The Mount Tambora eruption was a super eruption and was witnessed by many thousands of people. There is incredibly good data on it.
Lauren Beukes won critical acclaim
Basically I just needed an excuse to post that Arrogant Worms song, which has been in my head all day.
Yes, that is what is meant by "the destruction of our food supplies." Which — how often do you hear about that in reports about supervolcanoes? Pretty damn rarely. People worry about the fire, when they should really worry about the food riots.
Have aliens finally discovered the joys of poutine and the Arrogant Worms? UFO sightings in Canada doubled in 2012, which raises troubling questions about whether the U.S. is falling behind as a favored destination for extraterrestrials.
Absolutely. But it's not the disaster that most people expect, which is (as I said) a kind of wall of lava. I suspect that most US citizens do not know the scientific term "pyroclastic flow," nor do they realize that volcanic catastrophe comes from cold ash.
Not likely to cause another ice age. The kinds of volcanoes that can do that are called "large igneous provinces," and they are massive lava outpourings from a whole region of vents (often under the ocean) which can last for thousands of years.
Lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park is a massive underground reservoir of magma, capped by the park's famous caldera. 640,000 years ago, a super eruption rocked the region. What would happen if another such event blasted the park today? We asked USGS geologist Jake Lowenstern, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
I think the key here is "on a large scale."
