Five Volcanoes That Might Erupt In Your Lifetime

Number 5. Mount St. Helens This active volcano is located in Washington, in the pacific northwest region of the United States. The volcano is based in the cascade Range and is part of the famous volcanic arc. Which is a segment of the pacific ring of fire, that includes over 160 active volcanoes. Mount St. Helens is most notorious, for its major 1980 eruption. The deadliest and most ecnonomically destructive volcanic event in the history of the united states. The eruption claimed the lives of 57 people and totally destroyed more than 250 homes, 47 bridges 24 km of railways and 298 km of highway. A massive debris avalanche triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale caused an eruption which in turn sunk the sea level elevation of the mountain itself by 401 meters. That left a 1.6km wide horseshoe-shaped crater. Nearly 40 years after this eruption, mt st helens is recharging and might erupt again, in any given day. Number 4. Mount Vesuvius The Volcano that terrified the romans is located on the gulf of naples in campania, Italy. Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in 79 BCE that led to the total anihilation of the roman city, pompeii as well as several other roman settlements. The eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcaninc gases as high as 33 km. The volcano spewed molten rock and pulverized pumice that released a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the hiroshima nagasaki bombings. The exact numbers of deaths by this eruption is unkown but is estimated to be in the thousands. Vesuvius has erupted many times since and is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 living nearby the kill zone. Number 3. Krakatoa Krakatoa is a volcanic island situated in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. On Sunday, August 26, 1883, The Dutch East indies, is the last place on earth you want yourself to be in. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, obliterated the volcanic peak of it's island in a cataclysmic form. Over 70% of the island and its surrounding archipelago were destroyed as the island itself collapsed into a caldera. The eruption was so powerful that it was heard from as far away as Australia. it was one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history. At least 36,000 deaths are attributed to the eruption. But this volcanic explosion killed as many as 120,000 people indirectly by creating 30 meter high tsunamis. 44 years after the eruption, a whole new island emerged from the caldera and is named Anak Krakatau, which means, Child of Krakatoa. But the worst part of Krakatoa apart from having children is that it's still an active volcanoe and might erupt again. Number 2. The Toba Supervolcano The Toba supereruption was a supervolcanic explosion that occurred about 75,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of the Earth's largest known eruptions, so large, that scientists developed a theory, known as the toba catastrophe theory which holds that this event caused a global volcanic winter of six to ten years and possibly followed a 1,000 year long cooling episode. The eruption was so large that it deposited an ash layer approximately 15 cm thick over all of South Asia. In addition it has been variously calculated that 6,000 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide were ejected into the atmosphere by the event. As a comparison, the energy released by the toba supereruption, was greater than the energy in all nuclear bombs in the world combined, several thousands times over. Number 1. Yellowstone Caldera The Yellowstone Caldera is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States. It is also known as the Yellowstone Supervolcano. The caldera formed during the last of three supereruptions over the past two million years. The last full-scale eruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano, the Lava Creek eruption which happened approximately 640,000 years ago, ejected approximately a thousand cubic meters of rock, dust and volcanic ash into the sky. The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor between the year 2004 and 2008 was more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923. But By the end of 2009, the uplift had slowed significantly and appeared to have stopped. And the chances of another super eruption are as low as 1 in 700,000 each year. But then again there are people with worse odds waiting to win the lottery. Scientists at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory see no evidence that another cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future. So we can rest assured that a supereruption wont occur in our lifetimes, Right?