10 Terrible Acts of Mother Nature
For years now, we have suffered unremitting lectures on how mankind is ruining its chance of a future due to its indiscriminate disposal of waste, and excessive reliance upon fossil fuels. This is just a small reminder that, when in a bad mood, Old Mother Nature can do more harm to the fragile human race in the blink of an eye than men can do to themselves in over a century of industrial pollution. Her advantage is, she has the time and the talent to remake everything again. Natural catastrophes have always played a part in this planets history, but I don’t intend to comment on those still fresh in peoples minds. In chronological order: 
Biped humanoids first appeared several million years ago, but the modern variety, Homo sapiens, hadn’t been around too long before they were almost wiped out. About 75,000 years ago, Lake Toba, in Indonesia, erupted in a super volcanic event, described by many scientists as ‘mega-colossal’. The event is believed to have been the largest explosive eruption anywhere on earth in the last 25 million years, and it was so immense it came very close to calling time-out for the burgeoning human race.
Up to 6,000 cubic kilometers of ash – enough to cover the entire USA to a depth of 70cm – jetted into the atmosphere. It took place in a part of the world fairly thin in habitation at that time, but its discharge of vast amounts of noxious sulphur dioxide, and a deposit of ash 25 centimeters thick, destroyed all the lush forests of south-east Asia, while dust clouds blocked sunlight and plunged the entire planet into an estimated 6 to 10 year volcanic winter.
There was worldwide destruction of vegetation and severe drought in all tropical rain forests, and entire groups of animals became eliminated. Some people believe this may have resulted in humans world-wide being reduced to just a few thousand individuals, surviving mostly in Africa, with a core of perhaps only 10,000 breeding pairs. This bottleneck in human evolution, they say, could have been responsible for the very small residual gene pool in the world’s population now.
