Supervolcano...

Previously I have refered to my interest in volcanoes, and on many occasions I have refered to my prediliction for fact based TV... so it will come as no suprise to hear that I spent the last two evenings glued to the telly watching "Supervolcano" on BBC1. The technology the key characters used was a bit sci-fi (their portable computers seem to have had everlasting batteries, holograms are still pretty tricky and the phone networks, both landline and mobile, would die very quickly in those conditions) but the rest was quite well done, and certainly within the sort of parameters of what could (and, as they kept saying, eventually will) happen. My only criticism is that the end was a bit upbeat. But that's telly, I suppose.

Anyway, for further reading I suggest visiting http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/index.html which is the website of the real Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. You may also want to obtain a copy of a book called "A Guide to the End of the World: everything you never wanted to know" by Bill McGuire which will really scare the shit out of you!