Super Volcanos: Are We Supposed to Be Scared?

Another thing we can’t do a damn thing about

MartinEdic
5 min readNov 15, 2023

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Photo by Toby Elliott on Unsplash

Line ’em up: fear, fire, foes. Climate change, terrorism, prejudice, intolerance, political chaos, and now…super volcanos? Yikes. Yes, there is such a thing and if they blow, we are all screwed. Live anywhere in the Pacific Northwest of the US and Canada? Yellowstone sits on a super volcano.

How about Italy, specifically the Naples region? It’s not just Vesuvius. That’s just a piece of the bigger super volcano under the region. There’s lots more. In geologic time, these things are popping off all the time, sending literal mountains of dust and smoke into the air, blocking the sun across the globe.

No sun equals ice age and we all, well, most of us, die. The good news is in our measurement of time, these eruptions are extremely rare and the likelihood of one is slim.

It doesn’t really matter because we can’t do anything to protect ourselves if they blow. Unless you’re Elon and you’re watching from your spaceship. That view should be mind blowing.

So, don’t spend a minute worrying about the super versions of volcanos. Of course if you live in Iceland you might be evacuating right now, as a huge eruption threatens to take out an entire small city.

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MartinEdic
MartinEdic

Written by MartinEdic

Mastodon: @martinedic@md.dm, Writer, nine non-fiction books, two novels, Buddhist, train lover. Amateur cook, lover of life most of the time!

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