The origins of this photo have been pretty muddy over time. Some on the internet claim that the photographer was found dead with his film under him, and that sounds credible because that actually happened, but to someone else. It took years of research and digging, but. The photographer, Richard Lasher, survived, but only because he decided to sleep in that morning and not leave as early as planned.
You can probably see where I’m going with this, but complacency can be even worse, even if not as deadly. But, I’ll come back to the people who lost their lives after I talk about how little the eruption mattered to mine growing up. When I was in college, hysteria over the Yellowstone volcano seemed to hit a peak. Since then, scientists have figured out and the rest of us are starting to get a clue that. The likelihood of any eruption happening in any of our lifetimes is very low. But, my childhood idea that the Lower 48 is safe from extreme events was still shattered. While the issue of volcanoes was real for people living in the Pacific Northwest, it became part of reality for me when I saw my town on the maps.
USGS scientists determined how dangerous the volcano was in the weeks leading up to the biggest eruption