Ashes to Ashes | National Geographic

when a volcano explodes what you’d see
is this column of dark material rising
up into the sky and that’s what we call
volcanic ash volcanic ash is not really
ash at all it’s made of very fine
particles of glass it’s frozen magma
shards it would look like a snowfall
except it’s not snow it’s ash it weighs
a lot more than snow it’s going to cause
buildings to collapse it is also very
damaging to engines as it will clog out
their air systems and in the case of
airplanes can coat the engines in a fine
film of glass which stops them working
when volcanic ash falls on power lines
we can coat these lines and a fine layer
of volcanic dust when this becomes wet
it actually becomes conductive and this
can short out the Kura lines effectively
shutting down the grid
so now we have a giant ash cloud
drifting out over East Asia and volcanic
ash is catastrophic for crops you’ve
ruined the food chain for that year and
probably for many years in the future
if you live within a thousand miles of
interruption your environment could be
poisoned for years the only way you
could live through that kind of ash
cloud is to seal yourself away you’d
have to create for yourself a closed
ecosystem a mini world that was sealed
off from everything else the term we use
for this is a biosphere a biosphere is
essentially something that would
simulate life on Earth in a contained
environment that might be able to keep
out all that’s happening on the planet
and simulate within it all the processes
necessary to keep people plants and
animals alive