There’s been a lot of hype around Yellowstone lately with its increased activity and fears it may blow into the first modern super eruption which could cause the next ice age. There is also an ongoing eruption at Hawaii at the moment where people are being evacuated due to the slow flowing lava heading into towns and destroying houses which doesn’t help the doomsday theorists waving their arms and saying these are signs. I’m no seismologist and haven’t been to Yellowstone but I have seen the Supervolcano movie by BBC One which pretty accurately goes through what would happen if this monstrosity were to erupt. The effects were widespread across the globe with few survivors near the epicenter of the disaster and a LOT of ash everywhere preventing travel, plant growth and plummeting temperatures. If you wish to watch it I’ve added a link to it below on YouTube.
There’s a lot of great information throughout as it’s a documentary style movie, such as knowing only a few inches of pumice can collapse a roof and half of that if it’s wet, as well as its effects on our bodies if breathed in. It’s a far fetched movie for this event to ever occur in our lifetime at the scale it’s depicted, but great for fine tuning your preps if you live near an active volcano as it may contain information you never knew.
I’m in Australia where there’s almost no danger of any volcanos or earthquakes to be of much concern, the nearest volcano to Brisbane is in New Zealand and that’s a little smaller than Yellowstone. However there’s never any reason to slack in your preparedness duties as even the most remote possibility of an event could still happen. I recommend looking into volcanic disasters and buying one extra item this week to compliment your gear if you don’t have one of the following:
• Air Filter Mask or N95 Mask and spare filters (For rock particulate)
• Goggles (If you don’t have a full face filter mask)
• Road Flares (For visibility during any disaster)
• Duct Tape (To block car air vents)
• Heavy Duty LED Flashlight (To see and signal through the thick ash, 2,000+ Lumens Recommended)
• Radio with NOAA Weather Station
You might also want to take a look at this list of countries ranked by natural disaster risk, I was surprised to see that Australia was rated higher than the UK, US and Canada at 4.22% chance.
Interestingly the highest is Vanuatu at 36.28% and the lowest is Qatar at 0.08% risk.
Country Natural Disaster Risk
Another very useful map is The Global Risk Map where you select what natural disaster you want and it will display the current risk or the history of that disaster in an area you specify.
Global Risk Map
Stay prepared!