The "600 000 year cycle" is journalistic licence (or to use the technical term, bollocks). From last night's (slightly) less sensational programme: 3 occurrences, 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640 000 years ago. That gives two measured intervals between eruptions, one of 800 000 years and one of 660 000 years. Certainly not enough to predict a pattern.Even if you use the highly dubious method of predicting on the basis of the shortest interval, we have 20 000 years to go before the next eruption is "due". Definitely not my problem.

nick