Forget Monte Paschi, Italy May Have A Far Bigger Problem
While the metaphorical 'earthquake' of a systemic banking crisis is coming to a head, it appears Italy may have a far more existential problem on its hands. As The Independent reports, one of the world’s most dangerous supervolcanoes is showing signs of reawakening under the Italian city of Naples.
The Campi Flegrei may be nearing a critical pressure point necessary to drive an eruption for the first time in 500 years, according to scientists.
Researchers say the volcano is moving towards a threshold beyond which rising magma could spark the release of fluids and gases at 10 times the normal rate.
This surge would cause an injection of extremely hot steam into surrounding rocks, Giovanni Chiodini, lead author of the study, told AFP.
This could ultimately trigger a “very dangerous” eruption for the three million people living in the area.
Since 2005, the Campi Flegrei has been undergoing “uplift”, which is the accumulation of magma under the surface of a volcano.
In response, Italian authorities raised the threat level from green to yellow in 2012, signalling the need for the supervolcano to be actively monitored.
Four years ago, scientists warned any eruption could kill millions living near or on top of the volcano.
"These areas can give rise to the only eruptions that can have global catastrophic effects comparable to major meteorite impacts," said Giuseppe De Natale, head of a project to monitor the volcano's activity.
Nearby Mount Vesuvius, whose massive eruption buried Roman settlements including Pompeii in AD79, is also considered an active volcano
If that volcano is similar in size to the Yellowstone Supervolcano (goes off about every 500,000 years or so), that would be a very big problem for all of Europe, and beyond.
The Pacific plate is very active at the moment. Pressure from deep eathquakes transmits across the globe to quakes, volanoes and to breaks in the crust ...like the fracking and oil drilling sites.
Any of these super volcanoes could kill 1/3 of the population if not more.
For 100 years or so we've had electricity and the internal combustion engine; less than the blink-of-an-eye in the history of Earth.
The Yellowstone Caldera blowing would starve 1/2 the planet by itself, but we may do it ourselves before it happens.
The two things are in no way correlated and there is no human overpopulation.
Few are aware Vesuvius has erupted around 36 times since Pompeii, including four times just in the 20th century. It's actually overdue for another. In 1908 an eruption ruined the planned site of the summer olympics and took out a nearby American Air Force base. For anyone who wants to see what the the end of the world could look like, go to Google Earth, find Naples about halfway down Italy on the western coast. Vesuvius is located at 3:30 about 8.7 miles southeast of Naples. Pretty impressive cone, right? Now look at the size of the caldera that Mt. Vesuvius sits inside and calls home, the Monte summa volcano, with a width of five miles wall to wall.