I know that you all are thinking that with the pandemic, and the fires in California, and brain amoebas, and police brutality and protests in the streets and Donald Trump and murder hornets (did they go back home? Never heard.) and the presidential election that 2020 simply could not get worse. I did too, especially since this was also they year they rearranged my cervical spine and the doctor said “Pssh, it will be no problem. You will feel better in NO TIME.” right before slashing my throat and making me look like a zombie murder victim, but I was wrong, people. I forgot about the volcanoes.

I was trolling Youtube vidoes, looking for something to cheer me up about this horrible year and came upon this video called Why Was 536 A.D. The Worst Year in History and of course I was stupidly curious, and I clicked on it cause what could be worse than now? Krakatoa, that’s what. I’m not just talking about the unfortunate people who were standing anywhere in the 5 billion mile radius or whatever of the big ka-boom, but for the people who didn’t vaporize immediately. You see, Krakatoa’s eruption was so massive it shot straight up into the sky and, I’m not kidding here, blotted out the sun with volcanic dust. For years. This caused a cooling of the Earth, which turns out is as bad as global warming (I forgot to add that to the list earlier), and caused a series of very unfortunate events.

Summer turned to winter in a way that George R.R. Martin could only pretend to imagine, crops failed for years, drought and famine came, fleas went nuts, plague started, Rome and other empires fell, and millions died. Wee. Check out 3.17 in the video as they reconstruct the eruption of Krakatoa for a big kablooey, it’s awesome – I mean terrible. Miles of magma and steam and dust hit the atmosphere like a freaking mushroom cloud and this was not only long before our scientists had figured out how to create this level of destruction themselves, it was also like nearly 1500 years before the birth of Donald Trump. Unbelievable.

This was all brought to you by Volcanologists (no they do not study Vulcans, they study Volcanoes, nerds) and guess what? These scientist guys are studying other volcanoes whose boom date is well overdue. The “grandaddy” is Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming, that’s right, right here in the old U.S. of A! But that’s not all! There’s also one in California (I know you guys think fire is enough, but sorry) that has noxious gases coming out of the earth as we speak. It didn’t say where in California, just somewhere, so best avoid that state entirely. Don’t go to Italy either. Cause if these volcanoes blow, they could also not only destabilize nearby people, but destabilize other unstable countries, cause we haven’t done that enough with this administration.

The rest of the video talks about how awful it could be if this volcano blew, and the giant environmental catastrophe took over – basically everthing would suck and the world would become a video game. Think apocalypse, but a little slower for it all to happen. Yay! No word on whether the global cooling would balance out global warming, cause I’m thinking that’s a positive possibility. Why all the doom and gloom guys?

So I guess the message of this blog post is to live while you can, travel – oh wait, no, um go party with your friends, er, no, um, stay home and binge Netflix. And wear masks. Watch funny videos and read funny stuff. You might avoid this blog unless, like me, immense global disasters now just make you hang your head back and laugh maniacally. Also, and most importantly, avoid volcanologists; they are a depressing bunch.

~ Alice