Some things never change. I was at dinner the other night and the North Americans starting going on and on about what a dangerous place is Australia- snakes, spiders, crocodiles, sharks,....

That's rich- this was a Vancouver dialogue. These folks live on an fault line with active volcanos on the horizon. There are no, zip, zero volcanos in Australia. The whole continent lies inside one tectonic plate. Geological activity? Just say no.

So let's do the maths shall we? Shark attacks last year in Australia vs ... Kobe! Or worse, Pompeii ! See, a crocodiles will eat you- if you are stupid enough to take a boat into their marsh lands. But one volcano can trash a whole city!

It's so unfair. My partner Helen speaks of Australia as death trap. And she grew up under the shadow of New Zealand's Mt Ruapehu. Ruapehu is Maori for "twin peaks exploding into pit". Or "get the hell out of here, she's going to blow... again". Sharks and crocodiles attract tourists but when Ruapehu went BANG in 1996, it killed the local skiing industry for years and years.

There's all this geological records for west coast USA. One big earthquake (I mean, really BIG) every 200 years for as far back as we can see. But no big earthquake for the last 400 years. It's coming- everyone knows it. And when it does, the Californian economy (third biggest economy in the world) is going to get a savage dent in it's cash flow (lava flow does that to cash flow).

And that will be nothing, I repeat nothing compared to pending Yellowstone explosion. The reason Yellowstone bubbles is that it sits on a huge super-volcano, which is active. The ground there is 74cm higher than in was in 1923- i.e. the magma is pouring in underground and the pressure is building. When Yellowstone blows, magma will be flung 50 kilometres into the atmosphere. Nearly all life within a thousand kilometres would die from falling ash, lava flows and the sheer BANG of the explosion.

Now lets compare that with, oh- I don't know- how about, snakes! Well, there are anti-venoms. I ask you, is snake bite plus anti-venom worse than volcano plus clouds of poisonous gases plus molten rock falling out of the sky? I don't think so.