10 Prehistoric Climate Events That Wiped Out 90% of Life on Earth

252 million years ago, Earth came closer to total death than at any other moment in the history of complex life. This is the story of the End-Permian Extinction — the Great Dying — when massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia unleashed carbon, poison gases, acidified oceans, lethal heat, collapsing forests, and toxic seas that nearly erased life from the planet. From the golden spike at Meishan to the Siberian Traps, from dissolving shells and hydrogen sulfide oceans to the strange survivors that carried our own lineage through the apocalypse, this video explores how the world almost ended — and why the warning written in stone still matters today. This was not just an extinction. It was the closest Earth has ever come to becoming a dead planet. Subscribe for more forgotten stories from the darkest chapters of Earth’s history.