re: Real climate cataclysm: Scientists Can No Longer Ignore Ancient Flooding Tales (Netflix)

The Younger Dryas was the dramatic end of the Ice Age. It was essentially a nuclear winter. After the Younger-Dryas was over, all of the mega-fauna were dead, sea levels had risen hundreds of feet, the ice sheets had melted, and the climate was VERY different.

The Ice Age lasted for millions of years, fluctuating between periods of heavy glaciation and relatively warmer eras. The period immediately leading up to the Younger-Dryas was slightly warmer than the ice age typically was, but not so warm as to melt the ice sheets and raise sea levels. This environment left huge swaths of the globe fertile snd temperate for human development.

It is theorized that the Younger-Dryas’s sudden temperature plummet was caused by dust ejected from meteor impacts blocking out the sun. At the same time, however, despite drastically lower temperatures globally, the ice sheets melted rapidly, implying a meteor impacting the ice sheet. That’s one of the few triggers that could simultaneously temporarily cool global temperatures, destroy the food chain killing off megafauna, while also melting massive quantities of ice.