Supervolcano (docudrama)

Infobox_Film
name = Supervolcano


caption = "Scientists know it as the deadliest volcano on Earth. You know it...as Yellowstone"
writer = Edward Canfor-Dumas
Julian Simpson
starring = Michael Riley
Gary Lewis
Shaun Johnston
Adrian Holmes
Jennifer Copping
Rebecca Jenkins
director = Tony Mitchell
producer = Sara Cropley
Victoria Goodall
Michael Mosley
Ailsa Orr
Fiona Scott
Rosie Taylor
distributor = BBC (UK)
Discovery Channel
released = March, 2005 (UK)
runtime = 115 min.
language = English
budget = "Unknown"
awards =
imdb_id = 0419372
amg_id = 1:372734

"Supervolcano" is a 2005 BBC/Discovery Channel docudrama centered on the fictional eruption of the volcanic caldera of Yellowstone National Park.

Plot

The film begins with a group of hooded people in caribou parkas riding through the snow on snowmobiles. Arriving at a nearly buried building, inside they find a video recorded journal of a man who appears to be dying. The man in the video reports that the Yellowstone caldera eruption has affected nearly everything in the United States, burying much of the country under several feet of volcanic ash.

The film then goes back five years to before the incident, where tourists are seen viewing Old Faithful and exploring the hydrovolcanic features of the Yellowstone National Park. Inside the visitor's centre, the same man from the video journal, Rick Lieberman, a USGS scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (Y.V.O), is seen presenting to a crowd on Yellowstone's seismic activity. He states during the presentation, using a fictional holographic projector known as "Virgil", that Yellowstone is on the verge of an eruption, though neither major nor hazardous.

Later throughout the film, more and more signs of seismic activity occur, all indicating towards the imminent eruption of Yellowstone (such as geyser explosions, earthquakes, tsunamis and Old Faithful going silent), though Rick and most of his colleagues try not to cause public panic by saying that these seismic activities do not necessarily indicate an imminent volcanic eruption. However, media speculation raises public alarm, helped in part by Rick Lieberman's brother-in-law, who is selling a book on supervolcanoes called 'Super Bangs'. As seismic activity increases, a leaked government e-mail acknowledging a possible eruption causes widespread panic.

Rick's team is caught by surprise while researching at the USGS field office next to Yellowstone when the volcano violently erupts, spewing tonnes of rock and pyroclastic material into the sky. Two of his colleagues, Nancy and Matt are killed as a result of attempting to outrun the pyroclastic flow, and only an injured Jock survives the eruption, escaping via helicopter. Rick is away at a conference and is caught in the ash cloud as he returns.

Tension begins to rise at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (F.E.M.A.) as more and more vents open above the underlying magma chamber throughout the week long eruption. On Day 3 the ash destroys the second Y.V.O. base in Bozeman, killing another colleague, Dave. People are literally being drowned in the volcanic ash and the death toll rises to hundreds of thousands. Slowly, thermal images begin to reveal a contour of the new caldera produced by the vents and authorities begin to realise the seriousness of this problem. Very soon, the authorities become desperate, trying to find a way to save the trapped Americans in the central and western half of the country. At F.E.M.A. Jock raises tension by saying that even after 2,500 cubic km of magma had come out, that it could still go on because Yellowstone has a maximum capacity of 25,000 cubic kilometers, ten times the amount already ejected. And Rick, while in contact with F.E.M.A. mentions that the entire caldera could explode after the collapse. Luckily, things take a better turn just as all hope is nearly lost; the caldera collapses upon itself, indicating the decrease in pressure within the magma chamber, and it doesn't explode.

As it turns out, the film ends with three quarters of the United States covered in nearly one centimeter of volcanic ash on average as a looming cloud of suspended, lighter ash gets carried over the globe, engulfing the northern hemisphere of Earth, and as a result, plunging it into a volcanic winter. The southern hemisphere however, gets a dose of the ice age while the rest of it is in drought.

The film ends the same way it started, only this time, the man is revealed to be Rick, shown with his brother-in-law and a US Marine. He later flies in a helicopter back to Yellowstone to see what has happened to the volcano that he has been studying all his life. What he sees is a frozen landscape resembling Antarctica, where no vegetation nor animals are visible; a frozen lifeless world, but he states his optimistic views on it also, saying that although it is the ending of much life, life would also begin as a result of this event.

Finally, the last scene shows the camera panning out from the area where Yellowstone erupted in a series of satellite images. Eventually showing the cataclysmically large resulting landform caldera relative to the size of the United States.

Cast

*Michael Riley as "Rick Lieberman"
*Gary Lewis as "Jock Galvin"
*Shaun Johnston as "Matt"
*Adrian Holmes as "Dave"
*Jennifer Copping as "Nancy"
*Rebecca Jenkins as "Wendy Reiss"
*Tom McBeath as "Michael Eldridge"
*Robert Wisden as "Kenneth Wylie"
*Susan Duerden as "Fiona Lieberman"
*Emy Aneke as "Johnson"
*Jane McLean as "Maggie Chin"
*Garwin Sandford as "Bob Mann"
*Sam Charles as "William Lieberman"
*Kevin McNulty as "Joe Foster"
*Shelagh Mitchell as "as Fiona's Mother"

ee also

*"Superstorm", a 2007 miniseries by the same producers.
*Supervolcano

External links

*imdb title|id=0419372|title=Supervolcano
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/supervolcano/ BBC: Supervolcano]
* [http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/supervolcano.html Discovery Channel: Supervolcano]