A few weeks ago, nobody who wasn’t liv­ing lit­er­ally in the shadow of a vol­cano was giv­ing much thought to the impact that a vol­canic erup­tion could have on their lives. Of course, that was before the volcano-nobody-could-pronounce erupted in Ice­land, shut­ting down air traf­fic in Europe for sev­eral days. Would-be trav­el­ers were faced with a choice between sit­ting tight in Lon­don (or wher­ever) and read­ing a book or sight­see­ing, or else hop­ping a train to race south and attempt to fly out of a dif­fer­ent air­port. For most trav­el­ers, it was a rel­a­tively minor incon­ve­nience and per­haps a bit of unplanned expense. For the air­lines, it would cer­tainly have had a much big­ger impact.