When This Volcano Erupts Humanity is Doomed

bonjour a bienvenue surf 42 today's video is sponsored by babel the number one language learning gap in the world in 79 a.d the volcano known as mount vesuvius erupted in what is probably the single most famous volcanic event in human history at the peak of the eruption which lasted for a full two days the volcano coughed up a lethal mix of molten rock pulverized pumice and red hot ash at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second to put the magnitude of the eruption into human terms the total thermal energy released was roughly 100 000 times greater than that produced by the hiroshima and nagasaki nuclear bombs it isn't surprising then that those living in the vicinity fared rather badly in the aftermath as the eruption progressed pyroclastic surges which are basically fast-moving clouds of rock fragments ash and noxious gases tore through the nearby towns of pompeii and herculaneum with the force of an industrial sandblaster the settlements along with everyone unlucky enough to have been home at the time disappeared under six metres of hot ash pompei and herculaneum were buried so completely and so quickly they created a kind of time capsule perfectly preserving a moment in roman history whenever i get time away i love traveling in france it's such a beautiful country but i always get frustrated and feel embarrassed by my total inability to communicate with the locals and people in shops and cafes so i'm using babel to learn to speak french babel is way better than other language learning apps i've used for a start babel has no ads which makes it a joy to use unlike other apps that use algorithms to generate lessons babble lessons are created by real people who have vast experience with teaching languages and you know what the results speak for themselves university studies have shown that just 15 hours of babble is equal to a semester of college spanish and that doesn't surprise me because after just a couple of hours using babel i've learned and can recall a long list of french phrases that are actually useful in conversation because babel prepares you for situations you will actually encounter in real life what language have you always wanted to learn well you should start today by heading to my link below to get fifty percent of six months for a limited time only archaeological work began at the sites in the 18th century and alongside all the mosaics pottery and coins the scientists were perplexed to find thousands of cavities filled with human bones it soon became clear that these strange voids were created when the human bodies they contained rotted away by pouring plaster inside archaeologists were able to create near-perfect outlines of the victims who had died in the eruption almost 2 000 years earlier the growing number of plaster molds revealed that many of the victims had died in twisted agonised positions as a result it was long assumed the poor old pompeians had perished from asphyxiation choked to death on ash and poisonous gases but recent evidence suggests they were actually killed by the extreme temperatures that accompanied the pyroclastic surges as high as 300 degrees celsius the heat was so intense that the organs and blood of the victims would have been vaporized killing them instantly the brain of one victim was even found to have been vitrified turned to glass by the intense heat those eerie death poses of the pompe victims were actually caused by heat shock contorting the bodies in all it's fought that 16 000 people were killed the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions is measured on a scale known as the volcanic explosivity index which runs from zero to eight as utterly devastating and deadly as the famous eruption of man vesuvius was it only came in at a five on the vei scale for reference eruptions of this magnitude occur once every 15 years or so worldwide to see what happens during a magnitude 6 eruption we can fast forward just over 1800 years after mount vesuvius sent real estate prices in pompei and herculaneum through the floor literally to 1883. when the indonesian volcano krakatoa was readying itself for one of the most devastating eruptions in modern human history at the time the island on which the volcano stood had three peaks the tallest of which was 800 meters above sea level but things were about to change dramatically because when krakatoa blew on sunday the 26th of august that year the eruption was so monumental it literally smashed these mountains out of existence obliterating almost the entire island on which they stood in the process the sound of the last and largest explosion to shake krakatoa that day was so loud it was heard four full hours later off the coast of mauritius almost 5 000 kilometers away for comparison a typical handgun shot can be heard around two kilometers away to say the eruption of krakatoa was loud is almost meaningless when the volcano blew it is fought to have produced the single loudest sound created on earth in recorded history the british ship norm castle was minding its own business in the sunder strait 65 kilometers away when the pressure wave from the explosion hit even at that distance the sound was loud enough to burst the eardrums of the sailors on board it's said that anyone unlucky enough to have been within 15 kilometers of krakatoa when it blew was left permanently death if of course they survived at all the colossal shock wave from the eruption swept around the entire globe for days afterwards circling the planet four full times but overexcited air particles weren't the only thing the locals had to worry about the incredible violence of the eruption unleashed a tsunami of truly biblical proportions the boiling wave of water was more than 40 meters high when it hit the town of merak 56 kilometers away where all but two of the 2000 inhabitants were killed all told more than 36 000 people died in the aftermath of the eruption but as catastrophic as the 1883 eruption of krakatoa was we humans have seen worse and oddly enough the biggest baddest volcanic eruption in recorded history happened just 68 years before krakatoa blew itself to bits and less than 900 miles away in the very same country it's fair to say indonesia was having one hell of a shitty century despite being far less famous than its cousin krakatoa the title of largest and deadliest volcanic event to have occurred in modern times was the 1815 eruption of tambora the only volcanic explosivity index seven in almost a thousand years like krakatoa the eruption of tambora was cataclysmic according to eyewitnesses the mountain itself turned into a flowing massive liquid magma when the dust well ash had settled mount hambora stood a full 1500 meters shorter than it had days before a combination of pyroclastic surges tsunamis and general destruction is fought to have taken the lives of at least 71 000 people but shocking as that is the tambora eruption is most famous for what happened afterwards the volcano spewed forth so much ash pumice pulverized rock and sulfur aerosols into the atmosphere that it prevented a substantial amount of sunlight from reaching the earth's surface as a result average global temperatures were reduced by as much as half a degree celsius in the aftermath of the eruption that may not sound like all that much but 1816 is known as the year without a summer for a reason it was the coldest recorded in europe ever and it wasn't just europeans who suffered the monsoon season was knocked off kilter in parts of asia and temperatures in north america fell sharply with snow and frost reported across much of the country in the middle of june the cloyingly cold wet conditions caused massive crop failure and led to widespread death of cattle food prices left alarmingly and famine inevitably followed the tambora eruption is even thought to have caused the emergence of a new strain of cholera in india as well as widespread typhus epidemics taken as a whole it's fought to knock on effects might have claimed 1 million lives on a slightly less horrific note there were a couple of silver linings to the monumental tambora ash cloud oats became so expensive that horses the standard mode of transport of the day became something only the rich could afford which is fought to have been a key driver behind the development of the bicycle invented just two years later all this shitty weather also had the effect of keeping people shut up indoors bored out of their brains trapped inside during a holiday in geneva mary shelley sat down with a group of friends lord byron amongst them because apparently all the famous people in the past knew each other to tell ghost stories according to mary herself it was that very nice that the idea for her genre-defining novel frankenstein came suddenly to life something her famous monster has been doing on tv screens and in cinemas the world over pretty much ever since there's even some suggestion that the tambora eruption might have had a hand in altering the course of european history with foul weather caused by the eruption postulated as a contributing factor in the defeat of one napoleon bonaparte at the battle of waterloo with mud caused by unseasonal rain blunting the effectiveness of the legendary french general's military maneuvers now pretty much everyone watching this video will have heard of vesuvius and most of you are probably well aware of krakatoa too but i'd imagine far fewer of you are familiar with tambora modern modern-day pompeii is a unesco world heritage site so that accounts for vesuvius's fame but why is krakatoa so much more well-known than tambora the eruptions occurred just decades apart in the very same country after all and the impact of tambora was undeniably the greater of the two the answer to this little poser most likely lies in the global telegraphic network that was painstakingly built in the time between the two eruptions which meant that when krakatoa blew itself to bits in 1885 it became what's often cited as the first truly global news event in history making headlines across the world vesuvius krakatoa and tambora represents some of the deadliest most catastrophic volcanic eruptions in modern human history but despite its size and impact the largest of them tambora only measured in at a mere 7 on the volcanic explosivity index and i say mere because the vei is a logarithmic scale meaning each number represents 10 times the explosivity index of the level preceding it that means roughly speaking the eruption of krakatoa in 1885 was 10 times larger than the famous eruption of vesuvius and the eruption of tambora in 1815 was 100 times larger a score of 8 is reserved only for super volcanoes capable of erupting with such devastating forces to make vesuvius look like a cute school science project cobbled together with paper mache and dry ice you've probably heard of the super volcano that slumbers beneath yellowstone national park in wyoming but you may be surprised to learn that there are plenty more dotted around the globe around 20 and all but luckily for us humans super volcanic eruptions are extremely rare you'll be relieved to hear that only around 40 vei 8 eruptions are known to have taken place in the last 130 million years or so the most recent was the euro-winner eruption in new zealand about 26 500 years ago as far as super volcanic eruptions go it was a relative tiddler but it still belts forth around 1170 cubic kilometers of ash pumice and magma that's enough erupted material to cover the entirety of england in a layer of deposits more than a kilometer deep put simply outside of asteroid strikes super volcanic eruptions are the most cataclysmic events ever to have taken place on earth and speaking of asteroids it just so happens that deccan traps a kinder super volcano known as a large igneous province erupted around 66 million years ago right around the time a giant asteroid smashed into the yucatan peninsula in modern day mexico that date might sound familiar to any budding paleontologists out there it's just about the time the non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out in the kt extinction event coincidence well maybe exactly what part the deccan trap super volcanic eruption had to play in the extinction of the dinosaurs is unclear but there is some evidence to suggest it was these two apocalyptic events occurring in tandem that proved so lethal to life on earth around 75 percent of all plants and animals were extinguished some scientists even believe that the deccan trap super eruption may even have been triggered by the asteroid strike itself however it went down the eruption which was something of a slow burn by volcano standards and may have lasted for a million years or so produced over half a million cubic kilometers of lava enough molten rock to bury england four kilometers deep the effect super volcanoes can have on the global climate is also profound the tambora eruption i mentioned earlier wreaked havoc when it reduced global temperatures by half a degree but the eruption of the super volcano beneath present-day lake toba in indonesia the largest super volcanic eruption of the last 25 million years no less caused global temperatures to fall by between 5 and 15 degrees celsius and triggered a period of global cooling that endured for a millennium as you can probably imagine this had a catastrophic effect on life on earth including as it happens was we humans experienced a genetic bottleneck around the time of the toba eruption during which time our entire species was whittled down to as few as 3 000 individuals scientists have found similar genetic bottlenecks in other species too including several kinds of primate as well as tigers and cheetahs whilst it may sound a little worrying that a super volcano came so close to wiping our species out it should probably come as something of a relief after all you don't have to dig deep through the internet to find sensationalist articles claiming the next eruption of the yellowstone super volcano might spell the end for humanity but if our ancestors whose idea of cutting edge technology consisted of a sharp piece of rock were able to survive a super eruption it's a safe bet modern human with our bunkers hazmat suits and advanced computer modelling technology we'll be able to make it through a similar mini apocalypse having said that for all our perceived mastery over nature if a super volcano did erupt today it would very likely be the most devastating natural disaster in human history picture the world's least fun game of the floor is lava okay so we've covered some pretty big volcanoes here but which is the biggest of them all and i'm not talking volcanic explosivity index here i mean which is the biggest volcano in terms of height if you'd said mauna kea in hawaii bravo you're wrong but bravo because mauna kea is indeed the tallest volcano on earth at a majestic 10 200 meters above sea level but the biggest volcano we know about isn't on earth at all olympus mons the tallest volcano in the solar system can be found on mars at a mind-blowing 21 meters olympus mons is approximately 2.5 times the height of mount everest it is so obscenely tall in fact that if a commercial jet were to take one hell of a wrong turn and fly towards it to cruising altitude it would crash right into the side less than half way up thanks for watching thanks again to babel for sponsoring this video don't forget to check them out using the link below

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,365,159

Rating: 4.8608694 out of 5

Keywords: supervolcano, volcano, volcanic, eruption, erupt, yellowstone supervolcano, supervolcanoes, supervolcano eruption, volcanic eruption, volcanoes, volcano eruption, super volcano, yellowstone eruption, yellowstone, yellowstone national park, biggest volcano, yellowstone volcano, lava, science, volcanologist, volcanic winter, geology, magma

Id: CmwJ_SAahR8

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020

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[u/Chickenwomp]

I just wanted to drop in and mention that thoughty2 is notorious for misinformation and you shouldn’t watch/support him