supervolcano – The Red Pen of Doom

Just as it’s not brilliant to (a) quit your job, cash out your retirement and move your family to an underground bunker in the Yukon to eat canned beans and get ready for the arrival of zombies, aliens or killer robots, it’s equally dumb to (b) do absolutely nothing. Because there will always be hurricanes, earthquakes, raging wildfires and pandemics. No matter where you live, something can go wrong.

HOWEVER: What should you actually prep for, and what scenarios are fanboy fantasies you can safely forget about?

Two bits of terrible nonsense that definitely will happen, but you can completely ignore

Last week, I did a post with a great infographic created by the BBC, which sorted possible disasters in a great way. Click here: Chapter 11: What’s the actual likelihood of all the different flavors of apocalyptic craziness?

Two big ones on the BBC list are things that will happen. Guaranteed.

Yet you can safely ignore them.

Death of the Sun–Yes, this will happen, eventually. Billions of years from now. What are you gonna do about it?
Heat death of the universe–Also guaranteed, if current physicists are right. Also impossibly far off in the future and not worth your time pondering or prepping.

Four horrific things that MAY happen that you should also ignore

Gamma Ray Bursts–Doesn’t sound that bad. Isn’t that how Bruce Banner became the Hulk? But no, in the actual universe instead of the Marvel one, Gamma Ray Bursts are insane space death rays that originate from black holes and such and can fry a planet like earth just like that. Nothing you can do about it. No way to predict or stop one, and they’re crazy rare. Fuggetaboutit.
Rogue Black Holes–Yeah, this is theoretically possible. One of these might float into our solar system and eat Jupiter for breakfast and Earth for dinner. Not likely and there’s nothing you can do about it.
SimCity–Some people think our entire universe is a simulation, and some 13-year-old alien may get tired of it, shut it down and play Batman: Arkham Knight instead. Also not likely and impossible to stop if true.
Zombies–Though I adore zombie movies, you have to really stretch to pretend there’s a scenario where zombies actually happen.

Eight different Apocalypse Maybes

Now we’re talking. These scenarios are (a) possible, if not likely, (b) capable of causing global havoc, (c) preventable, (d) survivable and (e) good fodder for a movie starring The Rock.

Waterworld–Kevin Costner was a prophet, right? Climate change is happening. Seas are rising, weather is getting more extreme and it doesn’t look good.
Spanish Flu on Steroids–Airplanes circling the globe make it super easy for a new virus or disease to spread unnaturally fast.
Supervolcano Goes Boom–There are about a dozen supervolcanos on earth. Any one of them going off could ruin things for, I don’t know, a century. Nasty business.
Overpopulation–We’re already kinda there, with 7 billion people using more resources than the earth can replenish every year.
Underpopulation–The flip side, most likely in combination with another disaster.
Mad Max–Though it’s a Hollywood cliche, nuclear war is still a real-life issue.
The Terminator–Killer robots, or AI gone rogue, are definitely possible, especially if militaries increasingly deploy killer drones and AI tanks and such.
Killer Rocks from Space–Little asteroids hit Earth all the time. A big one could end modern civilization.

In the next few weeks, I’ll dive into each of these eight scenarios. Can it be prevented, and how would you actually prep to survive it?

So people are freaking out because (a) the Yellowstone supervolcano blows up every 600,000 years, (b) it would turn North America into a sea of ash and create a mini Ice Age, (c) the magma pit under the supervolcano is causing earthquakes and bulging and (d) there’s a viral video of bison running along a highway, supposedly fleeing the coming explosion.

Well, grab your bug-out bag and run for the hills.

Except it might not happen for another 100,000 years. So there’s that.

This video lends weight to survivalist types pointing at the stockpile of canned food and ammo in the basement and saying, “See? It was all worth it. Throw the tent in the pickup and let’s head to the Yukon.”

On the other hand, a supervolcano is a complicated thing. It doesn’t sleep for eons and suddenly wake up to go boom, as this man of science explains in a smart, rational look at Yellowstone.

And finally, this park ranger at Yellowstone, who sort of knows more about the bison and the supervolcano, seeing how it’s his job, destroys the whole “the bison are fleeing, so we must run for our lives, too!” thing.

In the end, I disagree with the viral video folks and End of the World theorists saying “This is it.” Will this supervolcano go nuts? Someday. Scientists say there’s a 1 in 10,000 chance Yellowstone will blow in our lifetime.

Those odds make this far, far more likely than (1) a zombie infestation, (2) U.N. black helicopters coming for your shotgun or (3) killer robots that transform into cars making a mess out of Manhattan. If you’re going to be smart about being prepared, yeah, it’s worth thinking about Yellowstone.

But it’s not worth obsessing over, and there’s no need to panic.

It’s far smarter to think about heart disease, traffic accidents, cancer, getting mugged in a dark alley, diabetes, climate change.

Will you likely dodge most of them? Sure. But 10 out of 10 people die, those are known dangers and it only takes one of them to get lucky and add you to the list. It’d be smart to prepare and prevent the most likely dangers, seeing how they’re basically sure bets compared to Yellowstone going boom or a giant asteroid slamming into Florida because Bruce Willis was too busy making THE EXPENDABLES 12: BUSTING OUT OF THE NURSING HOME.

So while I agree with survivalists about being prepared for more than a flat tire, you should be brutally practical and look at the odds, then spend time and energy on the most likely Terrible Things You Would Like to Avoid, and 99 percent of those problems aren’t solved by me stocking up on more cases of MRE’s. Though I do have a killer plan for making any house zombie proof.