There once was a glorious period of time after the History Channel stopped being “Hitler Central” but before it became the “Conspiracy Theory Broadcasting Network” when the channel played almost nothing but great programming. Whether it was a Band of Brothers marathon or that How the Earth Was Made documentary that I’ve watched like 12 times, you could generally tune in to History at any time night or day and find something great to watch.
Perhaps the greatest of these great shows was Mega Disasters. And, unquestionably, the greatest episode of Mega Disasters was the one that detailed the literal doomsday scenario of an eruption of the “supervolcano” lurking — for now — dormant beneath Yellowstone National Park.
The most recent eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera came 640,000 years ago and, according to these scientists, on that day “there would have been hundreds to thousands of earthquakes” as “a million tons of molten rock heated to 1800 degrees fahrenheit rushed to the surface.” In other words, that would have been the wrong day to go see Old Faithful. Or, really, just the wrong day to be a human being on planet Earth at all for that matter.
Anyway, the only reason I bring this up now is because I just happened to run across the episode in full on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor. It’s tremendous.
And way better, scarier and better directed than 2012.
I’m disappointed by the absence of the word ‘Caldera’. For some reason it evokes in me the grand scale of disaster that merely calling it a ‘supervolcano’ doesn’t.
My bad, Vyn.
And while I do consider “SUPERVOLCANO!!!” to be scarier than “Caldera,” which I barely even understand, I’ve added a caldera mention above at your bequest.