What images go through your mind when you think of the end of the world? Asteroids? Perhaps a world war? Climate change? Or even aliens? Even if some of these things are realistic, there's a much greater threat lurking beneath Earth's surface that could put an end to human civilisation — and very few know about it. According to a report by the BBC, even NASA sees them as one of the greatest natural threats to humanity: supervolcanoes.

What are supervolcanoes, and how catastrophic can they be? Learn how supervolcanoes form, where supervolcanoes are located, and how their destructive capabilities can make way for new life.

Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth’s atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon’s defeat, says new research. Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history. Two months prior, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, killing 100,000 people and plunging the Earth into a ‘year without a summer’ in 1816.

It's known as the "Great Dying," an extinction event even more powerful than the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It's called the Permian-Triassic extinction event, and it took place 250 million years ago, before dinosaurs ruled the Earth. Scientists previously believed the Permian-Triassic extinction event happened because of a volcanic eruption. And not just any volcanic eruption... the volcanic eruption. Called the "Siberian Flood Basalts," this million-year-long volcanic eruption potentially caused the extinction of up to 96 percent of marine life, along with 70 percent of terrestrial vertebrate species.

Scientists are hoping archaeology, carbon dating, and tree rings together can help solve the mystery.

This giant volcano is very much alive

Even after a 220,000-year break, the caldera can get rolling in just a few years. By Scott K. Johnson.

What can be done to prepare Naples for the volcano in their midst?

At noon on August 24, 79 A.D. the peak of Mount Vesuvius exploded, propelling a 10-mile mushroom cloud of ash and pumice into the stratosphere. For the next 12 hours, volcanic ash and a hail of pumice stones up to 3 inches in diameter showered Pompeii, forcing the city’s occupants to flee in terror. Some 2,000 people stayed in Pompeii, holed up in cellars or stone structures, hoping to wait out the eruption.

The wind shifts. The stench of rotten eggs makes it nearly impossible to breathe and the hot fog clouds my view. I hold my breath and close my eyes, imagining the fog growing thicker, crushing me. Then without warning the wind clears and I’m enveloped once again in the cold, dry air. The heat feels like a lost dream. I shiver as I analyze my surroundings.

Impressive footage of a volcano eruption used in the BBC series Patagonia: Earth’s Secret Paradise has been revealed as fake. According to The Observer, the BBC admitted the scene was created by merging two separate eruptions from two separate volcanoes together - one from 2011 and one from 2015 - even though the programme suggested the eruption was a single occurrence.

There’s something about volcanoes that brings out the worst in your modern creationist. They’re willfully ignorant about plenty of things, and surely do love viewing science through a funhouse mirror, but most of them (ACE excepted) do manage to avoid mangling some of the science. Some of it even sounds downright secular in places. But they’ve got this really odd complex about volcanoes. They lose their shit to such an extent that they can’t even get basic facts straight.

Maly Semyachik is a stratovolcano located in the eastern part of Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. Three overlapping stratovolcanoes were constructed sequentially along a NE-SW line, with the youngest cone, Tseno-Semyachik, at the southwest end. A hot, acidic crater lake fills the historically active Troitsky Crater, which formed during a large explosive eruption of Ceno-Semiachik about 400 years ago.

Europe's Mount Etna and Nicaragua's Momotombo both erupted spectacularly in this first week of December, 2015.

Geologists have long-known that continental crust forms when liquid, hot magma bubbles up from deep within the Earth, but have been debating on just how that happens.

Photographed by Abdul Azis.

The Tungurahua volcano spews fumes and lava in Huambalo, Ecuador, Feb. 27, 2016.

France's iconic Chauvet cave holds mysterious spray-shaped imagery, made around the time when nearby volcanoes were spewing lava. By Ewen Callaway. (Jan. 15)

Pavlof is one of the most consistently active volcanoes in the Aleutian Islands

In a remote and desolate landscape, the rocks are tearing themselves in two beneath your feet and new land is being born

Mexico's Popocatepetl volcano spewed a large column of ash and vapor Tuesday afternoon. (March 30)

A photo from an astronaut on the space station shows four magnificent Alaskan volcanoes poking out of the clouds.

Matthew Teller roams Ascension Island, a volcanic outpost of empire where it's hot and cold at the same time - and nobody's sure who's in charge.

Scientists think they can now tie the disruption that hit Mayan civilisation in the 6th Century to an eruption of the El Chichon volcano.

Back-to-back volcanic eruptions in the mid-6th century darkened Europe's skies for more than a year and may have ushered in the Dark Ages, according to finding to be presented Friday at a science conference in Vienna.

A new study suggests that volcanic eruptions did not lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and also demonstrates that Earth's oceans are capable of absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide—provided it is released gradually over an extremely long time. Scientists have long argued over the cause of the Cretaceous-Palaeogene extinction event, during which three-quarters of all plant and animal species, including the dinosaurs...

Volcanoes are awesome, but risking your life to get close to one is just plain stupid.

Photographer:Joel Santos - Shown above is an aerial image of Erta Ale in the Afar Region of northeastern Ethiopia. The caldera of this continuously active, basaltic shield volcano cradles a lake filled with molten lava.

Volcano eruptions can wreak havoc on airplanes that fly through the clouds of ash and sulfur dioxide. The ash, in particular, can destroy a jet engine and even cause it to fail mid-flight. However, it can be difficult to detect the ash clouds, because they often look like ordinary rain clouds on radar and to the pilot's eye. To be cautious, volcanic eruptions are given a wide bearth, leading to costly delays and cancellations. NASA scientist Nickolay Krotkov is developing a new way to map ashes.

An active volcanic eruption on Jupiter's moon Io was captured in this false color image taken on February 22, 2000 by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. White and orange areas on the left side of the picture show newly erupted hot lava. The two small bright spots are sites where molten rock is exposed to the surface at the toes of lava flows. The larger orange and yellow ribbon is a cooling lava flow that is more than more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) long.

Snow in June, freezing temperatures in July, a killer frost in August: "The most gloomy and extraordinary weather ever seen," according to one Vermont farmer. Two centuries ago, 1816 became the year without a summer for millions of people in parts of North America and Europe, leading to failed crops and near-famine conditions. While they didn't know the chill's cause at the time, scientists and historians now know that the biggest volcanic eruption in human history, on the other side of the world...

Scientists say they've discovered a magma buildup near a New Zealand town that explains a spate of recent earthquakes and could signal the beginnings of a new volcano—although they're not expecting an eruption anytime soon.

Pavlof Volcano, a volcano on the southwestern end of the Alaska Peninsula, has seen increased seismic activity. The Alaska Volcano Observatory increased the volcano's threat level this past week.

The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 caused catastrophic loss of life and cooled the globe three degrees. By Jack Williams. (June 10, 2016)