Seventy four thousand years ago in Indonesia a gigantic volcanic eruption shook the earth. It blasted a cloud of volcanic ash out to a distance of three thousand kilometres and triggered a global volcanic winter. The crater left behind by this eruption was larger than the City of London. This was no ordinary eruption. IIt was a super eruption. At the time the human race was in it’s infancy with just a few thousand people occupying the Planet. But what if the next super eruption occurred in the heart of a country that is home to three hundred million people?
Scientists have tracked the ash fall from Yellowstone’s three previous super-eruptions and believe the next one could unleash 1,000 cubic kilometres of ash – 1,000 times more than the eruption of Mt St Helens. The ash would spread across the Atlantic to Europe pushing the death toll higher. A super eruption at Yellowstone would kill more people than all the volcanic eruptions since humans first walked the earth. The changes to climate and weather will be global and last years.
