10 Catastrophes That Could Cause the Extinction of Our Species

While asteroids and comets are threats from above, supervolcanoes are dangers from below. If a supervolcano were to erupt next week, it would release huge clouds of dust into the atmosphere, resulting in a “volcanic winter” whose effects would mimic the “impact winter” just discussed.

This risk may seem extremely improbable — and it is. But not so improbable that we shouldn’t take it seriously. There are supervolcanoes around the world today ready to split Earth open and spew its innards into the stratosphere. For example, Yellowstone National Park is home to a supervolcano whose magma chamber was recently discovered to be much larger than previously thought. New estimates suggest that there’s enough magma underground “to fill the Grand Canyon more than 11 times.”

And according to some leading scientists, a supervolcano erupted ~75,000 years ago in Indonesia, causing a population bottleneck that nearly wiped out our ancestors. It’s humbling to realize just how close humanity may have come to extinction 73,000 years before Jesus was supposedly born in Bethlehem.