JACKSON, WY—Taking note of the circumstances that were presently transpiring on the surface, the dormant supervolcano located 12 miles beneath Yellowstone National Park reportedly thought to itself Friday that now was probably just as good a time as any. “You know, I’ve gotta do this sooner or later, and frankly, this just feels like a pretty decent time to pull the trigger and go through with this thing, so why not?” the 11,200-cubic-mile magma chamber reportedly told itself, adding that after 630,000 years without a supereruption, and given the week the landmass above it had just endured, the time seemed right to unleash an explosion 1,000 times more powerful than the Mt. St. Helens eruption and blanket much of North America in several feet of fiery ash, immediately killing 90,000 people and setting off a nuclear winter that would slowly annihilate millions more. “It’s been a while, and I mean, I’m more or less due on a geologic time scale, so today seems like a good enough day to me. I might as well just go for it, right?” At press time, the nation’s citizens were breathing an immense sigh of relief as an onrushing wall of superheated gas and volcanic ejecta came hurtling toward them.

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