Ash to fill 58 football stadiums is a level three the 1883 eruption of katoa in Indonesia was a level six a super volcano make that level eight each point on that scale represents an eruption 10 times bigger than the one below Mount St Helens was a five a super eruption is at least a, times [Music] bigger but what factors make super volcanoes like Yellowstone so explosive the answer lies in the type of magma or molten rock that triggers the [Music] eruption quiet volcanoes like kill laa in Hawaii have a very runny magma called Basalt when the magma reaches the surface any gases trapped within it Escape gently there's no violent eruption but the magma beneath Yellowstone is completely different it contains larger amounts of a substance called silica which can bind vast quantities of explosive gas into the magma if you combine that binding um Phenomenon with lots of gas then you have a recipe for a really big explosion a super volcano isn't just the world's biggest bomb it's a bomb that throws smaller bombs to see what sort of bang it would make you need to compare it to the largest man-made explosions [Music] ever this is the most powerful bomb ever detonated ated by the United States it's the Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb set off on bikini ATL in 1954 but at 15 megatons it's still 160 times smaller than a super volcano eruption this is the world's biggest bomb in 1961 the Soviet Air Force dropped a 50 Megaton bomb over Nova zemlia in the Arctic Ocean the mushroom cloud Rose above of the stratosphere and the shock wave traveled three times around the earth imagine an eruption 50 times bigger than this and you have a super volcano any way you look at it that kind of eruption would be a very nasty surprise so how will the Emergency Services know that a super eruption is on the way all volcanoes warn us that they are about to erupt the first sign of a Yellowstone eruption would probably be the ground Rising just before Mount St Helens erupted the mountain bulged growing 5 ft per day a similar kind of uplift would be likely at Yellowstone as magma deep below the surface of the Earth Rises it splits the Rocks above in Yellowstone it would probably lift the whole Caldera an area the size of Houston and Dallas 10 ft or more into the air weeks or even months before a Yellowstone super eruption these warning signs would trigger the mother of all evacuations the area 60 M around the volcano would become a hazard Zone officials would place on alert the surrounding region up to 200 mil readying people for a violent eruption walk that up eer as people evacuated the area geologists would look out for new warning signs that would tell them an eruption is imminent you start to see swarms of earthquakes as fresh magma moved into the system and broke the rock above it and it started to rise upwards these earthquakes produce distinctive waveforms on the seismographs the crack of rocks fracturing creates a signal that starts with a sharp rise and Fades quickly long before an eruption swarms of earthquakes would sweep the hazard Zone and surrounding [Music] area just before a volcanic eruption the signal produced by regular earthquakes would give way to a new signal a long continuous vibration now when magmas opened a space for itself it will start to move through that and as it moves through that fairly rapidly it will vibrate the walls of the of the crack or the conduit and that will give you a sort of rumbling um signal it sounds like the vibration of a large Organ Pipe scientists call it harmonic Tremor it's the last warning this is what magma racing towards the surface might sound like for anyone Brave or foolish enough to remain in the hazard Zone the chances of Escape would be slim the Big Bang would be moments away the blast of a super eruption would be a awesome enough but it's nothing compared to what would follow spreading out from Yellowstone would come one of Nature's most deadly forces violent churning clouds of rock Ash and gas called pyroclastic flows parastic flows are the nastiest of all volcanic phenomena they are blasts of fragmented Magma Hot Ash incandescent gases that travel at Hurricane velocities and they blast out cross the ground surface in all directions from from the [Music] eruption it's like an avalanche on steroids hidden beneath the turbulent cloud of scalding hot ash is a mass of tumbling rocks at temperatures as high as 1500° f it sweeps down the mountain at high speeds destroying everything it touches there's nowhere to run and absolutely nowhere to [Music] hide death comes pretty quickly not from the actual burning of the skin outside but from inhaling these very very hot gases and they really wreck the lungs and the throat almost instantaneously um after after that the the water in in the the human tissue is boiled off uh and there are cases in in in in some past eruptions where people's skull skulls are SE popped apart as the brain essentially has exploded for tangible recent evidence of the nasty nature of pyroclastic flows naked science paid a visit to the Caribbean island of monserat hell came to this paradise in 1997 in the form of giant pyroclastic flows David Lee is a local filmmaker in 1995 he had a hair raising runin with an exploding volcano there's an eruption right now that's hot stuff going off there Rocks coming up and I'm getting out of here he had climbed to the summit of the volcano to film it when it erupted now do I look scared I'm not out of here yet I'm only down about 600 ft if the whole thing went wouldn't have a chance up here you could have seen pyroclastic flows rushing down those slopes at at Fantastic speeds maybe maybe 60 to 100 mph maybe even more they rush out over the ocean and they just float out over the sea it's an amazing thing to see the power and fury of these pyroclastic flows are awesome but they're nothing compared to what would spew forth from a super volcano to see what happens when a pyroclastic flow hits a major town naked science visited Plymouth on [Music] monserat we're just coming into uh the capital city of monat which was Plymouth and it has been hit by pyroclastic flows and devastated 1997 David Lee witnessed the flows that hit the town the experience is seared in his memory at the daytime they look like a gray Mass you wouldn't even think they were dangerous although they're moving quickly at night they are totally on fire totally incandescent just glowing and you could see them sweeping down over the city and everything they touch because they're probably 500° or more just bursts into flame uh most of the population was up on the hillsides as close as we could get and you could see the whole whole city burning once over 4,000 people lived here today it's a ghost town the city center is buried in Ash a modern-day Pompei monat's disaster was appalling but its volcano was relatively small and life on the island has begun to recover if this had been a super volcano we'd be looking at no life what's [Music] soever within an hour of a Yellowstone super eruption pyroclastic flows could Race Across the countryside and engulf the valley of Jackson Hall and the town of Livingston some 50 miles away within a 60m radius 90% of any remaining people would be killed a few might be blown to pieces in the initial blast most with would suffocate In the Heat of pyroplastic flows but this would just be the beginning blowing across the states would be the mother of all ash clouds an aerial mountain of deadly particles and debris Yellowstone National Park is the site of a recurring super volcano an eruption so large that if it happens again it would destroy nearly everything within 60 Mi but what would happen next as a mountain of Ash begins to spread and then fall the Yellowstone super eruption could throw Ash 15 mil into the atmosphere The Fallout could cover half the United States 3 days after the eruption the skies would be dark and deadly from scientist predictions naked science has pieced together a picture of the country after 3 days of ashall at six times heavier than wet snow wet Ash would cause many roofs to collapse clog up filters of cars and ground aircraft across much of the western us any planes in Flight would be in danger of crashing their engines clogged by the fine particles when Mount St Helens erupted swirling particles of Ash in the atmosphere generated lightning which in turn ignited scores of forest fires a super volcano could ignite hundreds the worst affected region would be the downwind area up to 500 M from Yellowstone as far away as Salt Lake City and Denver carry by the normal prevailing winds the ash would reach Denver in about 24 hours by the time it had finished falling it could be Deeper Than 3 ft within this zone no movement would be possible for 2 days roads would be invisible and people Outdoors would not be able to see where they were going Transportation would come to a stop winds whipping up the ash would create dust clouds and people stranded in the the open would likely suffocate within hours moist Ash collecting on power lines would short insulators cutting off power if it happened in Winter then the cold weather would take more lives Falling Rain would wash Ash into rivers creating giant mud flows called lahars smashing everything in their path pumping stations at reservoirs would be clogged with Ash leaving many people without friend fresh water nuclear power stations dependent on cooling water from Rivers would be forced to [Music] close as with the aftermath of any catastrophe lawlessness could take over livestock could die from lack of grass and water hospitals could stop running the old the sick and the very young would be even more vulnerable in this central zone up to 10% of the population or half a million people could die 7 days after the eruption Yellowstone could still be pumping Ash into the air a thousand miles away in places like Santa Fe and Kansas City the ash would continue to fall and to kill keep one low on your head the ash itself is is deadly anyone living under the path of the ash cloud would need to protect themselves that's because volcanic ash isn't really Ash at all it's rock that has been blown apart into tiny pieces to see what makes it so dangerous naked science put it under an electron microscope up close the particles show up as minute shards of glass with Jagged [Music] edges if these get into the lungs they can be deadly but not the way you might [Music] expect to find out what can happen to people who inhale this ash naked science traveled to Nebraska to meet Mike Vorhees a respected American paleontologist in the 1970s Professor Vorhees made a startling discovery I was prospecting for fossils here and came across this volcanic ash bed and right at the bottom of the ash bed was a skull of a baby rhinoceros sticking out it was the start of an incredible find underneath 10 ft of Ash was an ancient water hole full of skeletons of horses camels and rhinos the mass grave contained over 200 animals all died within days of each other scientists suspected the killer was Ash but they had no proof when the ash was tested they were shocked to find that it had come from an extinct volcano almost 1,000 M away in Idaho Mike's Discovery led him to conclude that volcanic ash can kill even 1,000 mil from its source but how I think I can demonstrate how it did it the ash is so fine that it drifts easily on the Wind so it probably took maybe six or seven hours for the ash to get to Nebraska from the volcano fine Ash hangs in the air the same air we breathe this ash is so far from the volcano that only the very very finest material settled out here it's so fine that it it makes a uh a dust that easily gets into the lungs in his laboratory Mike and his team started examining the bones there was something unusual about them right up here in the front part of the jaw is healthy bone this is the way a fossilized camel jaw should look but this one has something extra it actually has uh symptoms of the disease that killed the animal unlike normal fossils every single bone they found was covered in a strange white substance the white spongy substance is new bone growth it's a classic sign that an animal has died of the rare lung ailment known as Marie disease as the lungs fail the skeletal system goes out of control rapidly depositing new bone on top of old it reveals that the animals died a slow and painful death as their lungs choked by Ash started to fail it caused their bones to grow thicker racked with pain they were drawn to the water hole where they died all within a month of the [Music] eruption if the Yellowstone super volcano erupts no one within a th000 miles would be safe prolonged exposure to the fine Ash would guarantee a lingering death from Marie's disease the death toll from the immediate blast of a Yellowstone eruption would be bad enough but for those who survive the explosion and even the ashall it could get worse DNA evidence suggests that the last super volcano eruption created a mini ice age that nearly led to the extinction of the human [Music] race an eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano would cause widespread Devastation across the United [Music] States in the first day those spared by the initial blast would face pyroclastic flows that would sweep out from Yellowstone destroying nearly everything within 60 Mi 3 days after the eruption normal life within 500 M of the volcano would be impossible within a week the center of the US would be buried under a thick carpet of Ash killing thousands of the painful lung disease but scientists now suggest that the greatest impact would come months after the eruption [Music] they believe that the deadliest part of a super volcano eruption is not the ash that falls to the ground but the gases that stay in the [Music] air Professor Mike rampino of New York University investigates how volcanic eruptions in the past change the climate of the planet to find out what will happen if Yellowstone erupts naked science brought Professor rampino to New England an old tombstone in a New Hampshire graveyard contains a warning of what a super volcano would bring it records the events of 1816 a date that became known as The Year Without a summer this is a uh Memorial to a farmer named Ruben Witten who managed to save the town of Ashlin New Hampshire in 1816 by growing enough wheat on his land to feed the community there was snow in June and frosts in July and again in August that killed most of the wheat in the lowlands but Ruben Whitten managed to grow enough wheat in the highlands here to uh feed the [Music] town they were lucky in 1816 the growing season in New Hampshire dropped from 120 days to just 60 killing the crops in the ground before they could ripen and it wasn't just America that was affected bad weather caused harvests to fail in Europe 1816 to 1817 witnessed the worst famine in over a [Music] century the cold weather was believed to be caused by a volcano to find out more Mike rampino went to Har University to search the historical records they show that in 1815 the year before the cold summer the volcano of Tambora to the east of java blew its top although not a super eruption this volcano even a 10,000 M away had a far-reaching effect it's our best clue to what will happen when a super volcano erupts explosive volcanoes uh put material up into the stratosphere and the most important thing is they release sulfur dioxide gas which is converted into sulfuric acid aerosols little droplets in the Earth's atmosphere in the stratosphere scientists agree that what made Tambora such a killer was the 200 million tons of sulfur dioxide it pumped into the air these tiny droplets are spread worldwide by the stratosphere winds and they produce a veil that covers the earth and cuts out some of the sunlight that's coming in so that the sun actually appears dimmer and so less sunlight is warming the Earth and it's natural then the Earth cools down this dimmer effect caused the Famine of 1816 by some estimates Tambora killed 71,000 people twice as many as katoa mainly through starvation it's the deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history a super volcano's effect might be even greater the effect it would have on the atmosphere is much more severe than uh any of the historic volcanic eruptions like Tambora and we estimate that the drop in temperature globally after a Yellowstone size super eruption would be about 10° fah now that is a very severe Cooling Frost and snowfall in even in Equatorial regions tropical vegetation has no cold hardtin so a frost in the tropics would kill off all the above ground vegetation and in that kind of situation the climatic effects the loss of the growing season for one or two years it's been estimated that you could lose billions of people from the Earth's population evidence suggest this type of climate change has happened before some scientists believe that the last time a super volcano erupted it very nearly wiped out the human race 74,000 years ago a super volcano erupted on the island of Toba in Indonesia it's a very very large volume eruption the same kind of thing we might see from Yellowstone and it's interesting to note that at that time there's genetic evidence that the human population went through a bottleneck before the volcano erupted scientists believed that humans were abundant throughout Africa around the time of the eruption their numbers plummeted the population of human beings in that bottleneck was about a few thousand at most 10,000 some people think as little as 3,000 so imagine the entire human population of of the planet at that time reduced to a few thousand individuals it's very close to an Extinction of uh of homo sapiens according to these scientists a super volcano has nearly ended human life once already could it happen again and just as importantly for us when an active super volcano lies in Waiting under Yellowstone National Park if it were to explode it could plunge the world into a volcanic winter as the global temperature dropped millions could die it would be by far the biggest BG disaster ever to hit the modern world it sounds terrifying but if it happens 500,000 years from now we're not quite so worried if it's 5 Years start packing so when will Yellowstone next erupt the scientist in charge of Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is Jake lowenstern if Yellowstone phone is about to erupt it's his job to see it coming using the very latest technology he can tell what is happening below ground at any time there are over 20 seismometers that are located within the park the seismic data is recorded continuously sent to the University of Utah the key to knowing when Yellowstone is going to blow is understanding the composition of the magma Underground the magma deep below Yellowstone is made of three things gas bubbles crystals of cooled magma and a certain percentage of molten rock or melt before a volcano can explode the magma chamber has to contain enough melt to trigger the eruption generally it appears that about 50% melt is needed in a magma for it to a rock so what percentage of rock below Yellowstone is melt to find the answer scientists have recently analyzed the seismic waves created by earthquakes like a giant ultrasound scan these allowed them to see into the Earth and estimate the percentage of melt below ground we do have some data that indicates that the magma chamber on a Caldera wide basis is only about 10% melt and therefore it doesn't seem likely at this time that Yellowstone Caldera could have one of these really large Caldera forming eruptions there's just not enough highly molten material down there but in 2003 geologists monitoring the volcano saw unusual signs that Yellowstone was becoming more active Dan derish is a geologist with the US geological surveys volcano hazards group he was one of the first to see the signs of the increased activity the tallest Geyser in the world erupted several times Steamboat geyser a very rare event there were new cracks in the ground uh the ground heated up to the point where the National Park Service had to close some Trails uh we discovered that a different part of the area was going up and frankly the only thing we can think of that could be down there that would be causing the uplift is Magnum it could mean that uh the system is getting closer to its next eruption and uh we're starting to see intrusion of magma uh we don't know so what could these signs mean in the past the Yellowstone super volcano has erupted three times these things happen you can you can look at the Earth and see the scars uh they happen and they're going to happen again Yellowstone appears to be in a cycle the last three super eruptions at Yellowstone occurred 2.0 million years ago 1.3 million years ago and 0.6 million years ago well that sounds like we're getting ready for the next eruption but these dates are not an exact cycle the eruptions varied by plus or minus 100,000 years this means that the next Yellowstone eruption might not happen for another 100,000 years will the next one occur at zero or 100,000 years from now uh we don't know according to the scientists it's unlikely that Yellowstone will blow in a super eruption at anytime soon but one thing is sure super eruptions do happen and being a little cautious we wanted to know if Yellowstone were about to explode is there any way we could stop it some have suggested Ed that the way to prevent a super volcano eruption would be to drill hundreds or thousands of holes down to the magma chamber to release the pressure of the gases it it just wouldn't work um first of all it's a technological challenge to drill to the depths of these magma Chambers uh on the order of six miles perhaps in some cases um but even if you drill that far um all you would be doing is is a pin prick in a very large very complicated system it's not just a big balloon full of magma and it wouldn't notice there's no technology uh that I can conceive of that I've ever heard discussed that could stop a super eruption so we can't stop one with any known technology if Yellowstone blows is there any way the United States could survive it would be very difficult for the United States to survive as it is now um in the immediate aftermath of an eruption super eruption at Yellowstone the United States would be crippled thousands could die in the blast Millions more could perish from breathing in Ash or from the famine that many predict but recognizing the danger and detailed disaster planning could yet offer hope some scientists believe the preparation of hardened facilities would allow survivors to dig themselves out and respond effectively the size of the underground threat means that Yellowstone will be on round the-clock surveillance for centuries to come fortunately for us super volcanoes are extremely rare events on average one erupts somewhere on Earth every 700,000 years the challenge facing scientists is finding where and when the next next one will happen before it's too [Music] late

Channel: Naked Science

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Keywords: doc, documentary film, documentaries, HD documentary, education, history, informative, supervolcanoes, supervolcano, super volcano, krakatoa, volcanoes, anak krakatau, what if, science documentary, what if scenario, mystery, yellowstone, yellowstone eruption, yellowstone volcano, yellowstone simulation, biggest volcano eruptions, iceland volcano, geology, nature, natural science, yellowstone supervolcano, supervolcano eruption, how dangerous, earth, yellowstone volcano eruption

Id: pgwPBDjrOg8

Length: 49min 40sec (2980 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024