Uturuncu

For a few years now I've been kind of worried about the Yellowstone supervolcano. Not that there's anything I (or you) can do about it, but some of us can't help worrying about that which we cannot affect.

But I've moved on. Now I'm worried about Uturuncu in southwest Bolivia.

Researchers realized about five years ago that the area below and around Uturuncu is steadily rising — blowing up like a giant balloon under a wide disc of land some 43 miles (70 kilometers) across. Satellite data revealed the region was inflating by 1 to 2 centimeters (less than an inch) per year and had been doing so for at least 20 years, when satellite observations began.

Now, rationally, it's a bad idea to panic. As noted above, there is absolutely nothing -- I mean nothing -- any of us can do about a supervolcano. (Well, unless you're the President of the United States, who presumably could issue a secret executive order establishing a survival bunker somewhere safe. That's pure speculation, by the way: I have absolutely no evidence that that has happened, although it would certainly make sense to have a survival bunker for more reasons than just surviving a supervolcano.) If a supervolcano erupts, the fallout, literal and otherwise, will be global: there will be no place to hide from it and no way to mitigate its effects (especially its sun-blocking impact) on any significant scale.

But I'll still worry.