Supervolcano Melts Roads into "Asphalt Soup" at Yellowstone National Park

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

So Yellowstone is acting up, there's a massive doomsday hole in Russia and the scientists are claiming that we're on a brink of another mass extinction. I could use this shit to scare the living crap out of gullible people with poor grasp of logic and pattern recognition. I could start my own cult and make people give me their money and all of their earthly possessions in exchange for the salvation of their souls. But alas, I'm not a psychopath.

 

[Basement Cat]

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

What is the proper level of terror I should feel on a scale of one to ten?

If the supervolcano in Yellowstone lets loose on a minor scale--7 at the minimum. As the other have said the ash fall will obliterate the bread basket and directly result in tens of millions of deaths within a week or so.

Then you have mass starvation coupled with the total break down of American society: No food transport. No medical drugs to the needy. Basic services like electricity and plumbing will be disrupted. Cell phone towers obliterated so everyone lacking a land line will lose the ability to communicate with others and most land lines will go down, too. Etc...etc...etc...

Then it gets worse: There are scores/hundreds of nuclear plants scattered across the U.S.; One of the true life disaster scenarios that are routinely ignored in Zombie or plague movies, etc, is that without proper attention any one of those plants could suffer a meltdown. With a disaster of this level dozens of plants would suffer meltdowns leading to Chernobyl-like catastrophes scattered all across the nation.

Furthermore a blast like this would produce high level earthquakes. With a supervolcanic erruption we'd be seeing earthquakes at 8 and 9 on the Rictor scale.

See the chart in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

Next: If the supervolcano completely blasts away then we're looking at a Terror Level: 10. No doubt about it. Expect every building and bridge, etc, within 1,000 to 3,000 miles of the erruption to be leveled from class 10 earthquakes that would echo around the planet and back again--again and again and again...

If you're asking whether you should be afraid now then I'd say Terror Level 2 or 3. I've been paying attention to Yellowstone's supervolcano ever since I went on a family trip there in the mid 80's (I saw Old Faithful erupt right on time--this was before a local earthquake rendered Old Faithful rather less than faithful). The seismic activity has been steadily increasing for decades.

Yes, things are looking worse...though it could be 1000's or years before it goes up. Maybe 10,000 years or even more.

Or it could go up within our lifetime. That would be bad. Modern civilization would be hammered so hard most of the world's population would die off: We're looking at upwards of 5 to 6 billion of our current 7 billion dying from starvation, etc...

Most of the survivors would be hammered down into the stone age. I kid you not. For all intents and purposes the USA would be wiped off the map.

The lucky ones would be the ones who died first and quickly.

That's how bad it could be.

 

[Riff Moonraker]

I cannot help but wonder if this is some sort of red flag.... that this thing might be on the verge of blowing? There have been a TON of "what-if" shows on this very volcano in particular... and the scenario in all of them is pretty scary. I honestly hope there isnt anything more to this.

 

[Rhykker]

*snip*
But alas, I'm not a psychopath.

Damn your parents for raising you to be mentally balanced. They've deprived the world of one less kooky doomsday cult.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

EDIT:

Spoiler: snip

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

Well... It's a supervolcano. I'm sure there are people who will exaggerate things, but it would certainly have worldwide impacts. A good chunk of the US would be buried in ash. The ash ejected into the atmosphere could easily take us into a nuclear winter, cooling temperatures by partially blocking out the Sun and certainly affecting global climate more than humans have.

While this doesn't mean the world will explode or that we're all doomed, apart from those directly affected by the ash burial (ie a good chunk of the US), the sudden climate change could lead to famine in parts of the world and have other widespread socioeconomic impacts.

Fortunately, the odds of Yellowstone erupting any time soon aren't particularly high.

Spoiler: snip

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

To add to what Rhykker said, if the Yellowstone super volcano erupted, a good portion of Mid-West and Central US would be gone essentially from the ash. East US would not suffer as bad, but there would still be problems, particularly large scale food shortages because the East's main food source (Mid-West/Central US farming) would be wiped out. The West Coast (Oregon, CA, and Washington mostly, most likely a good chunk of the South West too) would not feel any major aftereffects until at least six months to a year after the eruption, as most of the ash will settle in the Atlantic/Europe/Asia areas.

The Southern Hemisphere will fare the best due to how the air streams conflict with those of the Northern Hemisphere. Africa, Australia, and South America will get a huge influx of refugees from the Northern Hemisphere. Air travel will be dead basically for a good two, three generations because of the ash clouds and whatever remains of North America will be completely restructured.

Thanks for the info!

Here's a visual aid to what those two said. The red dot is Yellowstone. The brown is where all the ash is most likely to settle. It's roughly 2/3rds the US. In terms of pure economical impact, that region is where virtually ALL of the US's food and manufacturing takes place. We'd be screwed.

 

[gridsleep]

I always feel a bit like I am constantly underestimating the dangers of a "Super Volcano." Like with many environmental phenomenon it is so hard to separate the fiction and reality. What is really going to happen if this volcano full on erupts? If its twice as big as they thought it was when they were scared about it years before, then is this one going to split the Earth in 2 if it goes off?

I mean that movie volcano didn't seem so bad. ( I mean it just seemed to rain ash, and destroy a tiny country town, but the world still worked.

What is the proper level of terror I should feel on a scale of one to ten?

If you live on planet Earth, or anywhere in reality, I usually find that a panic level of 10 is normal. I haven't dropped below that since I was about three years old.

The moment I read about roads melting, I could only think, "Oh dear. Now, it begins."

Scientists can't reassure anyone it won't erupt any more than they can predict when it will erupt. There are no guarantees. It could erupt tomorrow. Or 5,000 years from now. If it's tomorrow, chances are, you won't see next month. Anyone within 600 miles of Yellowstone won't see the next five minutes. They might be considered the lucky ones.

 

[gridsleep]

We must telephone Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, they will know what to do!

That is remarkably similar to something Benjamin Disraeli said once.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Spoiler: spoiler snip for space

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

EDIT:

Spoiler: snip

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

Well... It's a supervolcano. I'm sure there are people who will exaggerate things, but it would certainly have worldwide impacts. A good chunk of the US would be buried in ash. The ash ejected into the atmosphere could easily take us into a nuclear winter, cooling temperatures by partially blocking out the Sun and certainly affecting global climate more than humans have.

While this doesn't mean the world will explode or that we're all doomed, apart from those directly affected by the ash burial (ie a good chunk of the US), the sudden climate change could lead to famine in parts of the world and have other widespread socioeconomic impacts.

Fortunately, the odds of Yellowstone erupting any time soon aren't particularly high.

Spoiler: snip

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

To add to what Rhykker said, if the Yellowstone super volcano erupted, a good portion of Mid-West and Central US would be gone essentially from the ash. East US would not suffer as bad, but there would still be problems, particularly large scale food shortages because the East's main food source (Mid-West/Central US farming) would be wiped out. The West Coast (Oregon, CA, and Washington mostly, most likely a good chunk of the South West too) would not feel any major aftereffects until at least six months to a year after the eruption, as most of the ash will settle in the Atlantic/Europe/Asia areas.

The Southern Hemisphere will fare the best due to how the air streams conflict with those of the Northern Hemisphere. Africa, Australia, and South America will get a huge influx of refugees from the Northern Hemisphere. Air travel will be dead basically for a good two, three generations because of the ash clouds and whatever remains of North America will be completely restructured.

Thanks for the info!

Here's a visual aid to what those two said. The red dot is Yellowstone. The brown is where all the ash is most likely to settle. It's roughly 2/3rds the US. In terms of pure economical impact, that region is where virtually ALL of the US's food and manufacturing takes place. We'd be screwed.

Yeesh, that puts things into perspective...

Spoiler: spoiler snip for space

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

What is the proper level of terror I should feel on a scale of one to ten?

If the supervolcano in Yellowstone lets loose on a minor scale--7 at the minimum. As the other have said the ash fall will obliterate the bread basket and directly result in tens of millions of deaths within a week or so.

Then you have mass starvation coupled with the total break down of American society: No food transport. No medical drugs to the needy. Basic services like electricity and plumbing will be disrupted. Cell phone towers obliterated so everyone lacking a land line will lose the ability to communicate with others and most land lines will go down, too. Etc...etc...etc...

Then it gets worse: There are scores/hundreds of nuclear plants scattered across the U.S.; One of the true life disaster scenarios that are routinely ignored in Zombie or plague movies, etc, is that without proper attention any one of those plants could suffer a meltdown. With a disaster of this level dozens of plants would suffer meltdowns leading to Chernobyl-like catastrophes scattered all across the nation.

Furthermore a blast like this would produce high level earthquakes. With a supervolcanic erruption we'd be seeing earthquakes at 8 and 9 on the Rictor scale.

See the chart in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

Next: If the supervolcano completely blasts away then we're looking at a Terror Level: 10. No doubt about it. Expect every building and bridge, etc, within 1,000 to 3,000 miles of the erruption to be leveled from class 10 earthquakes that would echo around the planet and back again--again and again and again...

If you're asking whether you should be afraid now then I'd say Terror Level 2 or 3. I've been paying attention to Yellowstone's supervolcano ever since I went on a family trip there in the mid 80's (I saw Old Faithful erupt right on time--this was before a local earthquake rendered Old Faithful rather less than faithful). The seismic activity has been steadily increasing for decades.

Yes, things are looking worse...though it could be 1000's or years before it goes up. Maybe 10,000 years or even more.

Or it could go up within our lifetime. That would be bad. Modern civilization would be hammered so hard most of the world's population would die off: We're looking at upwards of 5 to 6 billion of our current 7 billion dying from starvation, etc...

Most of the survivors would be hammered down into the stone age. I kid you not. For all intents and purposes the USA would be wiped off the map.

The lucky ones would be the ones who died first and quickly.

That's how bad it could be.

... and that's down right terrifying.

 

[Darks63]

Lovely the Volcano Capable of causing a E.L.E. is waking up.

To bad we didn't invest much in alternate power otherwise we could be bleeding some of its geological activity off to slow down or depower a possible eruption.

 

[masticina]

Remember all those movies about super vulcanoes. Actually they are still getting made but usually direct to dvd/netflix.

Still a guilty pleasure all those movies.

I guess if we end up being killed by vulcano at least make the best of it right.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Spoiler: spoiler snip for space

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

EDIT:

Spoiler: snip

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

Well... It's a supervolcano. I'm sure there are people who will exaggerate things, but it would certainly have worldwide impacts. A good chunk of the US would be buried in ash. The ash ejected into the atmosphere could easily take us into a nuclear winter, cooling temperatures by partially blocking out the Sun and certainly affecting global climate more than humans have.

While this doesn't mean the world will explode or that we're all doomed, apart from those directly affected by the ash burial (ie a good chunk of the US), the sudden climate change could lead to famine in parts of the world and have other widespread socioeconomic impacts.

Fortunately, the odds of Yellowstone erupting any time soon aren't particularly high.

Spoiler: snip

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

After a little looking, it seems like the people covering the 'what if?' of this scenario are just trying to sell a doomsday story.

To add to what Rhykker said, if the Yellowstone super volcano erupted, a good portion of Mid-West and Central US would be gone essentially from the ash. East US would not suffer as bad, but there would still be problems, particularly large scale food shortages because the East's main food source (Mid-West/Central US farming) would be wiped out. The West Coast (Oregon, CA, and Washington mostly, most likely a good chunk of the South West too) would not feel any major aftereffects until at least six months to a year after the eruption, as most of the ash will settle in the Atlantic/Europe/Asia areas.

The Southern Hemisphere will fare the best due to how the air streams conflict with those of the Northern Hemisphere. Africa, Australia, and South America will get a huge influx of refugees from the Northern Hemisphere. Air travel will be dead basically for a good two, three generations because of the ash clouds and whatever remains of North America will be completely restructured.

Thanks for the info!

Here's a visual aid to what those two said. The red dot is Yellowstone. The brown is where all the ash is most likely to settle. It's roughly 2/3rds the US. In terms of pure economical impact, that region is where virtually ALL of the US's food and manufacturing takes place. We'd be screwed.

Yeesh, that puts things into perspective...

Spoiler: spoiler snip for space

I'm curious what would happen if it erupts.

What is the proper level of terror I should feel on a scale of one to ten?

If the supervolcano in Yellowstone lets loose on a minor scale--7 at the minimum. As the other have said the ash fall will obliterate the bread basket and directly result in tens of millions of deaths within a week or so.

Then you have mass starvation coupled with the total break down of American society: No food transport. No medical drugs to the needy. Basic services like electricity and plumbing will be disrupted. Cell phone towers obliterated so everyone lacking a land line will lose the ability to communicate with others and most land lines will go down, too. Etc...etc...etc...

Then it gets worse: There are scores/hundreds of nuclear plants scattered across the U.S.; One of the true life disaster scenarios that are routinely ignored in Zombie or plague movies, etc, is that without proper attention any one of those plants could suffer a meltdown. With a disaster of this level dozens of plants would suffer meltdowns leading to Chernobyl-like catastrophes scattered all across the nation.

Furthermore a blast like this would produce high level earthquakes. With a supervolcanic erruption we'd be seeing earthquakes at 8 and 9 on the Rictor scale.

See the chart in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale

Next: If the supervolcano completely blasts away then we're looking at a Terror Level: 10. No doubt about it. Expect every building and bridge, etc, within 1,000 to 3,000 miles of the erruption to be leveled from class 10 earthquakes that would echo around the planet and back again--again and again and again...

If you're asking whether you should be afraid now then I'd say Terror Level 2 or 3. I've been paying attention to Yellowstone's supervolcano ever since I went on a family trip there in the mid 80's (I saw Old Faithful erupt right on time--this was before a local earthquake rendered Old Faithful rather less than faithful). The seismic activity has been steadily increasing for decades.

Yes, things are looking worse...though it could be 1000's or years before it goes up. Maybe 10,000 years or even more.

Or it could go up within our lifetime. That would be bad. Modern civilization would be hammered so hard most of the world's population would die off: We're looking at upwards of 5 to 6 billion of our current 7 billion dying from starvation, etc...

Most of the survivors would be hammered down into the stone age. I kid you not. For all intents and purposes the USA would be wiped off the map.

The lucky ones would be the ones who died first and quickly.

That's how bad it could be.

... and that's down right terrifying.

That's just the part that settles. If a "super-eruption" were to occur, an incredible amount of ash would be ejected into the upper airstream, which would have profound implications for global climate, let alone that of the continental US.

 

[The Apple BOOM]

I understand everyone's having fun going over the end of the world, but I did want to put some perspective on this. This is absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only can we do nothing about it, if we worry about this, we should also be worrying about:

1. Planet destroying asteroids
2. Solar System frying Quasars
3. Alien invasions
4. Supernatural powers unleashing themselves
5. Random nuclear missile firing due to computer error

And #5 is the most likely out of all of them to happen within our lifetime.

 

[jthwilliams]

I understand everyone's having fun going over the end of the world, but I did want to put some perspective on this. This is absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only can we do nothing about it, if we worry about this, we should also be worrying about:

1. Planet destroying asteroids
2. Solar System frying Quasars
3. Alien invasions
4. Supernatural powers unleashing themselves
5. Random nuclear missile firing due to computer error

And #5 is the most likely out of all of them to happen within our lifetime.

As I hear it #5 nearly happened. A bug with potentially false positive results related to semi-rare natural conditions may have been caught in about the last round of tests before the NORAD MAD systems went into affect. Don't know if that is true or not, I got it 3rd hand and it might just be a computer science urban legend. Further, I obviously don't know the details of the system but assume that human intervention.

Also the person who told me was trying to teach me the importance of making bug proof code. So, could be complete bullshit though it was effective, I have a very low bug count for production systems.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

Of course, that's just what they want us to think.

The government doesn't want us to know about it until they've already stored all of their "elite" people in the arks.

2012 WAS A DOCUMENTARY.

WE HAVEN'T YET EMBRACED THE TRUTH.

 

[Hebby]

When it goes it goes and since there is nothing we can do about it, why worry? Just make preparations as best as we can pending the event. Less we have a cold fusion device like in Star Trek to beam down to the Vulcano to detonate. But I can't help thinking... Take California. "Wow some earthquake hazards we got here. I tell you what guys. Let's build a city here". Is that what happen?

4. Supernatural powers unleashing themselves

If one worry about that, people have to little to occupy their minds with in the first place. And the Ghostbusters quit years ago.

 

[Saetha]

Christ, so much doom and gloom in this thread. This is why I don't particularly care for apocalyptic fiction. It always comes off as a bunch of nihilistic navel-gazing to me. Yeah, yeah, we all get it, human civilization is a fragile construct that exists because the universe allows it, people are really all animals inside and when you strip away society they turn on each other like dogs, blah blah, Nietzsche quote, blah.

What a lot of people forget is that humans have survived some pretty tough shit. We've been through, what, four or five extinction events? Weren't we down to, like, a global population of ten thousand once? And now there's seven billion of us. Oh, there's definitely some stuff we wouldn't be able to come back from - rogue suns flying through the solar system, quasars frying the planet, a bunch of other freaky space magic scenarios. But Yellowstone? Nah, we could handle that. Society might take a beating, large swaths of the population might die off, but we'd come back. Might take a few generations, or centuries, or whatever, but it'd happen sooner or later. I mean, supervolcanoes have erupted before, and they obviously didn't wipe out all life on the planet since, y'know, life's still here. And now life's got science and technology and really big guns. So screw you, supervolcanoes.

(Please note: I know that guns, no matter how big, wouldn't really help against supervolcanoes. Still, screw those guys)

Also, if it goes, it goes. Not much sense in worrying about it. S'why I never got doomsday sayers. Yeah, the end is nigh, that's great. What can I do about it? Nothing? Well then, why are you sitting here ranting about how we're all totally doomed instead of, you know, making the most out of the life you're sure is about to be cut short?

 

[RJ 17]

To answer the question in the article: I actually have been to the Park and seen Old Faithful. It would have been a much better experience if it weren't for the facts that 1: I was just starting to come down with a cold by the time we got to Yellowstone and 2: my father and brother had gotten into a BIG argument that put a damper on the 2nd half of our trip.

Still, it really was beautiful...though I do remember falling asleep in the car as we were waiting in a traffic line through the park. When I woke up 3 hours later: we hadn't moved.

On a side-note, for some reason have a strange sense of morbid pride in the fact that one of the ways the world could end - with the eruption of a super volcano - is right here in the good ol' US of A. :3