I’m just suggesting that these calderas do blow sometimes. I am not a geologist. I guess this is a borderline GQ. Sorry if I guessed wrong.
I would think that opinions might vary on the significance of any particular caldera bulging or what would happen if Yellowstone blew. It sounds like there is some debate over Steamboat itself, “no apparent looming threat.” Um, why mention that?
Yellowstone is a little overdue for the next big bang:
Meteors, Tidal Waves, Yellowstone, Global Warming.
Civilization is looking kind of endangered these days, ain’t it?
Just one more reason to get off this stupid friggin mudball and into space. :>
Basically, half of the United States would more or less cease to exist. And I’m sure that, in the ensuing climatic and social upheavals, the wars that resulted would cause more of humanity to cease to exist.
Do a search on “Supervolcano” or “Toba”. While I’m a little suspicious of the Toba explosion = near-extinction of early humans equation (b/c no other species appeared to die off), records of where the volcanic tuff from the prev. Yellowstone eruptions landed seem to indicate that most of the midwest will be covered in the stuff, and breathing it in (it’s basically microscopic slivers of glass … not good for your lungs).
No more than it has looked ever since records have been kept of such phenomena.
Just remember:
If a volcanic eruption or a giant meteor impact (or, for that matter, Nuclear Winter) cloaks the Earth in a gigantic layer of airborne dust, it will cancel out global warming!
Hopefully this will eliminate the Republicans stranglehold on the political process. I, as an anarchist, look forward to this opportunity to finally establish the reign of reason and justice on Earth.
I don’t think Yellowstone is going to hurt you too much. The big caldera eruptions don’t happen that frequently. And they are likely to bend the ground a bit for a few months before they pop. A bit like a huge boil really. So you do get some warning time. Besides which Yellowstone is still pretty hot. Any changes underneath and you’d notice all the increased activity.
In NZ where I live we have a bit of a hole called Lake Taupo. It’s about 30 miles across and popped a mere 2000 years ago releasing some 60 cubic kilometres of ash. (Mt St Helens was less than 0.1 cubic km). They reckon it was the biggest bang in recent geological history. But theres a couple of dozen caldera in the region. I guess getting covered in hot pumice is a bit stressful, but even that big there is evidence of some things quite close having survived. And no one stops their fishing trip just because a few bubbles rise frm the bottom of the lake. Come to think of it, we even ski on the side of a volcano while it is erupting. (Do a search on Ruapehu 1995 and 1996)
I wouldn’t worry.
This is somewhat incorrect. The pressure builds up over millenia, not mere months. Tiltmeters placed all over Yellowstone have* been measuring a bulging corresponding to the suspected location of the magma buildup. On the surface, very little will change (at least not rapidly) just bofore it blows. Since vulcanologists have never seen a supervolcano explode, we havew absolutely no idea what sort of signs to look for to tell us that an explosion is imminent. It is doubtful we’ll see a lot of surface activity, since the magma pocket whose outgassing causes the the pressure to build is several tens of kilometers beneath the surface. When it does blow, most of North America is basically toast. I’m not losing any sleep over it, though.
What if the caldera blows up when it gets struck by an asteroid during a forest fire???
It will be a noticeable event.
You do know that it’s already bending, don’t you? One of the lakes tilted up recently, and much of the water ran out (source: A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson. I read a loaner so I don’t have the exact words, but there’s a whole chapter about it).
TV movie of the week.
I have this book, and the chapter you’re quoting from is called Dangerous Beauty. It is devoted to Yellowstone Park.
That event of the lake tilting happened in 1973:
“… and by 1984 the whole central region of the park had risen by more than 1 metre. It subsequently subsided 20cms, but it now seems to be swelling again”
The last eruption of Yellowstone was 630,000 years ago and was about 1000 times the size of the Mount St Helens eruption. One previous Yellowstone eruption was about 8000 times times as big. I’m sure the next one will be pretty spectacular - for a time!
V
Okay. For the sake of argument (disregarding the probability that, according to previous posters, the swelling we’ve been seeing since we started measuring is the warning time), we have five years advance notice that the western half of the United States will be destroyed: either cease to exist or become basically uninhabitable. A hundred and ten million people will need to be relocated, and nearly half of the nation’s economy will go up with the explosion. What do you do in five years to prepare for it?
That is an interesting post on the caldera near you. OTOH, I couldn’t help but notice:
Know any good real estate brokers?
Cervaise, exactly. Should there be any contingency planning at all? Is it so catastrophic that we just put our heads between our legs, etc.?
Given that we have no way of knowing what the warning signs even are, let alone how much time we have from their onset, it’s pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. I can’t imagine any way to evacuate an entire continent, and I don’t think they’d even bother to try. Underground shelters might allow one to survive the initial blast, assuming one had sufficient warning to get into it, but afterwards the decades of deep freeze would take care of a lot of people. I think I’d rather get vaporized by the blast than suffer through years of freezing weather and possible starvation.
Since it’s a chemical reaction that makes the supervolcano explosions so nasty, has anyone considering deep drilling to dump some chemicals that will render the supervolcano’s chemistry inert? Might not take a hell of a lot of stuff to do it, and could save a lot of relocating. I don’t think we have drilling tech that’ll go that deep yet, but it would be good to have a plan other than kiss our asses goodbye.
It isn’t exactly chemical reactions. Magma contains huge amounts of dissolved gasses, like carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide. In a supervolcano, the magma collects in a huge underground pocket in the rock of the crust, and the gasses come put of solution slowly building up pressure until the rock can no longer contain it. Theoretically, we could drill vents down into the magma pocket and release the gas, but as yet we have no technology for drilling to the needed depths. Plus, any such drilling would allow the pressurized magma to burst to the surface and create an instant volcano, probably killing the drill crew. One hole wouldn’t be enough either. There must be enough holes of sufficient size to relieve the pressure faster than it can build.