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  • So I've made several videos already on both tsunamis and natural disasters that have already happened

  • But I've never made a video about a natural disaster that hasn't happened yet

  • Tsunamis as I'm sure you know are some of the most devastating forces in nature

  • But every now and then nature likes to take something that's already

  • scary and multiplies it

  • This is where the rare events called mega tsunamis come in and there's one in the future that some scientists are predicting will happen eventually

  • The generation of mega tsunamis maybe most important to understand in the Atlantic

  • Mostly because of the large number of active oceanic volcanic islands and the fact that some of these volcanoes are showing early signs of instability

  • The most infamous of these is located here in the Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa

  • the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma

  • It's erupted several times in the past. Most recently in 1949 and again in 1971

  • But a paper written later in

  • 1999 by a geologist

  • Named Simon Day was the first to notice that something seemed strange. It appeared to him that the western flank of the volcano was beginning

  • To become unstable and was in the initial stages of a collapse

  • Several future papers written about it hypothesized that with each future eruption

  • This flank would become even more unstable until at some

  • Uncertain point in the future an eruption would be big enough to cause the entire chunk to come crashing down into the ocean

  • how big of a chunk would this be? Well, a paper written back in 2005 estimates that it would be between

  • 150 and 500 cubic kilometers worth of rock, which is a lot. In the worst-case scenario of

  • 500 cubic kilometers it would slam into the ocean and create an initial water dome of 900 meters tall

  • Which is taller than the Burj Khalifa is in Dubai. That would be an incredible sight to see alone

  • but then according to this paper the really bad stuff happens next. The dome would quickly transform into a wave about

  • 600 metres high and surge westwards at speeds up to

  • 720 km/h about the same speed as a jet aircraft

  • several hundred meter high

  • titanic tsunamis will crash on the western shores of the canary islands and shortly after smaller 50 to 100 meter high waves will impact the

  • african west coast

  • meanwhile

  • a solid wave 500 kilometers across

  • Surges westwards across the Atlantic towards America since the Canary Islands acted like the Jupiter for Europe and took most of the tsunamis blow in

  • That direction small waves between five and seven meters will impact the shores of Spain and England and caused only minor damage

  • Finally after traveling for about nine hours

  • The first part of the wave makes impact in the Americas. After traveling for so long

  • The tsunami will have lost most of its size

  • but even still

  • 10 meter high waves will hit the coast of Newfoundland in Canada while larger 15 to 20 meter high waves impact the northern coast of

  • South America from Brazil to Venezuela unfortunately for Florida though

  • they will end up taking the brunt of the tsunamis power here 20 to 25 meter high waves will crash across the east coast of

  • the state and severely damaged cities like Miami and Jacksonville the waves here will be about the same size as the waves of the

  • 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia

  • And similar sized 10 to 25 meter high waves will crash across the rest of the US east coast

  • Which would definitely damage cities like Charleston New York and Boston while all of that sounds pretty horrible

  • It's very important to take all of this with a grain of salt

  • This is a worst-case scenario

  • Based on a scientific paper that itself has received a pretty fair amount of criticism from other

  • scientists for sounding too alarmist. Mega tsunamis generated from a volcanic collapse like this appear to be common on a

  • Geological time scale as there is evidence to show that it's happened dozens of times in the Atlantic alone over the past million years

  • But that's still incredibly uncommon on a human time scale

  • The only time in recorded human history that a similar event to this has happened so far was in

  • 1888 on Ritter Island in Papua New Guinea when a volcano

  • Erupted and caused a five cubic kilometer chunk of rock to collapse into the ocean this did cause a relatively large tsunami

  • 15 metres high the damage of the surrounding islands

  • But it was hardly the gigantic size that could happen in the Cumbre Vieja scenario

  • Further if the scenario that I just described is the worst-case scenario

  • It's possible that if the western flank of the island does collapse, it would be significantly less mass

  • Which would create a significantly smaller tsunami that may not be even capable of crossing the Atlantic. Even if the worst-case scenario

  • Does happen, it probably won't happen at any point in any of our lifetimes?

  • It will probably happen several thousand years from now when the eruptions cause the flame to grow even weaker

  • So realistically you shouldn't have to worry about this ever happening. Although it probably will happen at some point in the future

  • That's a problem

  • That future humans will have hopefully figured out by then in the meantime

  • the only reason you should ever worry about it is of a super villain sets up residence on the island and decides to

  • Artificially turn it into an island version of the Death Star. If you are an aspiring

  • Supervillain watching this video though

  • You'll need a lot of certain skills to be able to pull anything off and there's no

  • Better place to learn those skills than by going to Skillshare next

  • well

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