The script began development in the early 2010s, initially following a foreigner who was stranded at the Odessa airport due to volcanic eruptions in Iceland, and who then began traveling into the Ukrainian countryside. Writers Daria Averchenko, Roman Bondarchuk and Alla Tyutyunnyk greatly updated the plot following the Euromaidan movement, the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, the Russian annexation of Crimea and the War in Donbass, but kept the title "Volcano". Averchenko noted that the title symbolized the sudden cataclysm that can occur in a person's life.