and this cloud also killed hundreds of thousands more in europe, according to john grattan.how could an eruption in iceland affect people across such a vast area so far away? grattan: how on earth can these gases be concentrated sufficiently that you can taste them and smell them that they will burn your eyes over a thousand miles away? narrator: the answer to that lies not with laki's eruption, but with the weather. during the last week of june 1783 high pressure sweeps over northwest europe, bringing fine summer weather. but it also allows something foul high in the atmosphere to sink downwards. that's where the volcanic gases are. now they are being sucked down dragged down to the earth's surface, and it's like a blowtorch devastating the environment below it. narrator: the high pressure acts like a vast funnel. air spiraling down from the upper atmosphere brings with it laki's poisonous gases. if we were standing here in 1783, the view behind us would have disappeared. what we would see instead would be a blue haze across the landscape. the color green would disappear be

grattan: but how would they do that?do that by switching off the power stations that might be burning coal. they'd do that by stopping us driving cars that are emitting pollution from the engines. they'd do that by closing factories down. i think modern-day society should very much be concerned with volcanism. i think we're probably more susceptible to these types of events in the 21st century than we were even in the early 20th century. we think we're immune to these things and frankly we're not. narrator: those least able to protect themselves would be most affected. grattan: to be brutal about it, the vulnerable population will be culled from society: the elderly, the sick, people with heart and lung conditions, the obese. we are going to see many, many people dying. narrator: today we have a society dependent on air travel. davies: the way we move food freight, people around the world now any disruption to that is devastating. narrator: a society that's delicately linked together. grattan: so a massive volcanic erupt

largely with the grattan ministration small government have government do very very little let the plutocrats do whatever they want it produced the longest depression in the history of the united states it devastated this country as referred to as the gilded age and also created a bunch of billionaires the second was in one thousand twenty two and warren harding ran for president on the slogan of less government and business more business and government kicked off the roaring twenty's harding coolidge and hoover and then you know it all blew up in one thousand nine hundred ninety because it predictably always does blow up when you have a market that's not regulated and then the third was when ronald reagan was inaugurated in his first inaugural address declared that he was going to repeat the mistake that have been made by grant and by a hearty areas. government is not the solution to our problem government is the problem. from time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by so. that government by an elite group is superior to government for by.