2022 was not a happy new year in TongaAn archipelago of islands and Polynesian kingdom in the South Pacific. . In December, an underwater volcano erupted near the island nation, sending a huge plume of vapour into the sky. It continued rumbling for weeks. By the middle of January, the worst seemed to have passed.

But then the volcano erupted again. This time, the blast was seven times more powerful. The plume rose to 58 kilometres. A shockwave followed, smashing windows and damaging houses. Then a tsunamiA Japanese word describing a succession of waves caused when an earthquake or volcano displaces a large body of water. swamped parts of Tonga. The country suffered damage equal to almost a fifth of its GDPShort for Gross Domestic Product, the measure of all the goods and services produced inside a country.. 

Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haʻapai was a rare magnitude 5On the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which measures the size of eruptions based on size and intensity from 0 to 8. Each level is 10 times more powerful than the previous. There has not been a magnitude 8 eruption since 26500 BC. volcano, similar in ferocity to the Mount Vesuvius eruption that destroyed PompeiiA Roman town in Italy. It was buried under ash after a nearby volcano erupted. The ash preserved the town so well that today people can walk through the streets and into some buildings. or the 1980 explosion at Mount St HelensA volcano in the state of Washington, northwestern US. Its eruption in 1980 has been called the most disastrous volcanic event in US history. It killed 57 people and reduced hundreds of square miles to wasteland. .

Some believe an even bigger burst is on the way. Scientists have identified a one-in-six chance that a magnitude 7 or 8 volcano will occur this century.

Super-volcanoes have the potential to change the world. They can destroy cities and create craters and canyons. The last one happened in 1985. Tambora, in Indonesia, killed 100,000 people. The ash released lowered the Earth's average temperature by a degree. There were crop failures in China, Europe and North America, and flooding across Asia and Russia.

In today's world, the effect of a similar eruption would be more devastating. Yet according to volcanologist Michael Cassidy, little has been done to prepare. He says: "There is no coordinated action, nor large-scale investment, to mitigate the global effects of large-magnitude eruptions."

The effect of a supervolcano is similar to an asteroidA small body in space, made of metal and rock material. Asteroids usually orbit the sun, but if knocked off course they can be drawn into Earth's gravity and fall towards it.  or cometConsisting mainly of dust, ice and gas, comets also orbit the Sun, with tails that can be millions of miles long. hitting earth. Big volcanic blasts are hundreds of times more likely to occur.

Others counter there is only so much we can do. The human race faces hundreds of threats. Some are more immediate and localised, such as the war in Ukraine. Some are longer-term and existentialRelating to the state of human existence. Existential dread can refer to grappling with your own experiences of responsibility and death., such as climate change.

Volcanoes are uncertain. We have no firm idea of when the next super volcanic eruption will occur and the exact effects it will have. There are not, says economist Tim Harford: "many easy answers to the general problem of preparing for predictable catastrophes." An unpredictable catastrophe is even harder. And if we spend all our lives focusing on every potential disaster, there will be no time to do anything else.

Yes: Millions of people have witnessed the ruins of Pompeii first-hand. We have had almost 2,000 years to work out how to prevent similar devastation. That we have not is extreme carelessness.

No: No one can ignore the threat volcanoes pose. But given the many problems we face and the unpredictability of volcanic activity, it is inevitable that more immediate concerns come first.

Or... Short of removing whole populations from volcanic regions and resettling them elsewhere, there is very little we can do that lessens the effect of a volcano. We should focus on what we can change.