The Cataclysm Files
Floods, impacts, supervolcanoes, and the extinctions that erased whole worlds before ours. The same forces that reset civilization once are still live risks today, so this wing runs the line from deep-time catastrophe straight into the dangers still ahead of us.
Chicxulub: The Asteroid That Ended the Dinosaurs
About 66 million years ago a 10 km asteroid struck the Yucatan, and roughly three-quarters of all species, every non-avian dinosaur among them, vanished.
The Missoula Floods: The Deluge That Carved the Scablands
An Ice Age lake half the size of Lake Michigan burst its ice dam and emptied in days, over and over, carving the Channeled Scablands in the greatest freshwater floods known on Earth.
The Toba Supereruption: The Winter That Nearly Ended Us
About 74,000 years ago Toba erupted in Sumatra, the largest eruption in two million years. Whether its winter nearly ended the human line is one of archaeology's most genuinely open questions.
Vesuvius and Pompeii: The City Caught in Its Final Hour
In 79 CE Vesuvius held a 33 km column over the Bay of Naples, then buried Pompeii and Herculaneum where they stood, sealing a Roman world in ash.
The Younger Dryas Impact: Did a Comet Reset the Ice Age?
The Ice Age thaw stopped dead for 1,200 years, the megafauna died, and the Clovis hunters vanished. One hotly contested hypothesis says a comet was the trigger.