[gentle music]
[animals chirping, chittering]
* *
- Greetings. Bill Nye here.
I'm in one of the most amazing places on Earth,
Yellowstone National Park.
We're in Wyoming, a beautiful, otherworldly landscape
sculpted by relentless geological forces
over billions of years.
They call this geyser Old Faithful
because it erupts every day, faithfully,
about every 74 minutes.
[whooshing]
The ground beneath our feet feels solid and stable,
and it is, most of the time.
But geysers like this one
are a sign of what lurks beneath us,
ancient volcanic energies that continue to shape our planet.
The people here today are in for an enormous surprise.
This time, when Old Faithful blows,
she'll unleash a fury that's been building
for half a million years.
Predicting it is difficult, and no one is prepared.
Old Faithful's a bit ahead of schedule,
but for the rest of us, it looks like time has run out.
[ground rumbling]
[people screaming]
[dramatic music]
* *
[people shouting]
[cow moos]
Welcome, my friends, to the Disaster Institute,
a museum of catastrophic events that have happened in the past,
are happening now, or could happen at any moment.
These exhibits aren't for the timid.
It's the end of the world, after all.
But we'll also see how we can save it,
a scientific blueprint for a better future,
you might say.
And our planet is a busy place.
Always has been.
Life is everywhere.
But even if there were no life on our world, none at all,
Earth would still be a very busy place.
Hidden beneath our feet is volcanic energy.
Sometimes, that energy breaks loose.
Here at the museum, it's volcano night.
The kids seem to love it.
Me, I hate volcano night.
On our planet, there are nearly 1,500 volcanoes.
At least 860 of them are active.
They can still erupt.
A few dozen are erupting at this very moment.
* *
And that doesn't include the tens of thousands
of volcanoes on the ocean floor
that we don't know much about,
but dozens of those, maybe even 100 or more,
could be erupting as we speak.
[distant clamoring and screaming]
I'm guessing this is not a rom-com.
[projector whirring]
* *
Ah, one of the first disaster flicks ever made.
Mount Vesuvius erupted and killed 10,000 people
in the city of Pompeii.
Most of them suffocated after inhaling sulfur dioxide gas.
- Bill Nye the Spoiler Guy!
- Sorry.
* *
It's no surprise we're fascinated by volcanoes.
Of the five mass extinctions here on Earth,
three of them have been caused, at least in part,
by volcanic eruptions.
Just ask Kor here.
Kor remembers.
- [grunting]
[volcano booms] [groans]
- Say what you will.
His genes are in each of us today.
The last major eruption in the United States
happened in Washington State just back in 1980.
I remember.
I was living in Seattle
when Mount St. Helens went ballistic.
It blasted so much ash into the atmosphere
that 22,000 square miles were buried
as deep as 3 feet or more.
Dozens of people were killed.
It was a warning of the unpredictable power
of volcanic forces.
Tonight, we're going to imagine something far more powerful.
We'll use our disaster simulator
to witness the events firsthand from three points of view.
A young bride-to-be whose special day
doesn't go as planned...
[people screaming]
A nervous traveler on a vacation from hell,
and a scientist who sees warning signs
that others simply ignore.
[whooshing]
Believe it or not, a volcano 1,000 times
the size of Mount St. Helens is about to erupt.
The entire world lives in its shadow,
and hardly anyone seems to know about it.
Let's check it out.
[animals chirping, chittering]
[gentle music]
* *
Our story begins here in Yellowstone National Park
in the not-too-distant future.
Life is good.
The diverse and abundant wildlife is thriving,
and the humans are too.
It's a record tourist season here in the park.
In nearby Bozeman, Montana,
the Sweet Pea Festival was, once again, a huge success.
It's peas and a parade.
What's not to love?
Speaking of love, this young woman
has earned a professorship in fine arts
at Montana State University.
It's a milestone for her, one of several lately.
- Do you want to marry me?
- [laughs]
Yes.
- Big dreams are coming true in Big Sky Country.
Out here, it's fresh air, clean water, and fresh fish--
the wilderness--
far away from the stress of city life.
[quirky music]
* *
I know that guy.
Nuts?
We flew through the Hydra storm together.
And it was not his best day.
Maybe this afternoon, he'll get a chance to unwind.
Probably not, though.
It's volcano night.
[foreboding music]
* *
Don't be fooled by the serene beauty of this place.
Yellowstone National Park sits atop one of the largest
active volcanoes in the world.
It's called a supervolcano
because it has a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 8.
That's the biggest there is.
When this VEI 8 last blew over a half million years ago,
it obliterated a mountain range
and left a smoking hole in the ground
the size of Los Angeles,
and the air quality was even worse.
The depression left behind by an eruption
is called a caldera, and this one is huge.
You know how some things are too small for the eye to see?
Well, some things are too big for the eye to see.
The Yellowstone volcano is so huge,
you need a satellite view to see the whole thing.
Even then, the giant crater has been flattened
by 500,000 years of erosion
and is hidden by a pristine wilderness.
But it's there, just below the surface.
You can feel the heat.
* *
[phones ringing, indistinct chatter]
* *
This is the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.
Seismometers, tilt meters, and gas detectors
are placed throughout the park
as part of an early warning system.
They're working here around the clock
because they know that this serene plateau
could blow so hard it would make Mount St. Helens
look like a sneeze.
Scientists here call it The Beast,
and you can imagine why.
[computer beeping]
The ground here isn't just warm.
It's the hottest in North America,
456 degrees Fahrenheit in some places--
237 Celsius--
so hot that, in many places, it steams.
The smell of sulfur through the air--
it's called "Yellowstone" because there are
so many yellow sulfur compounds in the rocks.
[kids laughing, indistinct chatter]
Today, the National Park Service
doesn't want to keep visitors away from the things
that make Yellowstone special,
but how many people here really know
they're hiking, eating, and camping on a sleeping giant?
[ground rumbling]
[all clamoring]
- All right?
- Just a little earthquake, right?
Not uncommon here to feel the earth move now and then.
The park normally gets around 1,000 quakes a year.
Over the past few weeks,
there have been more like 10,000,
often in groups they call swarms.
And here's the thing.
This week, they're not fitting their regular pattern.
Our volcanologist is concerned
that this could be a warning sign.
The odds of this supervolcano blowing its top
are remote at best.
Given its history, the probability
of it happening in any given year is maybe one in 750,000.
As of now, scientists have no way
to know why or when this volcano will erupt,
but there are signs if you know where to look.
Hot springs like this one have fascinated tourists
and scientists alike for decades,
but right now, they're draining away.
Red hot molten rock or magma is rising to the surface
and causing the rock beneath the pools to fracture,
which is causing the water that feeds the pools
to fall through the cracks, literally.
The ground here used to be flat, another warning sign,
swelling caused by rising magma
straining to breach the surface.
But the smoking guns, so to speak,
are these volcanic funnels or fumaroles.
The steam is changing color.
Bursts of old ash from long-ago eruptions
are shooting up through the fissures.
Wind carries that ash miles into the air.
It'll come down somewhere.
[soft dramatic music]
* *
Our newly-engaged college professor is unconcerned.
For most people, especially those
who live in a geologically-active area,
a few minor shakes and spews of ash
are not enough reason to upend their lives.
Every time Yellowstone belches,
there's a flurry of news reports about the supervolcano
and how it could blow at any time, and when it does,
oh, boy, look out.
But we've all heard the story of the volcano who cried boom.
A little dusting of ash isn't going to stop
this young couple from entering
the bonds of happy matrimony.
It's their big day.
You can't just cancel everything
at the last minute, right?
* *
[ominous music]
* *
Geothermal activity is poisoning the water
with nature's own toxic chemicals.
Not good.
Whew, uh, hey, buddy!
We should probably get out of here.
Remember me?
- Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Nope.
[ground rumbling]
[people screaming]
[dramatic music]
- So here's what happened.
The Yellowstone supervolcano erupted,
but only in one spot on the caldera, Old Faithful.
The trusty geyser blew its top one last time.
A national treasure is no more,
and experts can't be certain that the supervolcano
won't erupt again.
* *
Several tourists were injured and taken
to the hospital with broken bones, severe burns,
and even toxic gas inhalation.
Residents near the fissure are advised to close their windows
and stay indoors until the noxious gases and the ashes
have blown clear.
People living in Bozeman and the surrounding areas
wonder how worried they should really be.
Do they need to drop everything and finally get out?
Some experts are saying that Yellowstone letting off
some steam is a good thing, and the worst is probably over.
Besides, there are some things you just can't put on hold.
Wait.
You're not serving Merlot with chicken.
- While there are scattered reports of some tourists
and residents leaving the region,
no evacuation orders have been given.
Most people are fascinated by this
once-in-a-lifetime eruption,
and large sections of the park remain open.
[engine roars]
- Now, you might be thinking, Bill, what is it with us?
We humans tend to believe that normal situations stay normal.
Since a certain disaster has not happened before,
it will probably never happen.
Psychologists have a name for this way of thinking.
It's called normalcy bias.
And it can make people ignore a warning sign,
even when it's right in front of them.
Normalcy bias can explain why the people living in Pompeii
watched the volcano, Vesuvius,
erupt for hours without evacuating.
It's why people refused to leave New Jersey
as Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on them.
It's why people on the Titanic didn't take immediate action,
even while the so-called unsinkable ship
was obviously, sinking.
[ground rumbling]
[all clamoring]
Yellowstone hasn't had a major eruption
for hundreds of thousands of years.
I mean, what are the odds?
[dramatic music]
[indistinct chatter]
Some experts are taking the odds
of a bigger eruption seriously,
but what to do about it?
Top government officials decide to step in,
and they're suggesting a bold experiment.
Drill down into the rock and pump millions of gallons
of cold water around the magma chamber
to relieve pressure and cool it down.
But drilling quickly and deeply into the crust
poses a major challenge.
Is it even possible?
For better or for worse,
we humans are good at drilling into the Earth
and dressing up our pets like people,
but we're really good at drilling.
We already have the technology to drill and pump water
miles deep, fracturing the ground
to release the oil and gas trapped there.
It's called hydraulic fracturing,
better known as fracking.
Now, our volcanologist thinks this is a reckless idea
that could just make things worse.
Fracking a volcano has never been attempted,
and with good reason, but it has been studied.
A few years back, a group of scientists
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
investigated the possibility of relieving pressure
in a Yellowstone magma chamber using drilling techniques
similar to hydraulic fracturing.
It was considered too radical.
Our volcanologist agrees with that assessment
and recommends a mass evacuation
of everyone in harm's way, right away.
But that would take weeks.
They need to act now.
So the drilling operation gets a green light.
[machinery whirring]
* *
[machinery creaking, whooshing]
The wells are drilled in pairs,
and their placement is critical.
This truck is drawing cold water from a nearby stream
and sending it down the first well.
When it comes up the other well, it's super hot.
That's how they're drawing heat away from the magma chamber.
Now, our volcanologist thinks that this drilling rig
is too close to a fault line.
Fracking's been known to trigger seismic activity
in the past, and that is the last thing
they need right now. - It won't work.
- The drill chief disagrees.
He's been in this business 20 years
and he knows a thing or two about fault lines, thank you.
- Go back to your lab, egghead. Leave the drilling to daddy.
- What's about to happen here
is what I like to call an act of cow.
[dramatic music] [cow moos]
Act of cow symbolizes the human negligence
that can trigger a disaster or make one worse.
It's inspired by a bovine named Daisy
who, as legend has it, kicked over a lantern
and started the Great Chicago Fire.
[cow moos]
After several hours of drilling through volcanic rock,
our frackers accidentally disrupt a fault
near the edge of the magma chamber.
By pumping water into this particular fault,
they make the rock faces slippery, and they slip.
[machinery creaking]
The ceiling of the magma chamber,
which has been holding back millions
of years of volcanic energy, is cracked open!
[workers scream]
[indistinct shouting]
- Come on, come on! Come on!
[man screams]
[alarms blaring]
[dramatic music]
* *
- Dearly beloved and honored guests,
we are gathered here today to join this couple.
- It's a day after the second,
more powerful eruption along the northern rim of Yellowstone.
A giant column of turbulent clouds
is called an eruption plume.
It goes up 25 miles, 40 kilometers,
all the way into the stratosphere.
Most of the people here know that a second,
more massive volcanic eruption is taking place.
Others, mainly guests from out of town,
aren't sure what it means.
[camera shutter clicks]
Sure, it's big and scary looking,
but it's a safe distance away, right?
That's gotta be 20 miles.
Stay or go?
Your gut's telling you to hop in your car
and drive like hell, but it would be so rude.
And as the bride's mother keeps saying,
it's Courtney's big day.
That poor bird.
She's a harbinger of things to come.
When we think of volcanic eruptions,
we tend to focus on the fireworks,
but there are other, invisible dangers as well.
Magma releases carbon dioxide,
sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide.
Any one of those can kill you. [volcano booms]
We're witnessing the biggest eruption
of the Yellowstone supervolcano in over half a million years.
There's no stopping it now.
[ground rumbling, thunder crashing]
[guests shout] [thunder booms]
[camera shutter clicking]
Collisions between those jagged bits of volcanic ash
create huge static electric discharges.
It's volcanic lightning...
[guests gasp] [shutter clicking]
Terrifying, but a great photo.
Normalcy bias is about to go up in smoke.
[alarms blaring]
[all screaming]
- Hang on!
[ominous music]
* *
[all screaming]
[glass, materials shattering]
- Emergency evacuation orders have been issued
for Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota.
The eruption continues to grow in magnitude.
* *
- Right now, I'm being chased by a 1,000-degree avalanche
of ash and gas, a pyroclastic death cloud,
the most hazardous thing a volcano can unleash.
It's incinerating everything in its path.
Cities within 500 miles of the caldera
will be buried or burned to the ground within hours.
Volcano night.
It's a blast.
The cloud is gaining on us.
It's going about as fast as a fighter jet,
maybe 500 miles an hour.
This car doesn't go quite that fast.
[coughing]
[continues coughing]
[wind whooshing]
[somber music]
* *
[dramatic music]
* *
- I'm back from my own demise
as our disaster simulation comes to its fiery end.
When magma reaches the surface, we call it lava.
Right now, lava is flowing.
And that's a good sign, actually.
Molten rock, magma, is being released.
That means the most violent part of the eruption is over.
But the climate catastrophe has only just begun.
Those sulfur compounds get blasted into the upper reaches
of the atmosphere and winds carry the particles
around the world.
The particles scatter sunlight back into space,
cooling the entire planet.
We call it volcanic winter.
And it's a season the world never saw coming.
No preparations were ever conceived
for such a global catastrophe,
no way to handle ash
contaminating the water supplies,
no food stockpiles, nothing.
Whew.
I don't know about you,
but I could use a shower and some science.
Let's hit the lab, where it's a lot cooler and a lot cleaner.
So what can we do?
It might seem impossible.
I mean, volcanoes have been here since Earth was formed,
and they're not going anywhere.
But there are ways to live with them,
and there are even ways to love them.
I know this is true because we've also
been benefiting from volcanoes
for a long, long time.
You see, volcanoes are unique
in this Disaster Institute of ours.
Along with their astonishing destructive power,
they also bring life to landscapes.
It's what I call the volcano paradox.
To understand this Jekyll and Hyde geological conundrum,
we'll need to find out why volcanoes exist at all.
As a kid, I thought volcanoes were amazing and cool.
As a grown-up, I feel the same way.
They're amazing and hot.
It makes me wanna go prospecting
to see where all that energy comes from.
What makes rock hot enough to flow and melt like water?
It's this heat that gives volcanoes their power
to destroy and to create.
They're our OG frenemy.
The deeper you go inside the Earth, the hotter it gets.
All of that heat had to come from somewhere.
Let's track it to its source,
which goes back a few billion years.
[gentle music]
* *
This is, near as we can tell, how our solar system formed.
Cosmic gas and dust were blown into the void
when distant stars exploded and spewed their guts out.
Gravity drew the dust into a spinning disk.
Dust gathered into pebbles, which became boulders,
some of which became our Earth.
When you or the force of gravity
crush all that dust down to a ball the size of our planet,
that crushing motion generates a lot of friction
that becomes heat.
Some of that heat is still stored
in Earth's core, along with radioactive elements
from those exploding stars.
Earth is a nuclear furnace.
It's why we still have volcanoes popping off
4 and 1/2 billion years later.
[mystical music]
And Earth is not the only place this happens.
No, my friends, volcanoes are everywhere
in our solar system.
The largest one is Olympus Mons.
It's on Mars,
but the volcanoes on Mars are dead today.
Mars is also one big, desert planet.
That's no coincidence.
No volcanoes, no life--
which brings us back to the volcano paradox.
Sure, volcanoes are temperamental and toxic,
but we also owe our very existence
to these volatile beasts.
You can see the paradox in action
right now in the aptly named town
of Ashfall, Nebraska.
Ashfall is known for its soil.
It's part of what's called America's breadbasket
because so much of the food we humans eat
is grown here.
This fertile grassland was once buried in ash
from an earlier eruption of the Yellowstone volcano,
which is 900 miles, 1,500 kilometers from here.
It was blown here--
no, wait, it was blasted here from what is now Wyoming.
[imitates explosion]
The volcano left quite a calling card.
12 million years ago, that eruption
smothered and preserved these ancient creatures,
thousands of them.
It's like Pompeii in northeastern Nebraska.
Here at the Ashfall Fossil Beds,
scientists are reading the skeleton map,
sorting through the remains of rhinoceroses,
three-toed horses, and saber-toothed deer.
That's right, Bambi with fangs--
totally different movie, by the way.
They were minding their own vampire deer business,
taking a meeting at their local watering hole,
and blam!
They were buried and mummified under hot, dry ash.
We can even see the seeds of the plants
they had for lunch in their ancient tummies.
It's a little creepy.
And amazing.
Okay, here's the death part of what volcanoes can do.
You might ask, what about the paradox,
the part where volcanoes are bringers of life?
Volcanoes feed us.
Ash from volcanoes is made of ancient molten rock,
which was even more ancient exploded stardust.
It's loaded with phosphorus and potassium.
Check out this bucket of fertilizer.
These minerals are listed on the label.
Plants need them to thrive and reproduce.
We need plants to eat.
With time, volcanic deposits become among the richest
agricultural lands on Earth
because they contain these essential nutrients
and they hold water really well.
The American Midwest is the world's breadbasket
precisely because Yellowstone erupted millions of years ago
and dumped all that ash right here.
[dramatic music]
All over the planet, wherever we find a volcano,
we find lush ecosystems and thriving agriculture
made possible by volcanic eruptions.
That's the price of admission for living in a paradise.
Hell could be right around the corner
or right up the mountainside.
More than a few scientists believe
that volcanoes may have given rise to life itself.
[gentle music]
To grow and thrive and reproduce, life needs energy.
Biologists have suggested that life on our planet
may have gotten its start near volcanic vents
on the ocean floor.
That heat shot up from Earth's insides
and supercharged the nutrient-rich seawater,
creating the primordial chemical reactions
that gave rise to complex molecules
that could make copies of themselves.
And four billion years later, here we are.
Wild.
But the volcano's greatest gift
may prove to be the greatest natural resource ever known.
[gentle music]
- Here, in the beautiful Italian countryside in Tuscany,
people have enjoyed sulfuric hot springs
since ancient times.
Another gift from volcanoes, hot mineral baths
are known for their supposed health-giving properties.
Until one day, somebody realized
that the underground reservoirs of heat
could provide more than a relaxing day at the spa.
An Italian aristocrat named Prince Piero Ginori Conti
got the idea to dig wells
to access the steam and hot water,
driving a turbine connected to a generator.
Conti's generator was able to produce 10 kilowatts of power.
From these humble beginnings, the geothermal potential
deep inside the Earth was expanded,
and the world's first geothermal power plant
was completed in 1913.
That roiling fire inside Earth
can spin turbines to power generators
that make electricity.
Geothermal is a clean source of energy
that we will never deplete.
It will be available for as long as Earth exists,
and it never shuts down.
Geothermal power plants produce electricity
24 hours a day, seven days a week,
regardless of the weather.
Unlike fossil fuels and their toxic emissions,
geothermal's only byproduct is steam, harmless water.
Now geothermal provides a little electricity
in California, a lot in Iceland,
and yet, globally, it's less than half a percent.
So what are we waiting for?
Geothermal is Earth's own nuclear power
without the waste.
It's down there.
Let's go get it.
Let's harness that volcanic fire.
In order to tap into the full potential of geothermal,
we'll have to go beyond the places
where nature has already sent hot water
bubbling up to the surface.
We have to drill down over a mile,
a couple of kilometers into the hot Earth.
Fortunately, we know exactly how to do that.
Our primary fossil fuels are oil and natural gas,
which we pump up from deep underground.
Like I said, we're really good at drilling for stuff.
Fracking and geothermal drilling are the same concept,
but with very different outcomes.
Both technologies involve pumping
high-pressure water into underground rock formations.
Fracking unlocks fossil fuels, while geothermal drilling
unlocks the heat trapped deep inside the Earth--
clean, limitless energy.
The geothermal heat from Yellowstone alone
could provide all the energy we need
in the continental United States.
And it can be done safely, away from fault lines
and other geologic instability
so we can preserve the natural beauty of places like this.
So what about the dangerous part of volcanoes?
How do we stop those big, unpredictable eruptions
that could threaten our civilization?
The fact is, we can't kill volcanoes.
But we can be better at predicting future eruptions.
Geothermal drilling would give scientists
a deeper look at fault lines
and other subterranean features.
By mapping the inner Earth, we could detect
significant magma build up weeks,
or maybe even years in advance.
Geologists can also get a deeper look
at the magma's chemistry and its physical properties.
We could forecast a future eruption
with far more accuracy.
So along with clean electrical power,
we'd get better predictive power.
But none of that matters if we're not prepared.
We can get past our normalcy bias
and put systems in place, like immediate disaster relief
and longer-term plans to deal with the impact
on agriculture and the economy.
Let's develop new methods for growing crops more efficiently
with less water and energy,
along with better ways of storing substantial supplies
for long-term emergencies.
[phone blares]
Predictive algorithms will enable
smartphone apps to warn of impending eruptions
days in advance.
There would be a nationwide plan for food stockpiles
and seed banks,
and we'd have methods of filtering ash out
of the water supply,
a wide-scale doomsday prep for everyone.
The fertile soil created by erupting volcanoes
would continue to feed the world.
* *
[birds chirping]
[indistinct chatter]
For 4 billion years,
the Earth has been doing its own thing.
Now, with a little effort,
Earth can help us do our thing.
We can take some of that bottled up furious heat
and turn it into clean energy.
We're ready to face the future...
- And kiss the bride. - For better or for worse.
[cheers and applause]
It's just--it's a little ash.
I'll be okay. [sniffles]
- So what have we learned?
Volcano night is the original hot mess.
When they erupt, volcanoes unleash hell on Earth,
but they can also create paradise.
It's the volcano paradox.
The key to living with it lies in
our scientific understanding and our willingness
to act based on hard-earned knowledge.
We can learn to minimize the danger.
We can even harness the otherwise
catastrophic forces of our planet
to power civilization itself.
How cool is that?
So far, our species has had a funny blind spot
when it comes to these kinds of things.
We can know about a grave danger and live in denial.
We can know about a priceless resource
and look the other way.
It's the human paradox.
Let's figure it out.