#17 Volcano Apocalypse
I’m questioning if freelancing and content writing right here is really what I should be doing.
Check out this video about the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park in the state of Wyoming, USA, and NASA’s thought experiment to devise a plan to cool it down.
Sounds cool, right?
Well, it is. I first discovered it on Medium, where, like me, people can publish anything they want any time for free. From a Google search, the topic didn’t get a lot of traction outside of niche sites. I looked for more and found it on eclipseaviation.com, interestingengineering.com, and an exchange in the opinion column of wsj.com (Wall Street Journal).
Then I saw the hit on Business Insider. I didn’t expect to find what I found there — a coherent and compelling video about what the volcano is, the dose of dramatization that an audience would vie for, an explanation of NASA’s thought experiment, and a visually explained case of what that should not be done soon. It’s a 4 minute and 19 second long video. It no doubt took dozens of hours to make.
I’m usually not a video or podcast person. I like to read. Words are powerful to me and I often judge an author’s credibility by their ability to explain to me in simple language what is happening. When that’s done well, I’ll learn faster by reading than by watching a video. I want everything on the page in front of me. I can skim and scroll and control find my way through the meaning of the story.
I often lose patience with videos or podcasts, that unfold the story at their own pace instead of cutting to the chase. Who has time do wait for storytelling?
Honestly, most of us do, and so do I.
This video’s visual appeal kept me hooked until the end.
Here’s what would happen — an explosion would release a tower of ash and smoke into the air taller than Mount Everest and shield the earth from the sun causing massive cooling.
The world would run out of food in 74 days, according to a UN report.
One stimulus for concern was that scientists predicted that this super volcano should erupt 600,000 years after the last eruption, and the last eruption was… around 600,000 years ago.
In 2015, the NASA thought experiment devised a model for how to cool the volcano down to discourage it from erupting, as heat is one cause for volcanos erupting.
Each year, the region released massive amounts of heat that could power a number of power plants.
A plan to cool the magma chamber below the surface would involve drilling down and pumping cool water around the magma chamber. The magma would heat the water to around 340 degrees Celsius, which could be pumped back above ground to drive electric generators, which could generate tens of thousands of years of power.
Would we ever try something like this?
No. Not today. It would take around 16000 years to sufficiently cool down the magma chamber to make it unlikely to explode. It would cost 3.46 billion dollars… they didn’t say exactly whether that was yearly… nonetheless they claim it as 20% of NASA’s budget.
Perhaps a bigger discouragement — it could make the situation worse.
It took me 20 minutes to write out what I learned in a 4 minute and 19 second video.
Should I be making videos? Maybe.
Should I be watching them. Yes.
—
This is Day 17 of Don’t Break the Chain — a writing course by Cole Schafer.
Today’s prompt: Find something interesting, anything, on the internet. Then weave that into “something I have changed my mind about.”
