Volcanoes Part 1! Way, way, way back - approx 74,000 years ago, Humans and human-like species were enjoying their time on earth with clear skies when Mt. Toba erupted in Indonesia. The blast kicked off a thousand-year ice age and killed countless animals and vegetation. In the end, only the strong survived - and we are all descendants of about 2,000 people (who were all descended from the same woman in Africa from about 200k years ago) and a handful of Neanderthals. This is a story of DNA, fossils, carbon dating, and how little we know about our time on Earth. Also, James Watson of DNA is STILL ALIVE as of this recording - he’s 95. Hilarious pics from Midjourney AI and some from the creative commons. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Volcanoes Part 1! Way, way, way back - approx 74,000 years ago, Humans and human-like species were enjoying their time on earth with clear skies when Mt. Toba erupted in Indonesia. The blast kicked off a thousand-year ice age and killed countless animals and vegetation. In the end, only the strong survived - and we are all descendants of about 2,000 people (who were all descended from the same woman in Africa from about 200k years ago) and a handful of Neanderthals.
This is a story of DNA, fossils, carbon dating, and how little we know about our time on Earth.
Also, James Watson of DNA is STILL ALIVE as of this recording - he’s 95.
Hilarious pics from Midjourney AI and some from the creative commons.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod
Email: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
America's getting our papers ready I feel like this is another one where I like accidentally like learned a bunch
of stuff it was not what I was thinking I was going to learn and it's going to be very complicated and I'm gonna be
wrong so I just wanted to say to everyone that I'm not a scientist um Taylor's not a scientist
s yes we'll figure this out uh welcome to do the fail uh this is the podcast we
discussed two stories uh no we don't we do one now so we're gonna discuss one two stories
twice a week about relationships so we're doomed to fail I'm Paris joined by Taylor
hi and these are totally separate days that we're talking it's Wednesday it's Wednesday okay
um cool so as I mentioned on Monday I am super interested in those like big
shared volcano drinks that are like potentially on fire so let's put a pin in doing that together if you
have had a big flaming volcano drink please send photos I'd love to see and learn more about it
um are you doing Vesuvius not yet we're gonna get there though so
I have some tat some tangents that got me here of course this one is one that also has 7 000 tangents but we follow it
both with our podcast and myself um just like a fun Instagram account called Dark theme Reddit so it's like
asking questions like have you ever died have you ever seen anybody die like what's the craziest thing that ever happened to you this point so it's just
like fun little interesting stories and one of them was what is the worst event
in human history so I was reading through it like some of the number jokes some of them were like um you know actual terrible things but
one thing that someone mentioned that I have never heard of is the Toba volcano
so I was going to research the Toba volcano
but it actually turned into a story about DNA human genealogy and how stupid racism is
um like racism is serious because it's a real thing and it really happens but racists generally speaking well races are dumb
it's dumb to be racist because race is so brand new in human history because human history is so old so I'm gonna do
a series and it's going to be it's not going to be I'm not going to do it like one after the other because this would
turn into an entirely different podcast but it is actually going to be a seven part series on volcanoes
whoa this is part one I'll tell you what they're gonna do one
well part one is the Toba catastrophe Theory from 74 000 years ago okay so
we're going way back way way back then we'll do Mount
Vesuvius that was in 79 then we'll do but obviously there's like
tons have happened between 74 000 years ago and 79 but these are but these are the ones that we know more about now so
then we'll do Mom Vesuvius we'll do Tambora that was in 1816. that's the one
that when that one erupted it was a year without a summer they made everything really gloomy and that's when Mary
Shelley wrote Frankenstein because everything was really gloomy they had to see inside there's also Krakatoa that
happened in 1883 we know more about that because by then telegraphs were invented but Krakatoa is the one where the whole
the sky all over the world turned orange and that's when Edward Munch painted the Scream you know what I'm talking about
oh yeah and this guy looked like that in Europe because of Krakatoa in Indonesia
so because that's how like world going over it is um then we'll talk about Mount Pele that
was in 1902 that's what I know less about but it had some like crazy stories about
just like animals running and stuff so I'll do that one number six Mount St Helens in 1980 so that one happened like
um uh the most like recently in in Washington state um and then
for part seven talk about the future and like what's gonna happen when Yellowstone erupts because we're all
gonna die how does this have to do with genealogy and race oh we're gonna get there okay
this is unique Taylor I know here we go so part one
here's the book that I read twice to take notes um it's called when humans
nearly vanished by Donald R protherio he's obviously a scientist so um that's
the story about Mount Toba um I also look not randomly I was listening to Dan Carlin's amendum so it's like his like
short like kind of like chatty um podcast and he did one called the long game and he just talks about this
concept of like how old Earth is and how old humanity is and how little we know
you know humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and we know like maybe
ten thousand years of history from like bits of pottery you know like we know so so very little and we like imagine that
like the world became worth knowing about when people could write it down but like how do we know you know there's so much more wait do you think all it
has another podcast he does look a shorter one where he like sometimes interviews people sometimes you just like chats like this one he's
always like he's so oh he's the best he's always like very apologetic like well you guys keep telling me that I
should just like talk into the microphone so here I am and we're like yeah thank you exactly what we want what's that called he's like
uh amendum addendum add and hardcore history that's what it does no I lost
the word all right he's gonna be taken over by this now but listen to the long game I was
listening to that one twice as well that's fantastic um but yeah it's like the same he it's the same idea that we're gonna get here
that I've talked about before that like um the the existential dread of knowing that
most of History the vast majority of history is lost you know yeah
so uh so I did that and then I watched some videos on YouTube just to like wrap my head around this so one but how did
humans become the Earth's dominance dominant species and how many of species humans were there so just I'll put those
in um but also in one of the videos I watched they said um so Dan Dan obviously says Genghis Khan changes
right in this one I watched it said they said
Genghis Genghis Han whatever it was terrible I was like I can't do this like we need to like it's it's very confusing
but one more thing that I wanted to mention um before I really go into this is I did
make a a cool like timeline of all of my episodes and like they really definitely
like lean 1500 and and future into the future the most recent
one I did was the 63 of Jack Ruby so I want to like fill in that big gap but if I put this eruption of Toba 74 000 years
ago on my timeline you wouldn't be able to see anything it's like an outlier yeah
so I put it at negative 500 and then I also was like why don't we just say negative why are we doing this adbc CE
thing and I discovered that there is an astronomical year numbering thing that people do but it's based on different
calendars and anyway I'm gonna say negative from now on yeah go for it okay
so a little bit more about what Dan Carlin was saying and kind of what I'm going to
get into is you know people have only only existed of such a very small amount of time and a term
that I must have heard before but just heard doing this research is Paleo archeology so we're talking like really
like like human archeology but like from a long time ago um and there's just so much that we
don't know and also like a lot of this does kind of like lead into into racism
and into people thinking that like some part some kinds of humans are better than other kinds of humans
um because you don't everyone wants to believe that they're like descendants of Kings but we're all probably just
sending people trying to survive like we are you know um so and also we've talked about before
like there is no romantic past like trying to go back too that's all a myth like there's just like people trying to survive for all of time
um so it's a lot thinking about how far away the past is and how far away the future is and just like we're just such
a small little blip in our time um but the tldr of the Toba volcano
um and everything that happened 74 000 years ago is that all humans on earth have the same ancestor
she was a woman who lived in Africa between 50 150 000 200 000 years ago so
for whatever happened she was the one who her family line is the one that survived and the one that continued and
we are all descendants of her did you ask questions yes
how can anybody know that well okay I will get there it's very
complicated okay Okay so have you done have you done 23 and me no
because I want my great great ancestors or whatever the down the line to be able to commit whatever crimes
they want and not have it traced back no I want mine to be able to be punished for the crime because because that's how
we found this woman 250 000 years ago I know so here's so wait I didn't even
finish my tldr so we're all one species of human as you'll notice around 70 000
years ago there's there was a genetic bottleneck that really
um like cut down the different any diversity that we had and we're all descendants of about 1 000 um couples
also that happened 70 000 years ago so those couples came from that woman from 200 000 years ago but
um only about a thousand like mating pairs of humans are you know all of us right now
so what happened and why is it like that so I did do 23 in me and um what it does
one thing that it does is you can only get this DNA from a woman because it's like the for the maternal heple group so
it's like your your maternal DNA so if you like if you and your brother did it did 23 to me you wouldn't be able to see
your maternal line your mom would have to do it too um and like Kincaid did 23andMe and he couldn't see his return of the line
until I did it because it's only in women what is
the maternal um DNA that like shows your your your families
like your genetic migration from the time that we lived in Africa 200 000 years ago so I can trace my maternal
Apple group it goes from Africa through the Middle East and then up into Europe
and then that's how we like got here okay so
it's like so long ago you know but I but then but I can tell from my DNA that 4
like 47 000 years ago is when we my group of my history moved over to Europe
okay I can see that on this map the 23andMe gave me um so 70 000 years ago after the top of
volcano the only human species that survived Were Us and the Neanderthals and they eventually died
out and we'll talk a little bit about maybe why um but just you know those are the only ones that existed and so I wrote we won
yay anyway people welcome so we're gonna get to the volcano I promise but so yes
this is the question so how do we know anything about anything that's one of my headers in my notes
um it's a lot of scientific research a lot of accidents a lot of people looking for different things and finding things at the same time that like reach the
same conclusion um so we knew a little bit about like what species are and how we figured out about
our own Evolution but that is so new like it's just unbelievably new that we
know about DNA that we know about like our genetic structure um they are there's like hundreds of
thousands of years between any changes like in like in evolution so it's not like you know one day you don't have a
tail you know it like takes a long time now we're walking upright now we don't need the tail for balance like now this
and this um we can also so when we do this research and go back and start being able to date things because we know more
about DNA and we know more about like being able to date um like different things like uranium
and the things that we know about uh like the Earth they're pulling up pieces of the core of like ice core and like
Earth core and they can pull it up and say we can tell from this spot and this core that like 10 000 years ago the
weather was like this you know or things were like this so we know that there's
been ice ages we know that there's been like times of like severe drought we also can know that like the current
climate change is our fault because there's never been climate change as bad as it is right now you know and we know
that because of these like cores that we're we're um were drilling out there's a substance
called uranium-238 um and it can anal it is inside the glass in volcanic ash so in 1994
um a scientist was looking for more evidence of the same Ash that he'd been
seeing um wherever he found it and they found it all over the world so it was in the bottom of the oceans it's in India it's
in the Americas it's in it's everywhere and it's from 70 ish thousand years ago and it's from
Mount Toba so they can tell by that like volcanic ash glass that it's all from
the same event that happened relatively wrong at the same time so they're assuming that it was the same thing
yeah okay that makes sense because then there's also so there's like that dating of like minerals and
glass and Ash oh God I hope no scientists listen to this but you know what I mean and there's also human DNA
which you learned about in school what shape is DNA it's um the cricket thing
lots of double helix double helix yeah yes because it's James Watson and
Francis Crick they're the ones who um who came up with a theory of of DNA
you're close so Watson and Crick um they were working with a woman named
Rosalind Franklin and she was seeing the same things discovering the same things
about DNA that they were um they were like working side by side and she was hesitant to publish because she didn't
feel like it was fully ready to publish yet Watson and Crick didn't give a and they published anyway and they
bullied her out of the University they were working with and she had to leave all of her research behind and go
somewhere else where she would be like free to like study at her own pace and she died at age 37 from cancer probably
from all the x-rays that she was like looking at in her scientific study and they won the Nobel Prize
um but she would have wanted to if they would have let her be part of it no so they didn't teach you that in school
nope so stuff that we know and again kind of talking back to uh to race so
they're able to see from DNA that like humans have very low genetic diversity and there are you know very very small
things in our DNA that make us different at all we share like 99 of our DNA with Apes like we're so close to just like
being back where we were it's like all um just like an accident or whatever or that we got
to where we are but it's very little it's not like huge differences between us um we
there was like very recent changes um after you know people's humans
started to move like Out of Africa you know people's skin color would change because they needed to absorb vitamin D
in a way that you didn't need to when you're like on the equator you know things like that that are like the reason that we're like any different at
all they're annotations like it's basically it yeah another thing that I learned about
like early humans I don't know if I say this again but I thought it was interesting like one of the reasons that
humans can run the way we can run is that we're built outrun our prey so like
if we're chasing like a deer in like the Savannah we want the deer to get so tired that it passes out and we can do
that because we basically lost our hair like our ape hair so we could run faster and we sweat and other animals don't
sweat and the fact that we sweat means we can keep going technically I definitely could not run a beer but like you can technically keep going and the
deer has to stop and pant like a dog like any animal to cool down and so they
can't keep up as long as we can theoretically Taylor me and you are definitely in The Gatherer class of
hunter gatherers I was just gonna say I'm a vegetarian I'm a vegetarian because this plant that has not ran away
from me like I'm definitely not surviving 100
um I mean other things that helped us like survive is like being able to um to eat glucose because like a lot of
other like most other animals cannot digest glucose and like we can and that helped us become
um farmers and like stay where we were but we lived in Farmers for like 10 000 years it's like not that long in like history of the worlds you just remind me
of it's I go on walks with Luna and I mean people don't know Linda's like 100
pounds like Shepherd dog who's kind of dark and yeah she gets so started so
much faster than I do when it comes to like sports of energy I could never come close to matching her but for like like
longevity of energy she gets really tired and I think it has to do this wedding thing yeah I think it does too
then she like can't she needs to like really stop and cool her body down and we can do it like actively even though
I've certainly never felt cooler when I was sweating also feels like weird but I get it I get
technically what my body's trying to do my body is being like go inside yeah go
go have a strawberry why are we doing this is it stupid um yeah so
also so because there's like we're so closely related like we are more closely related
to apes and chimpanzees via our DNA than like any species of frog is to each other it's just like so unbelievably
hard to wrap your head around like why these changes exist um also like a huge part of our DNA is
Just Junk DNA which is like stuff that like maybe we got you know maybe somewhere in your DNA there's something
that keeps you safe from a virus that was in Persia
but it's still there which I think is bananas like what what do you mean it's junk DNA DNA feels extraordinarily
important but isn't that why there are some people who can like get
um expose like HIV for example but like don't catch it there's like there's like
something about that about how there's some people that are like weird genetic mutants that like can't contract the things that everybody else can
yeah there's like so then yeah like when something weird happens in your code that's when you do have every once in a
while there is a kid born with a tail you know yeah yeah you know and stuff
like that web hands or web feed or whatever yeah yeah like this is like one little thing in there that like does it
which is really crazy so I am thinking through like looking at
like a a map of like what people are it's not it's obviously not like a straight line it's not like monkeys
cavemen bus you know there's there's a whole bunch of branches um as it is with like every animal and every kind of
animal um but essentially um there are animals that are in the same species
and so if two individuals can breed and produce fertile offspring they're of the same species so like dogs
they're different but they can breed and have a baby that can have babies to the same species
wait can a human a chimpanzee um yes but we're not gonna have a a
child human can with anything but but you're not gonna but you're not gonna
have a child okay hold on so okay same species different breeds works yes
but we don't have breeds do we no but we used to that's what I'm going to tell you about
yeah which is crazy because I think I'm gonna maybe say this later but like this is me
overthinking everything but sometimes I'm watching like a show with like cartoons you know and it's like a cat
and a dog and they're in love and I'm like yeah but you can't have babies you know or like where are you gonna live
mom please stop screaming at the TV yeah and then also like I totally
understand like having babies is not the reason to be in a relationship but like I I think that is uh the idea that there
would be another human type that is not us that you could potentially like
Mary is so Banana is that Mary but like whatever you know what I mean like there are others and there's I'll tell you about that because we're not the first
yeah um so again this is like I thought about Googling uh different human breeds and
was like yeah my computer's immediately gonna get fired by the FBI so I'm starting to do it I know I was like everything also I'm like please don't
let's be racist I just want to tell the story like but
um it's hard to like make sure that I'm like reading actual science you know not accidentally someone who's like trying to make a point that's not good
um but all this is from like almost
no evidence they find like a Jawbone in a cave you know and like somehow they know that it was like this type of human
so I don't know I don't understand that it feels like um paleo archeology is like paleo um
teleology where like every time I go to a dinosaur museum they're like we thought this until yesterday and now it's this you know
yeah I mean who knows the the we were at the um the Natural History Museum in New
York City a couple weeks ago and there was like one thing that had these arms these like
dinosaur arms that were like 10 feet long and the sign was like unknown arms like I found his arms we don't know who
they belong to like it's weird right you're like yeah it's weird I wasn't no more but like you just they're just
trying to figure it out like very slowly so the oldest human-ish
bone that they found is potentially from six million years ago and it was found
in Chad um it's called The tumai Man
um some of the things that you know you start to see that start to like lean more towards being like more more like a
modern human um is starting to walk upright and having a larger brain cavity so like the walking upright came first and then our
brain cavities got bigger and bigger um there's an orthopedicus this is really hard from like five million years
ago there's Australis um so sorry from four to two million
years ago and they were the first um like hominins belonging to a Genus that was like near
ours so they're a crucial step in human evolution um that's like Lucy have you heard of
Lucy that like skeleton so Lucy is Astro
Australia I really thought I could do this also replicas whatever around I'll
wear them after that's like 42 million years ago starting to walk on two eggs a crucial step in evolution
you said you said it was um six million years ago yes potentially the two my found in Chad
did you find that one well I'm looking at cmai these don't go back six million years
they go back like hundreds of thousands of years oh they're different oh they're
different kinds there's homo it's not Homo Sapien it's like Homo erectus and Homo whatever it's all kinds exactly
exactly and that's what I mean they're different species of like our well the
next one is of humans of the the the the homo bus so yeah
is the is the overarching category that we all fall under I think yes
okay close enough so there's some fossils from like 2.8
2.3 million years ago where we start to get into our genus the Homo habilis is one of the
first ones they're the ones that had bigger brains and walked and then we
also you know had to um there's one from 2.3 million years ago
there's a homo rodolfinus and that and these all also have names like the name
of the of the fossil from homo rudolphus from 2.3
million years ago is k-n-m-e-r-1470 yeah I saw that too yeah
it's like Isotopes like yeah it's unbelievable so um it could be that the
Homeward office is a different species or could just be another of the Homo habilis is it's hard to tell
um this is also like I know that we talked about um we I was talking about like dinosaurs but um parents there's a TV show called
Dino Dana that is that is so fun um and so Dana Dana is like a little girl who can see dinosaurs like she's
and she's a delight and it's very like learn a ton but the down day in a movie the question they're asking is why
aren't there any kid dinosaurs like why don't you find children dinosaurs and the answer is that some of the dinosaurs
that we think are different dinosaurs are actually the children of bigger dinosaurs
so it's not that not not two different species it's like just a child so some of the things that we're finding they're
very specific like the idea that a neanderthal is like a hunched over like man is because the first one we found
was an old man who had rickets so like take a skeleton from like one of the worst of us and say that's what humans
look like yeah makes sense so we just don't know um the um Homo erectus those are like
those are ones that you may have may have heard of like the Java Man and the P King man like found around around the
world that's like 1.9 million years ago um and there's also been hoaxes so once
people started to say like you know we are descendants from these different homo uh homo species and they're they're from
the species of like apes then people would like buy an ape skull take the jaw off put human teeth on it and try to
sell it to a museum it's pretty smart actually that's kind of uh that's that's an entrepreneur right there
so a lot of that happened in the beginning like in the beginning I mean like 100 years ago it's not even it's not even new
um in 1.9 million years ago in Africa Homo erectus
um is when you think about like standing up the tallest went further with tools they have bigger brains there's um
that's the Java Man and the Peking man or Homo erectus there's um evidence that they like had art you
know they were the only Homo sapiens on Earth for a while or the homo species on Earth the homo erectus yeah longer than
we were longer than us like they lasted longer than we did so far that's the convergence that's like where like
everything I'm looking at this like amazing genealogy map and that's what I'm saying it's so much yeah it's a lot
this is like so many people has probably spend their entire life just researching like one aspect of one of these things
100 so now we get to Homo sapiens um they are it's like homo and assessor
that's where we come from um there are offshoots just like in anything else um there are others that are just like
one jaw so you just don't know but it's potentially the ancestor of everyone you know we're Homo sapiens neanderthals are
in the group homo but a distinct species happen at the same time so for a while we thought that they were
um that they were totally separate but we're not sure it's definitely a
distinct side quest um and but neanderthals they definitely
we're healthy they cared for each other they were artistic they used tools um and my 23 and me uh DNA I have more
Neanderthal DNA than 70 of the population 77 of other of the population
um I have a little bit less than two percent Neanderthal DNA well
um so wait wait hold on let me so we we enter oh yeah because we're the same we're different breeds of the same
species yep wow so you can
meet with a neanderthal and have a child and that child can have children which is how you get neutral DNA into the DNA
of most humans unless you can trace your line all the way into Africa that you've never left Africa then you don't have it
but everybody else does this has to do with the Toba as well
so there's a couple other
um oh like what question is like you know why did the Neanderthals um go extinct it could be because they just
got like absorbed into the homo sapien population it could be because they were a little bit violent it could be one of
the reasons they think maybe it's because um Homo sapiens were able to um get
domesticate dogs and have dogs help them hunt and Neanderthals didn't do that so we got all the food
so there's like a bunch of different theories that's why me and Charles don't exist anymore and that we're the only species of of homo sapien out there you
know what I mean yeah it's saying that um 20 of Neanderthal genes have survived
in our our DNA yeah she said a lot
which I think which is crazy which I think is is crazy there's you could be like I know like now you know recess are
like we're all so different you're like actually we're not but if there was actually a different species of human that'd be crazy
yeah yeah it's interesting because it breaks it if you look at um the Wikipedia for
neanderthals the end of breeding with modern humans it talks about the differences in terms of like
geography and the density of the average person Neanderthal so eurasians it says
3.4 to 7.9 percent is Neanderthal DNA and there's variations in every part of
the world so like some places like the neanderthals more than others I guess I don't I mean well I think it's
because they were there more because they were in the cold areas they were they were up in like they're up in in
Europe they're up in like Northern Asia where it's cold yeah that's why there were not neanderthals in Africa because
it was too hot for them so they were up in other places yes it wasn't like a day it wasn't like they were like this is
hot for me let's move it was like you know generations of migrating and like moving around yeah
okay cool so there's other things and again this is like it's wild because they're gonna
find something new tomorrow you know like who knows um in 2010 someone found a 41 000 year
old finger bone of a child um that could be another Branch from 600
up to 600 000 years ago called the denosovian um it isn't Homo Sapien or Neanderthal
so it might be something else so they found it could be a third one that we don't know about that lasted longer um in 2003 there's evidence of like a of
a group of people in the island of Flores like in Indonesia that are descended from H erectus but they're
like off the shoot of homo sapiens but they were also very small so they like literally call them Hobbits they would
have been about 3.7 inches tall um because they were inches that feet
feet okay if you eat oh my God sorry feet um she says that would have been awesome 3.7 feet tall so they're like little
because they all lived on an island where there was like not a lot of diversity in like their food and they didn't have to be that big so
again over 100 thousands of years but there's another one as well so this is who knows what else you're going to find
they're going to find all sorts of stuff as they continue to like be able to search and date these things
okay so quick side chat about volcanoes
do you know how volcano works um it is a capped mountain with a hollow
cavity in the center that is connected to the mag I forgot which part of the core it is
but it's somehow connected to the Center of the Earth and there's a Magna magma chamber and when it builds up with too
much pressure it explodes at the top pretty close
plates in the world moving and then sometimes they you know they obviously
they hit each other and we get earthquakes sometimes if they push up against each other you get kind of like a weak spot that is like a um
essentially like a tiny crack in the magma and in the in the earth's structure and that is what a volcano is
so inside the earth there's the magma and the pressure builds up because the plates are moving the Maga wants to
escape so it pushes up it finds a weak spot which is a volcano and it'll push up and it will do a couple things it'll
do lava which is like you've seen some some volcanoes are like the ones you see in Hawaii which are like
um really slow moving lava coming down you know off Side of the Mountain you'll
see those those are like on the scale it's like the Richter Scale where like the difference between one and three is
huge the same idea so like a volcano in in Hawaii would be like a zero or a one
on the scale um because it's just like kind of like slowly moving definitely dangerous and scary but like not a huge
thing and the ones that are huge like um like Krakatoa like the ones that you like run across the world those are like
a four where you can like see it across the whole entire world was like a 10. so this one's like this is the biggest
volcano they think in the history of the world the top of volcano um so
another thing that happens with volcanoes is it's not just like lava sporting everywhere the big problem
is actually the ash so the volcanic ash shoots up into the air like miles and
then the wind just takes it and that's when it can like cover the Earth because the wind is like taking these like miles
of Ash kind of all over the whole world and volcanic ash is also very very heavy
so like it's not like being if you think of I think of Ash as being like really light
because it's Ash you know it's in the air but volcanic ash is heavy and it's dense so like during like when the Toba
volcano I'll tell you this in a second it exploded in Indonesia it covered India with like a foot of Ash
wow because it's like and it like hardens and turns into and turns into rock it can also like help the soil like
it can be like a it's a nutrient dense but it also you know kills you and it's hot as balls
um do you remember when that volcano exploded in New Zealand um in 2019 when people were on vacation
so there's a woman named um it was just it wasn't lava it was like the ash that
hit the hit the people um there's a woman named Stephanie browett her father and her sister died
um in New Zealand's North Island but there she survived with so such severe
burns there's a photo of her that she shared um in the hospital of her back and it looks like a anatomical model of
muscles because all of her skin is gone what's her name crazy Stephanie browett b-r-o-w-i-t-t
so she's a survivor of a volcano but I'm not just like that's like one of some of the terrible things that it it does to
you well oh God so besides obviously yeah do you
know what I mean like it's just like it's not not like a a little the ash isn't just like oh so there's
some ash floating the ash is incredibly hot it's what boils your brain you know it's what kills you like that's a huge a
huge thing so so that's what this woman Stephanie got hit with was the astronaut actual like lava
well I guess a lot of hits you it just melts you immediately yeah you can't even get close to
um to Lava you know how like in movies people are like hanging over lava if
you're like within 10 feet of lava you catch on fire and probably less than that you know it's not like it's not a
joke yeah um so that's how a volcano Works mostly is the
ash it's the biggest problem because that is what can travel across like the entire Globe so now
it is 74 000 years ago and most most
species are gone there are the Neanderthals in Europe there's a homeless Homo sapiens in Africa and
Eurasia this just started to move out of Africa there are those Hobbits and Flores and there's also some HR rectus
in Eurasia but really quickly the hobbits in the HR rectus are gone after
the volcano so how do we know this happened 74 000 years ago in the 1990s people started to have
different ideas and they're finding things in rocks and fossils and DNA that all pointed to the same thing a genetic
bottleneck 74 000 years ago that means a lot a lot of different things came from
a small Survivor population so that's like most of the homo sapiens are wiped out in a small population that 1 000
couples are the ones that we are all descended from so something must have happened and so all of anything that was
going to make us diverse in different areas was gone and we were just like one small Survivor population they also see
the same thing that happened in pandas and tigers all at the exact same time
these were Homo sapiens a thousand okay yeah yes and that's where we're all
descended from is those those people and um the there's other like microorganisms
that have the same thing the in the book I was reading like there's probably so many other animals that have the same
genetic bottleneck but we know about tigers and pandas because they're cute makes sense but like there's probably
some ugly animals that similarly um so the Neanderthals are in you know Eurasia
and Europe um Homo sapiens are starting to spread out of Africa there's large animals as
well um which is which are like which I think is so fun when you like learn about like giant bears and giant sloths and like
destroying animals um super fun but they're all gonna um gonna go pretty soon so
there's this volcano near Sumatra which is the top of volcano also a reminder of Sumatra is where Van
Gogh was supposed to go to do his military service but they paid someone else to go nice throwback
um so it when the day that the Mount Hope
volcano exploded we'll never know like what day it was or like exactly what happened but Ash and pumice
have started to roll out of the top of the volcano so this is starting to happen then
um when it actually explodes and is an explosion so Krakatoa that we'll talk
about later in our series is like the one that a lot of people have heard about that was the one like the 1880s when that happened a sonic boom went
around the earth seven times so like people heard it everywhere you know like
it was it was the loudest thing anyone's ever recorded or anyone has ever heard Mount Toba was a thousand times more
powerful than that that's crazy so nothing in the world escaped hearing it it
um the once the ash what the ash plume went about and like the mushroom cloud and all this stuff was about came out
about 200 miles per hour and it went like six miles up into the air um the pumice and Ash from Mount Toba
covered about 15 million square miles which is 14 of the Earth
so it was everywhere um six inches of Ash covered all of Asia 10 inches covered all of India so it
also would have like mixed with dirt and created mudslides there was most likely a tsunami you know probably several
tsunamis that like destroyed people where people were living immediately like anything on any Coast near it was
probably destroyed almost immediately um the the ash is coming up is actually
sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide so I think it's not breathable it's like ruining you know the air everything in
the air is is dying it's also covering the Sun so that's what happened in the
year without a summer with Mary Shelley that's what happened um with Krakatoa is like it covers the
Sun and then you have a huge cooling event and the weather patterns change and a lot of Life dyes
um the sunlight's blocked things can't grow everything dies there's the hypothesize that Global temperature has
decreased anywhere from one to nine degrees so it's like a huge decrease like tons of things don't survive the
tree line fell um things would have things would have Frozen um we do know that there was an ice age
at this time this is probably why like an ice age started because of this so
what was left after this happened we have those 1 000 breeding pairs of people trying to survive
um between the eruption of Mount Toba there was like a 1 000 year Ice Age and then there was
um a from that from 74 000 years ago to 17 000 years ago it was generally cold
that's when all the large Mega megafauna animals died um and people started to just um kind of
move their small groups out into Europe some state in Africa obviously um but people kind of coming from that
that small group of people um another thing about another like genetic bottleneck that I thought was
really fun is hamsters you know hamsters yes the cute little pet all hamsters that you
have as a pet come from the same group of hamsters that was found in 1930 in Syria it was like a a a
um a wild animal and some dude was like I'm gonna go find a golden hamster found a little group of them they all died out
in the Wilds eventually and every hamster in existence in someone's cage is from that same family oh so thank you
it makes them cuter so that genetic bottleneck is because of
that group that was like taken away from any like bad things and put into like
safely now they just like breed like hamsters you know so after the mottobo collapsed or erupted
everybody who survived which was like a very small amount of people they survived because you know they were able
to find ways to like get food and other places that weren't able to
um and they were able to go out and then like you know populate the whole the whole rest of the world
so this is a theory because it's 74 000
years old so like I said like they learned about DNA in 1960 we haven't even known for 100 years and how fast things are how
change are changing and how fast we're learning like we might know more tomorrow we know more in in the year
like some people think that um maybe it was something else that caused us Ice Age but a lot of the evidence points to Mount Toba erupting
because of like you know the Ash and the glass and the Ash and the uranium and the things that we can like carbon date back there and we don't have Homo
sapiens don't differ after that you know it's it's when we like came out and like started to
um to really become who we think we are today um there's really good evidence that it's true there's other mass extinctions
obviously like the dinosaurs went extinct that was probably a meteor but other kinds dinosaurs might have gone
extinct because of volcanoes so there's all sorts of things that like we don't know but it could have been because of these because when a volcano erupts it's
like not just isolated it can affect the whole world um I did not add to my list the one in
Iceland because I absolutely cannot say that one but you remember when that happened yes there's a nice potential on
it yeah is there I I remember seeing things like American News trying to
pronounce it and it was just like the best because I can't pronounce any any Icelandic words but it's really fun
um so the book that I read that when humans nearly vanished like you know the stress
is that you know we all come from the same group of people because we were Hardy because we were able to like get out of this and then we started to move
around so we're all so similar genetically um which is really just like such small differences between you know
anyone of any race like that's that's something that we shouldn't even like consider when we're talking about people because people are also so brand new and
there used to be like other types of people and there used to be other things and there's so much I mean the whole world we don't know anything that
happened until so unbelievably recently um but like there will be other volcanoes we'll talk
about what might happen in the future later um but you probably won't die in a mass extinction event like you probably won't
die in like um San Andreas type California coming off the side of the thing you probably
won't die when um Yellowstone finally erupts that probably will happen you know in a long time people don't really die from these
things but to get a smidge political the things people are dying from is heat and
cold um so more people die of overheating in their homes than of any other natural
disaster because there's unless there's like a big event like a tsunami but like mostly as people not being able to adapt
to the current climate change that's killing people but there have been some
volcanoes that we've erupted where we actually can know what happens because we have first-hand experiences so the
next one I do is Mount Vesuvius and we have a first-hand account from Plenty of the younger of of what happened and
we'll talk about that and then talk about what it looks like in Pompeii and what happened to those people next time
I get back to volcanoes um Taylor just as a real quick synopsis am I gonna die because of Yellowstone
no you're gonna die because of like it's going to be too hot to live
I don't think I'm gonna dive that I think I'm like probably gonna die of
you're more likely to diet because it's impossible to be outside at all in
America then it is right now it is actually legitimately like I my dog
hates my guts because it's like why are you keep me in the house like I can't take you outside like you will die I'm
overheat yeah um yeah um yeah I mean I mean it's I don't know
what was it in uh the day after tomorrow what was that what was that was that a volcano the day after tomorrow no the
day after tomorrow it was an ice age right
but how did it happen so fast oh God that I don't know
a science fiction I'm so sorry everyone um
coming global superstorm
is extreme weather events and climate change I don't know I don't know what happened in one day
do you know that NASA came up with a plan on how to prevent Yellowstone from exploding
did they good because it does scare me um because I have seen those those like images of like y'all sort of splitting
in just like two seconds later off America is covered in Ash and then it's like
Canada's gone Mexico's gone the ash plumes everywhere
in terms of large explosions Yellowstone experienced three and two 1.3 and half
million years ago I mean it's like that and like the big
the big uh earthquake like they're like it could happen in a thousand years or it could happen tomorrow you're like God
damn it I mean listen I when I was living in L.A I actually thought about that like I
mean you you remember there were times when you'd wake up and your bed was like in the middle of the room because you were going through an art I mean my
first earthquake and it was at your friend's place but remember the guy that um you you got me his apartment or
something I subleased from it and the first time I experience I was like what the is it was terrifying it was
absolutely terrifying confusing it's like it's confusing because you're like I know what I should do an earthquake right now I'm not
actively having one but what happens you first you need someone to confirm as an earthquake so if otherwise you're like
am I going crazy you think your cars run into a building because it just feels so off
so loud too like if the building like at least the couple times that I've been in one like the building shakes in a way
that you're like huh and then the other thing the other thing that comes to your mind is you're like
is this going to be that big one like should I be panicked right now because because you're so clutched with like
care in the moment and confusion so my mom was like she was like I love
movie San Andreas I watch it all the time and I was like I can't watch it that much I was like but I understand you know the
rock is very handsome man that I get it
um yeah so okay so that is the Toba catastrophe theory that 74 000 years ago
a big volcano exploded changed to human who humans are because so many different
types of uh human species died out that just a small group survived and that
turned to us we are all related the Earth is terrifying let's take good care of it before it kills us because it's
100 gonna kill us and clear this should we we should be racist or we should not
be racist you should not be racist not be racist okay racist is brand new we're
all we're all we're all people come on you're nerds um some of the stuff like I said there's
some hoaxes like some of the hoaxes are like you know people like when they're finding the stuff out and like finding
these um Homo sapiens in Africa to prove that like we're all from the same woman in Africa you know however many you know
hundreds of thousands of years ago um people in Europe are pissed you know like the Nazis were pissed they were
like there's no way that that you know the first human came from Africa you know and then they're like he must have
come from here and they really wanted really really wanted humans have come from Europe and like they just didn't
get over it and that was one good thing about Oppenheimer was it brought up the fact
that the Nazis didn't believe in like actual physics because real physics was mostly
created by like Jewish people like all the best physicists in the world were Jewish and they were like those nerds
their racism prevented them from successful in being good racist like that was it was like the most ironic
thing ever they just handed Einstein to us exactly exactly the smartest guy ever and you
just give them to us um yeah totally yeah so all that is just it's just so new and it's so interesting
um and fun so you know diversity is Fun For All People we're all people this is
good this is a really creative concept Taylor like you're you're like throwing me for a loop here it's making me realize I got to set my game up but I
really loved this story and I'm excited about the next one and the next one after that in all seven parts so thank
you thank you yeah thank you it'll be in no particular timeline but you know
um but yeah also have you been to Pompeii no I have it this one I'll talk more about
it okay yeah we'll do it um folks remember right supposed to Doom
to failpod gmail.com we'd love to hear people's feedback and thank you for
listening and share with your friends yeah please share find us at Doom to Philip pod um everywhere that you listen to
podcasts and see things I'm so sorry I have one more thing to share Art Bell wrote theater tomorrow
yeah oh really yes and his um Wikipedia picture he's smoking a cigarette and wearing a turtleneck and
it was pretty awesome pretty fun it does look very cool that's all
cool thanks Forrest sweet thanks all bye
[Music]