O.K., I’ll admit it-- I’ve got a fondness for History Channel’s Mega Disasters and as a fan of such a show, I’ve often wondered which disaster would be the worst in terms of both likelyhood and destruction potential.
My vote goes to the Yellowstone Volcano super eruption. Sure, it only blows really big every million years or so*, but when it does— goodbye fly-over states!
Floods, fires, meteors. . . which do you think will doom your part of the world?
*Last time it blew big was 640,000 years ago, so if history is anything to go by we still got a half a million years to go-- give or take.
How about a La Palma initiated tsunami? After the Cumbre Vieja volcano collapses it will trigger a series of waves traveling at almost 500 mph and ranging from 10 to 50 meters in height that will hit the Eastern US and could travel up to 5 miles inland. Bye-bye Washington, D.C. So long, Manhattan. Nice knowing you, Daytona Beach.
Why not put them all together! Let’s play That’s Armageddon! Combine the Yellowstone mega-volcano, a New Madrid earthquake and the La Palma tsunami! All that would be left of the US would be the West Coast.
Personally, I think the ultimate doomsday scenario for America would be President Hillary Clinton.
Sorry, Frank. Couldn’t resist the temptation. Mea culpa.
Has anyone ever calculated the odds of just how doomed we really are? California is overdue for “The Big One” ™, as is the New Madrid fault. Yellowstone is overdue to blow its top. We are overdue for a major impact event as well as geomagnetic reversal. So what are the chances that something really nasty is going to happen soon that will just ruin our day?
But all you smug Californians are forgetting about the part of the Hawaiian Islands that is about to snap away and fall into the ocean. The ensuing 20 to 100 foot tall wave that will hit the west coast will be pretty bad.
I’m leaning towards some type of nuclear accident.
There are still plenty of nuclear power plants operating in the U.S.
Farley II in Alabama, Comanche Peak in Texas, Limerick in Pennsylvania, Davis-Besse in Ohio.
It’s only a matter of time before there is a serious incident in one of those plants, either due to their age or due to the fact that no one goes into nuclear engineering these days because it is a dead-end career.
So, in the near future, the plants will be run by old engineers who don’t give a shit, and they will give orders to young technicians with Associates Degrees who don’t give a shit.
bolding mine. Not to hijack, but what happens to the folks running the reactors in the Navy when they get out? I can’t think it’s that much of a “dead-end” career. Plus, with Global Warming and the need for alternative energy, wouldn’t it be a good career path to choose?
That sounds like some semi-anti nuclear perspective and it is very unpopular on this board even with ex-hippies and power plant engineers. Many environmentalists have apologized and turned themselves over to the voice of reason when it comes to nuclear power on a big scale. If you are anti-nuclear power, I don’t think you will find much company on this board or any place with an educated populous for that matter. The anti-nuclear movement is one of the greatest failures of environmentalism in the modern era and most people admit that now.
Whether or not I am pro or anti-nuke is irrelevant. Also, whether or not my [perceived] anti-nuke viewpoint is popular with the ex-hippies or power plant engineers (big surprise) is also irrelevant.
The fact remains that nuclear power plants are the front-running technology when it come to disaster potential.
As far as your last part about the reversal of anti-nukes and environmentalists re their view on nuclear power, I’d like a cite if you’ve got one handy.
Nuclear power in this country is on it’s way out. The oil companies can’t even build a refinery without all kinds of NIMBY hassles. How do you think a nuclear power plant would fare?
I am in range if the Cascade range has the massive earthquake it’s several centuries over do for. also in range for the Yellowstone catastrope. I can also count on wildfires (last year coming within five miles of my home.) There’s a few others, but those are the biggies.
But hey, if CA drops into the ocean, I might actually be close to the coast.
Well, I live in the Midwest, so I’m going to have to go with some sort of super tornado or death blizzard. Remember “The Day After Tomorrow?” That movie freaked me out. Seriously. In the end, when everybody’s evacuated to Mexico and they show the Midwest covered by an ice sheet, I burst into tears. I was watching it with my brothers, and they were going, “What wrong? What’s wrong?” What came out of my mouth was, “All the cows are dead! They don’t deserve that!” What was going through my head was, “What if everyone I know and care about was killed by a blizzard and super cold temperatures? So devastating!”
So, there you have it. My worst nightmare is freezing to death in a blizzard. Along with the cows of North America.
Zambini57, all the anti-nuke people have to do is put forward a single energy generation technology that’s at least as good as reactors in all respects. And isn’t oil.
