Sometimes it feels like doomsday is just around the corner, and the terrifying truth is that a number of global catastrophes could occur at any moment. From earthquakes capable of laying waste to entire cities to explosive stockpiles that are three times larger than the one that caused the blast in Beirut, here are some disasters that are just waiting to happen.
Yellowstone Eruption
Yellowstone national park is famous for its breath-taking hot springs, natural wonders and of course several species of protected wildlife. One thing it’s less esteemed for is what’s known as a super-volcano, which is just as bone-chilling as the name suggests.
What’s so "super" about a super-volcano is that it can belch out nearly 250 cubic miles of lethal ash, dust and gas into the atmosphere, which, for some perspective, is about 1000 times more powerful than the volume produced by the historic Mount St. Helen’s eruption in 1980. The Yellowstone super-volcano has erupted 3 times in history so far: the first was 2.1million years ago, the second 1.3million years ago and the most recent was 640,000 years ago. The latter was so powerful that it carved out a 34-by-50-mile cauldron-like depression in the earth which is known as a
caldera and is now the potential site of the next eruption.
The caldera sits on a large 5-mile-deep magma chamber which is fed by a plume of molten rock stretching down 465-miles into Montana. Magma is steadily rising through the plume into the magma chamber at a rate of 2-inches a year, and it has the potential to liquify causing a devastating eruption unlike anything mankind is currently prepared for. An eruption this enormous would cause economic and climactic devastation on a global scale as many of the dangerous aerosols emitted by the volcano would linger in the atmosphere, dimming the sky and lowering global average temperatures by just enough to plunge us into a mini-ice-age.
In 2014, a scientific paper explored the hypothetical fallout of another super-volcano eruption and found that entire states like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Colorado would also be buried in 3-feet of lethal volcanic ash. This chart, which simulates the ash’s gradual spread, shows that some coastal cities thousands of kilometers away would even be covered in a dusting of at least a few millimeters.
The good news is that the United States Geological Survey currently estimates that the odds of Yellowstone erupting in any given year are 0.00014%. The truth is that no one can be sure if or when the super-volcano will erupt again though as it doesn’t follow a regular cycle. What’s even more frightening is that a study from the University of Illinois in 2015 found that, unlike regular volcanoes, an earthquake powerful enough to cause cracks in the roof of the molten rock chamber could trigger another eruption, and we might just be due an earthquake of such epic proportions.
Lake Michigan Oil Spill
Oil spills are never good news, after all, they can permanently damage coastlines and decimate entire eco-systems, not to mention the insane clean-up costs involved. Worryingly few people are aware that Lake Michigan could currently be on the brink of the biggest oil spill in history, which would potentially spoil hundreds of miles of shoreline and cost as much as $2 billion in recovery.
A grand total of 2.5-million miles of steel oil pipelines sit at the bottom of America’s lakes, rivers and wetlands like a secret spiderweb, and beneath Michigan’s Great Lake’s lays a ticking timebomb known as Enbridge Line 5. Enbridge, a Canadian pipeline company, is responsible for overseeing this monumental 20-inch twin pipeline, which travels from Wisconsin through the 5-mile wide strait between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron at depths of some 200ft.
On July 26th, 2010,
Enbridge’s line 6B ruptured, spilling over 800,000gallons of oil from the Alberta Tar Sands deposit into the Kalamazoo River outside of Marshall Michigan, costing $1.2-billion dollars and two years of clean-up. Attention has now turned to the aging pipeline 5 under the straits of Mackinac, which would spew out oil at an even greater speed and volume due to the oscillating flow between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, resulting in a devastating estimated 2.4-million gallon spill.
Those who worked on the pipeline in 1953 were told it would last some 50 years, but as it was built over 60 years ago now it could be at serious risk of dangerous corrosion. Despite Enbridge claiming that the pipeline is still in good condition, National Wildlife Federation divers surveyed the pipe themselves in 2015 and found entire sections of unsupported pipeline, broken structural braces and dangerous debris.
Study: Enbridge Line 5 ‘worst place’ for Great Lakes spill by WOOD TV8 Although some anchoring braces have been added since, Enbridge still refuses to replace the pipeline, so this impending environmental threat to one of the world’s largest freshwater supplies remains unfixed.
Global Disease Epidemic
At a TED Talk in March 2015, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made what seemed, at the time, to be a rather bold claim: “if anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war”. Gates cited the response to the Ebola outbreak in Africa and warned that failure to prepare properly in future could result in an epidemic as lethal as the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed an estimated 50-million people.
Surprise! 2020 delivered on that promise with COVID-19. The virus may not have wiped out 50 million or even 10 million people so far, but the world economy is buckled under the weight of this pandemic, and it may have been entirely predictable.
In 2011, screenwriter Steven Soderbergh and W. Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology, neurology, and pathology, created a movie in response to the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak that would warn us of the risks of a future pandemic:
Contagion. It may not have been an instant blockbuster, but Contagion experienced a resurgence and even peaked at #2 on Apple iTunes rental chart as people turned to the movie for clues about what’ll come next.
Back in September 2019, a damning
annual report from the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board even described the threat of a pandemic as a “real one” and deemed efforts by governments to prepare for such a possibility “grossly insufficient”. And COVID-19 isn’t the only virus with pandemic potential. For example, Nigeria has already been battling a deadly
viral hemorrhagic fever known as Lassa Fever during the current pandemic. The disease was already endemic to the country, but in May 2020 cases surpassed the 1000 mark, making it the largest outbreak ever recorded.
Lassa Fever would be much harder to control if it spread worldwide, but thankfully confirmed cases in Nigeria have fallen dramatically ever since. There’s no cause for celebration quite yet though, because a new contender has already arisen to challenge it: G4. Full name G4 EA H1N1 is a new strain of influenza, better known to you and I as the flu, that emerged in China toward the end of June 2020 with some killer potential. This new strain was first identified in pigs and can jump to humans through contact with an infected animal or by eating infected meat.
Thankfully, there have not yet been any cases of human-to-human transmission just yet, but the phrase "watch this space" springs to mind. You might already be familiar with so-called swine-flu after a pandemic involving the H1N1 strain broke out in 2009 causing 284,000 deaths and infecting an estimated 1 in 4 people worldwide, but a G4 outbreak could be much, much worse.
The G4 variant shares most of its genes with Avian Influenza, to which humans have no immunity, with bits of mammalian strains mixed in. If G4 had a worldwide outbreak in 2020, we would have faced two full-blown pandemics at once, while resources were stretched enough already with COVID-19. But why do all these deadly viruses seem to originate in China? The answer seems to lie in China’s livestock practices like so-called wet markets that sell live, exotic animals in cramped, unsanitary conditions that are breeding grounds for viruses. Although temporary bans were placed on wet markets when COVID-19 broke out, these laws are usually repealed when the dust settles. Without permanent changes, the potential for more deadly viruses to emerge will likely remain.
The Big One
Remember that monumental earthquake was alluded to earlier? It might be coming sooner than you think, and it’s oh-so-delicately known as The Big One.
California experienced over 17,700 earthquakes in 2019 alone because it sits right on the boundary of the North American tectonic plate and the Pacific Plate, but none come close to this potential catastrophe. The point where the two plates meet and grind against one another is called the San Andreas fault line, and this is precisely where a seismic event of such historic proportions is predicted to strike.
"The Big One" refers to a magnitude-8 earthquake which will shake the cities foundations, causing a predicted 2000 immediate deaths as well as some 270,000 people displaced from their homes, not to mention over $200-billion in damages. Experts have been anticipating this disaster since 1906, when an earthquake approaching the same level of destruction peaked at magnitude-7.9 and lay waste to much of San Francisco, killing over 3000 people and injuring some 225,000 more.
The 1906 big one, as well as another magnitude-7.9 quake in 1857, both occurred on northern parts of the fault line, but the southern portion hasn’t experienced any activity in 250 years, which probably means it’s well overdue some action. In fact, theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku has pointed out that the last big one in the LA area was way back in 1680, and, as the average cycle for San Andreas fault line earthquakes is around every 135 years, that would make the next one 204 years late. According to the United States Geological Survey, there is no concrete way to forecast when or even if such an earthquake will strike, but it certainly seems dangerously likely. Some geologists have estimated that there’s a 37% chance it’ll happen in the next 50 years, while Kerry Sieh, who pioneered the field of paleoseismology, even said that:
“I’d be very surprised if it didn’t happen within the lifetime of children in primary school today”. Golden Gate Collapse
The Golden Gate bridge is one of the most iconic landmarks in the world, and throughout movie history it’s been ripped apart, melted and bitten by giant sharks, but what would it really take to bring down this monumental structure?
In 2014, a scientist and professor of structural bridge engineering at UC Berkeley named Hassan Astaneh
answered hypothetical questions about this exact scenario. Apparently it would take roughly 900,000 people alone to bring down the bridge, but fitting that many people on it at once seems out of the question. A tsunami also wouldn’t stand a chance, because a 300ft-tall wall of water forming off of San Francisco’s coastline is virtually impossible.
The only disaster potentially capable of tearing down the bridge is, you guessed it, an earthquake of epic proportions. That’s right, "The Big One" could potentially also wipe out the world’s most beloved bridge with its immense seismic power. Astaneh explains that the biggest earthquake the San Andreas fault could generate, a magnitude 8.3, could spell trouble because it might uplift the incredibly heavy bridge towers. As these 87-year-old legs weren’t bolted down properly during construction, they could rise slightly and come crashing down, crushing the foundations beneath.
Thankfully, a seismic retrofit has been underway on the bridge since 1998 after the the magnitude-6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 caused some minor damage. So far, strengthening work on the northern and southern approach and the north anchorage house, which holds all the cables coming off the span that tie down the bridge, has ben completed. Structural engineers are still racing to reinforce the center suspension section which can only currently withstand a magnitude-7.0, and this is pegged to cost somewhere between $450-500-million. The Golden Gate isn’t the only bridge at risk either, as the world has witnessed several high-profile bridge disasters in recent years, such as the 2018 Genoa bridge collapse which killed 42 people.
New video of Genoa bridge collapse released by Italian police by CityNews A worrying report published in 2018 also found that over 54,000 bridges across America are deemed structurally deficient, that’s almost 9% of all bridges in the country. It would take an estimated 37 years to repair these crumbling structures, so maybe it’s time to start thinking about alternative routes home.
East Coast Submission
A damning climate report published in June 2019 claims that future sea level rise poses a serious threat to many coastal communities and might even mean that New York City is partly underwater as early as 2050. With the planet’s temperature dangerously on the rise, huge glaciers melting could permanently alter global sea levels.
If the entire West Atlantic Ice Sheet covering West Antarctica were to go down, for example, the world’s oceans would rise by a staggering 16-ft, causing a colossal loss of coastal land. In the recent report, a global rise of 6.6-foot by the year 2100 is predicted as a worst-case scenario if temperatures warm by 9 degrees Fahrenheit.
The East Coast is especially susceptible to this threat, as a 2012 study by Professor John Boon from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science has highlighted an alarmingly fast rate of sea-level rise in New York, Boston, Norfolk and Baltimore. The results, which show that sea-levels there are increasing 0.3-mm per year, supports another US Geological Survey that claims the East Coast is experiencing this rise 3 or 4 times faster than anywhere else in the world. By 2050, 25% of New York City would be at risk of turning into a total floodplain following a predicted 31-inch increase in sea-level. Around 800,000 people currently live in the target flooding zone, and by 2050 97% of NYC’s power plants will be there too, so you can imagine why it’s pretty big deal.
In 2013, ex-New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called for a
$20-billion system of flood barriers to protect the city from this worst-case scenario, but his plan was not put into action before he left office. Aggressive steps to reduce our current emissions and a fool proof response plan are desperately needed to prevent New York and other coastal cities from swimming with the fishes, literally.
Another Beirut Explosion
On Tuesday 4th July 2020, a deadly explosion ripped through Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, claiming the lives of at least 137 people, injuring some 5000 more, and leaving countless others homeless. The explosion was so powerful that it was heard and felt as far away as Cyprus, and the cost of material damages is already expected to be around $15 billion.
Footage caused conspiracies about what may have caused the explosion to run rampant, with many initially claiming it happened at a firework factory.
Beirut explosion - Multi-angle footage | DW News by DW News The blast actually took place at a disused storage facility which housed 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical that is used in agricultural fertilizers. That’s more than 1,300 times the amount of ammonium nitrate used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. It’s still unclear exactly how the fire started, although initial investigations suggest it may have been ignited by a spark from nearby welding work. Shocking aerial and drone photographs showed a deep 140-meter-wide-crater of blasted land where warehouse 12, which stored the ammonium nitrate, once stood.
With Lebanon’s capital still smoldering, worrying evidence soon emerged to suggest that this disaster could’ve been avoided. As recently as six months prior to the incident, officials inspecting the consignment warned that if the mammoth stash of ammonium nitrate wasn’t moved, it would “blow up all of Beirut”. On the evening of Wednesday 5th July, the government said that it was putting an unspecified number of Beirut port officials on house arrest pending an investigation into how the highly explosive materials came to be stored less than 100 meters from residential neighborhoods. As outrage over possibly government negligence spread, the National Cabinet also declared a two-week state of emergency, effectively giving the military full powers over the capital. The Russian-owned cargo ship that bought the ammonium nitrate to the port, named the Rhosus, was detained and prevented from leaving for failing to pay port fees back in 2014 before it could reach its destination of Mozambique.
The ship’s owner, reported as Igor Grechushkin, abandoned it along with the crew. At the time, its former captain Boris Prokoshev recognised the dangers and described its 2,750-ton freight as a “floating bomb”. The mostly Ukrainian crew were held onboard the ship for nearly a year before they were released, while the ammonium nitrate was confiscated and held at the port in a warehouse. In the years that followed, Badri Daher, the director-general of Lebanese customs, confirmed that his agency sent 6 documents to the judiciary from 2014-2017 requesting that the material be re-exported, but these pleas were all ignored.
It seems like the writing was on the wall when it comes to the Beirut explosion. It may be too late to turn back time and take the correct steps to prevent this tragic event from unfolding, but it can certainly teach us a thing or two when it comes to another possible disaster waiting to happen. In Australia, between 6,000-12,000 tons of ammonium nitrate is being stored at the
Orica Plant in Kooragang, just 800-m from suburban homes in North Stockton. If this store were to blow up, it would have the potential to be almost four times as large as the Beirut explosion!
At least 300 residents in the Stockton Community Action Group have already been long-calling on the government to relocate the plant or reduce the stockpiles of the deadly chemical. But the Beirut explosion has sparked even greater fears that an accident at the plant could be fatal for nearby residents. However, a spokesperson for the company said the plant is subject to stringent protocols and annual drills and was quick to reassure people that there had not been a single incident involving the storage of ammonium nitrate in the Kooragang Island site’s 51-year-history. In fact, the potentially deadly material is stored in areas of the complex which are fire resistant and built from non-flammable materials to minimalize such threats. What’s more, the site is regularly inspected by the NSW Environment Protection Authority to ensure compliance with the conditions of the plant’s Major Hazard Facility license, and no concerns have ever been raised.
On the other hand, the ammonium nitrate store in Beirut had been stored at the port for six years without correct safety measures, and the explosion was the result of countless government oversights. Although those living nearby to the Orica Plant are right to be shaken after the news of the Beirut explosion, it also seems that the two aren’t as comparable as they may seem. If you were amazed at these disasters waiting to happen, you might want to read about
near-apocalypses we somehow survived. Thanks for reading.
