From the way the boffins go on about it, it sounds like a supervolcano eruption is the worst possible thing that could happen to a planet - or at least the one that'll cause the most devastation. Note that they compared it to the sort of damage a stray asteroid or meteorite crashing into the Earth's surface would cause, though; the biggest such impact in modern history was Tunguska event in Russia, which released an explosion of energy about 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. That meteorite was estimated to be between 60 and 190 metres in diameter. Scientists reckon that, 500,000 years in the future, the Earth will have been struck by a piece of space debris roughly 1 km in diameter. Assuming it cannot be averted, of course. We actually have a bunch of mooted ideas for how to deal with big hunks of cosmic rock headed right at us. There's the "chuck Bruce Willis and a load of dynamite at it" contingency plan, the theoretical use of gravity tractors (pretty much like the tractor beams the Empire use to net the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars), use of focused solar energy, sticking rockets on the side of the asteroids and blasting them off in another direction and, obviously, nuking them. None of which would be open to us by then because, as we say, humanity will almost certainly be extinct. So instead the Earth will have been struck with something that releases as much force as 1 million of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. There's not gonna be a whole lot left after that.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
