As far as mankind has advanced in its brief time on Earth, our survival is due as much to our species ingenuity as it is to the planet’s mercy. All of our technology and reinforced structures, testaments to how far we’ve come since arming ourselves with rocks and dwelling in caves, will ultimately mean nothing when one of our planet’s super volcanoes wakes up. In recent years we’ve gotten a taste for just how disruptive a volcano can be to modern man’s machinations across the planet, but a few days where the sky is filled with smoke and ash will seem like a lovely vacation when the planet decides to unleash its wrath. Volcanoes litter the planet’s surface, lying along the edges of tectonic plates, and each functions as a time-bomb of molten lava, rock, and ash. Thus, PBS’s NOVA: Deadliest Volcanoes asks the question: can we prepare ourselves to detect the eruptions before they hit or to avert cataclysmic events before they wipe us out?
Though the name feels sounds akin to one of Fox’s more exploitative specials from the 90s (“When Volcanoes Attack”, etc.), the title Deadliest Volcanoes is a bit like comparing nuclear warheads with extinction-event-sized meteors. Quite simply, all volcanoes have the potential to be bringers of doom and destruction, but it’s the situations where major metropolitan areas have been built upon dormant volcanoes with few people knowing it. Cities like these could be wiped out in minutes should the volcano erupt, and could result in millions of casualites. Deadliest Volcanoes offers a few beautifully rendered theoretical eruptions, and assuming the actual even lives up to the dramatization, you can’t help but feel like humanity’s future on this planet is something of a crapshoot.
DVD Bonus Features
None.
"NOVA: Deadliest Volcanoes" is on sale January 10, 2012 and is not rated. Documentary. Written and directed by Nathan Williams. Starring Craig Sechler.
