NASA's plan to prevent the eruption of the supervolcano Yellowstone could lead to its explosion - to trigger a nuclear winter that will destroy humanity reports
Brian Wilcox, a former member of NASA's Planetary Defense Advisory Board, made a horrifying revelation while discussing the space agency's report.
He said NASA's "risky" proposals to prevent the eruption could go wrong with disastrous consequences.
One of the proposed methods was drilling the bottom of the volcano and using compressed water flow to release heat from the magma chamber.
But Mr. Wilcox said there is a chance these actions will not be successful.
“If you drill through the top of the magma chamber and try to cool it this way, it’s very risky,” he said.
“This could make the upper surface above the magma chamber more fragile and more vulnerable to destruction. And you can cause harmful volatile gases to be released into the magma at the top of the chamber that would not otherwise have been released."
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But Mr. Wilcox warned that there is complete clarity that action must be taken over Yellowstone.
He told the BBC, “I was a member of the NASA Planetary Defense Advisory Board, which studied the ways NASA proposed to protect the planet from asteroids and comets.
"In the course of this research, I came to the conclusion that the threat of a supervolcano is significantly higher than that of asteroids or comets."
There are 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth that, if they explode, will cause planet-changing effects.
Major eruptions are incredibly rare, with the most recent being around 26,500 years ago in New Zealand.
But if an event like this happens today, it would trigger a nuclear winter, killing people in just a few months by starvation.
Mr Wilcox said action on Yellowstone is so urgent that an eruption is largely imminent. He explained, "Yellowstone explodes roughly every 600,000 years, and it's been roughly 600,000 years since it last erupted, which should make us sit down and think."