Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow? 877
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, Yellowstone National Park has been having a very unusual number of earthquakes. Many of the most recent tremors have been deeper underground, an ominous sign. Combine that with a rapid rise in elevation over the past three years, and the possibility that earthquake activity from surrounding areas could trigger such an eruption on its own, and you've got the possible warning signs of a supervolcano eruption that would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental US, plunge global temperatures, and wipe out a very significant chunk of world food sources. Here's a little more info to make your New Year brighter!"
Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Funny)
After all, if we are going to have the sun blocked out by a huge cloud of dust, it would be fantastic to have as much heat trapped on earth as possible!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus Christ, the summary is a bit alarmist, no? "Wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental United States?" Uh, no. It would leave half the United States under a dusting of ash. That's not the same as "wiping it out". Because, see, once the ash is cleaned up, the people, places and things underneath are all still there. At worst, it'll mean some clogged pipes and some really dirty shoes for a week or so.
The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 left approximately 1/3 of the United States under a dusting
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Interesting)
You have NO friggin' idea what you're talking about. The mega-eruption, if it happens, could be *hundreds of thousands* times bigger than Mount St. Helens. The last super volcano was 75,000 years ago. Light was blocked out all over the world. 35 centimeters of ash fell *2500 miles* away. The global temperature plunged 21 degrees. Mankind was almost extinguished, cut back to only a few thousand. This one...could be *ten times bigger*.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Insightful)
The Toba eruption is generally thought to have been larger than any of the Yellowstone eruptions. The largest Yellowstone eruption was pretty close, though. Source: http://www.armageddononline.org/known-super-volcanoes.html [armageddononline.org]
DO NOT NAME YOUR DOG TOBA! (Score:5, Funny)
We did, and she's spent her entire life trying to live up to the destructive power of her namesake.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Informative)
The Yellowstone one 2.1 million years ago was about same
as the Toba.
The Fish Canyon Tuft one in Colorado was bigger than both COMBINED.
That is scary as hell.
Glad it was a one off like 50 million years ago.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Interesting)
Mankind was almost extinguished, cut back to only a few thousand.
But this was human civilization from 75,000 years ago, which intellectually and technologically pales in comparison to human civilization today. Wouldn't the advancements we've made since the Toba eruption help us to endure the effect of another mega-eruption?
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:4, Insightful)
True, but I was thinking about technologies like consumer available solar power, water filtration, thermal clothes, and hydroponic vegetables. My end-of-the-world scenarios have been the product of '70s and '80s apocalyptic films like The Day After, Threads, and The Road Warrior... okay that last bit is a stretch.
Obviously life post-ELE will be bleak, but would it be any better because of these tools without considering what desperate people with guns and missiles do.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:4, Funny)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure!
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Informative)
Quality of information is the fundamental problem, coupled with the variability of real rocks.
[/self : puts on my formal "geologist" hat ; it is my job, though not this particular aspect of geology]
The area around Jellystone (and all volcanos) has a long and complex history ; particular rock units vary on a scale of centimetres to metres and larger, through bedding and faulting, to say nothing of the more subtle variations resulting from hydrothermal alteration. These variations in constitution and physical organisation of the materials lead to considerable (several orders of magnitude) variations in rock strength on quite small scales - metres, if not finer.
So, to accurately characterise the rock volume where you're intending to set off a small, controlled eruption, you need that scale of knowledge of the rock units in order to work out where you can safely set off that "small, controlled eruption", and indeed, how to set off that "small, controlled eruption".
Which is well and good - it gives us a goal of the approximate level of information that we need to plan and execute the "small, controlled eruption" plan. We'd need to characterise most of the immediate vicinity of the volcano that we're planning to "defuse" - for the Jellystone hotspot hmmm, on the order of 100km of land area to a depth of several km, say 300km^3 of rock with data at (say) 10cm spacing, and with density, triaxial strength and stiffness data, temperature, pressure, stress field (triaxial again), and a few other bytes of data. Lets say 20 bytes of data per station and around 300 x 10^9(km^3->m^3) x 1000 (data points per m^3) = 3 * 10^14 stations. So we're looking at on the order of 10^16 bytes of data for the core area, and I'd guess the same for surrounding areas at progressively decreasing data density to control for "edge effects" (I'm getting a bit hand-wavy here ; it shows!). Say 10^17 bytes of raw data and working / intermediate results. That's around 100 petabytes, or approximately 10 years worth of LHC data [wikipedia.org].
That's a serious chunk of computing power, but not incredible. It also allows us to put some sort of cost on the project - the LHC is costing on the order of 5 billion USD, so we're looking into the same sort of region of cost for working out what to do and how to do it. GIVEN that we've got the data to analyse. And that's where the problem lies.
To get the data that's necessary to do this modelling, we're going to need to measure those 20-odd bytes of data for those points, at something approaching that data density. Which we don't have techniques for. We can get some data points - for example I can measure the porosity, permeability and fluid pressure at centimetric scale in a borehole. The tools used are the MDT (if I'm working with Schlumberger equipment) or RCI (from Baker Atlas), but there are others. For measuring rock strengths ... well, I could conceive of relevant tools, and I could conceive of using them at the same time as doing the pressure measurements. Getting the triaxial stress field is a deal more involved (since drilling the borehole induces a change in the stress field, by drilling out the rock), but I can envisage doing it. So let's say that we can get our data using currently conceivable direct measurements for essentially the cost of drilling the borehole.
A 3km hole in hard rock. That would be in the region of a million USD, if you're doing it wholesale. To characterise the whole rock volume, you're going to need to drill in the order of one every 10 metre to make even a faint approach at getting the areal data density (your surface borehole is going to be nearly a metre across, so you can't go to any better data density than 1/
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:4, Informative)
It can be filtered out by a N-95 or better rated mask.
http://www.ci.anchorage.ak.us/healthesd/AirQualityVolcano.cfm [anchorage.ak.us]
Around paragraph 6 roughly.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Informative)
(emphasis mine).
Second cite [bbc.co.uk]:
Not just a dusting of ash, by any means. To extrapolate from a single event (Mt St Helens) which may or may not even be in the same geologic region (I don't know) is pointless when the Snake River Plain has erupted several times over - the entire landscape their bears the scars of it.
Some sobering facts (Score:5, Insightful)
Yellowstone will erupt in this dramatic fashion. The Siberian Traps will too. The 1.5km-diameter (or much more) space rock will definitely strike earth in the future. A comet will too. These aren't tinfoil hat ideas - everybody in the related sciences agrees that these events will occur. It's just a matter of time. Maybe it will be a long time, as we think about it usually, or maybe it will be a short one. Each of these events is neither more likely nor less likely to happen on a particular Monday a million years hence than they are on July 4, 2012.
They will happen and when they happen there's a good chance they'll wipe out all human life still on the Earth. Events like these don't have to wipe out mankind. We can choose to not let that happen. Or not.
Some sobering moves. (Score:4, Funny)
"They will happen and when they happen there's a good chance they'll wipe out all human life still on the Earth. Events like these don't have to wipe out mankind. We can choose to not let that happen. Or not."
That's it! I'm moving to Mars, where it's safer.
Um no (Score:5, Informative)
Um no, dude, you don't really get it. If Yellowstone blows, there is no volcano eruption in human history that even remotely comes close. Mt. St. Helens would look like a fart standing next to Chernobyl. Areas 400 miles away would get covered in a foot of ash. There is just nothing like it.
Here is a nice, graphical link for you to look at:
link [discovery.com]
The number of deaths could be staggering. That foot of ash, even 400 miles away in Denver, would collapse most roofs, and any with people in them would get severely injured or die. It would be the end of the U.S. as a global superpower, and there would be wars. You are naive.
Re:Um no (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the number of deaths would be negligible. Yellowstone sits in the most sparsely populated region of the U.S. The actual direct destructive power of the volcano would only effect a 40 square mile area, which except for Jackson Hole, is largely empty.
Laramie, Cheyenne, Bozeman, Billings, etc would be hit hard by ashfall, but Denver would only get about a foot. Folks know ash collapses roofs. So, gasp, folks would clear the ash as it accumulates. Many or most people would evacuate anyway.
This is alarmism. At its worst, there will be an immense disruption of the electrical and telecommunications grid, immense expense from ash damage and removal, alot of immediate deaths and some ash deaths.
Re:Um no (Score:5, Interesting)
At its worst, there will be an immense disruption of the electrical and telecommunications grid, immense expense from ash damage and removal, alot of immediate deaths and some ash deaths.
You forgot one little detail: Widespread subzero temperatures and no new food anywhere on the planet for at least a year.
Re:Um no (Score:4, Interesting)
The Ash fall for one of the bigger past eruptions has been
traced by geologists to be this size.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HuckleberryRidgeTuff.jpg [wikipedia.org]
It covers most of 13 states.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:4, Insightful)
once the ash is cleaned up
Um. How would you clean up a layer of ash 20 centimeters thick that spans half a country?! That's enough debris to create about 30 new Mount Everests... Well that's if it were compacted; in its dusty form it's probably more like half a meter thick. Since it tends to collect in lower areas, expect up to a meter of very fine (like quicksand) ash in the streets. This will not be cleaned up; mother nature will add add a bit of water and half the country will effectively become a massive mudslide or it will be covered under a big fat slab of concrete heavy enough to make just about any house collapse. Well, not just about any house, only the houses that are still standing after the massive mudflows...
This ash is not just normal ash either, it is like tiny splinters of glass that form a layer of concrete when water is added. Lungs are very wet places as fat as this ash is concerned...
Also, your comparison with Mount St. Helens makes no sense; if Yellowstone were to blow, it would produce 300-1000 times as much debris as Mount St. Helens did in 1980. Volcanos like Yellowstone probably produce enough debris to not only trigger an ice age, but the dust they leave in the atmosphere might very well be enough not to have any agricultural production for years. So Yellowstone might not just be big enough to wipe out half the United States, it might be big enough to wipe out most of humanity. The summary is not "a bit alarmist", it is very conservative.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Informative)
It's eruptions cover hundreds [yellowstone.net] of square kilometers, not tens of thousands.
Most of the United States by area would see a few meters of ash, not a football field's worth (which would be plenty devestating enough).
Yay for mods blindly modding up posts that contain numbers as "informative."
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Funny)
7. 17. Twenty one. Three point one four. Eighteen thousand, seven hundred and sixty two. Zero point zero three percent.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Funny)
4 8 15 16 23 42
Now, just type that in every hour, and the eruption won't happen.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Insightful)
A "few meters" of ash covering most of the US would be a pretty major issue. Almost none of the roofs are rated to carry that. All the planted crops, except trees, are killed. All trees less than a few meters die, naturally. You can't plow it. Most plants won't grow in it. Cars won't run for very long when it's in the air and nobody's digging a car out of a few meters of ash without patience, and if you did there's no where to drive it where you won't get bogged down in soft crunchy ash. The ash is suffused with toxic gases, some of which precipitate as acids. When it rains it kills all the life in all the rivers, and the silt changes the course of major rivers and minor streams. When it gets to the Atlantic and the Gulf it kills almost all of the fish in the ocean. It interferes with cell phone reception, TV and radio. A few meters of ash is enough to clog every hydro power plant, every nuclear power plant in the country. It blocks all the railways and all the highways of course, and that's how we move food around. And if you're not directly affected but you don't like America, that would be a fine day to attack. In summary, it's a big deal. Lava? A local issue where a good plan is not to touch the lava, not to get downstream of the lava. Ash, though, it'll wreck your whole week.
Link. [google.com] A few inches of ash is a big deal. I've been there. A few meters? It boggles the imagination.
Re:Good time to start pumping out GHG then! (Score:5, Funny)
none of the roofs are rated to carry that. All the planted crops, except trees, are killed. All trees less than a few meters die, naturally. You can't plow it. Most plants won't grow in it. Cars won't run for very long when it's in the air and nobody's digging a car out of a few meters of ash without patience, and if you did there's no where to drive it where you won't get bogged down in soft crunchy ash. The ash is suffused with toxic gases, some of which precipitate as acids. When it rains it kills all the life in all the rivers, and the silt changes the course of major rivers and minor streams. When it gets to the Atlantic and the Gulf it kills almost all of the fish in the ocean. It interferes with cell phone reception, TV and radio. A few meters of ash is enough to clog every hydro power plant, every nuclear power plant in the country. It blocks all the railways and all the highways of course, and that's how we move food around. And if you're not directly affected but you don't like America, that would be a fine day to attack.
Shit, will it really affect my cell phone reception?
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more likely to cause global cooling, as TFS and TFA state.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
If I am warmed and cooled at the same time how will I know what to complain about?
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
It's more likely to cause global cooling, as TFS and TFA state.
<VallyGirlVoice>What eeeever. Magma is HOT, dummy.</VallyGirlVoice>
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
People tend to eat nearly as much ice cream in winter as in summer, when the body tends to crave the fat in response to harsher environmental conditions.
But just to be safe, better add espresso. And liquor. And cigars. And porn.
You could call it "The Little Vice Age"
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Informative)
nah, it won't quite be that bad. most predictions expect the immediate danger zone to have a radius of 1000-1600km, with pumice & ash deposit probably covering all of California and most of the Midwest [tulane.edu]. but rather than being burned, most deaths/injuries will likely be caused by ash inhalation.
luckily, modern humans have the benefit of science and technology.given enough warning, most people within range of the volcanic explosion and subsequent lava/pyroclastic flow (70,000 to 100,000+ individuals by some estimates) can be evacuated beforehand. everyone else will simply have to stay in doors for a couple of days before they too can be evacuated outside of the ash cover area.
the USGS seems pretty confident that the YVO monitoring program will detect any premonitory indicators (such as emissions of magmatic gases) of any such impending disaster. and studies indicate that, if there is a volcanic eruption, it is not likely to be a caldera-forming supervolcanic eruption due to insufficient rhyolitic magma-storage to sustain such an event.
in the event that a caldera-forming eruption takes place, then yes the ash will probably circle the entire globe and lower the temperature in the lower atmosphere for a few years, and that can have a severe impact on the ecology of the planet. but it's certainly survivable. and the chances of such an event actually occurring is still statistically insignificant--contrary to what is often reported, are are not "overdue" for a supervolcanic eruption. (the mean interval between such eruptions is 710,000 years, not 600,000 years.)
if others are interested, you can read the USGS's report on the Preliminary Assessment of Volcanic and Hydrothermal Hazards in Yellowstone National Park and Vicinity [usgs.gov] (the actual report is in PDF format).
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. Major rhyolitic, non-huge-caldera-forming eruptions have a far more statistically significant record than anything you could call "supervolcanic", and are only once every ten thousand years or so on average. Far more common. And most earthquake swarms at Yellowstone have nothing to with upcoming volcanic eruptions.
Sorry to ruin everyone's doomsday fun. ;)
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Kind of makes the California smoking ban useless.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Insightful)
evacuated to where exactly? and by whom? you saw what happened to katrina do you really think we're any more prepared for anything like this?
Re:Global Warning (Score:4, Interesting)
I know if a localised calamity was due to affect a city here in Ireland, we would have the national bus operator's fleet transferred to special trips for evacuation, and similarly full trainloads would be organised to other cities and emergency facilities. The government would reemburse the transport operators from tax money - because we all pay taxes (yes, even the unemployed thanks to our regressive indirect taxation of 21.5% sales tax and direct charges for just about everything). Ireland is kinda US-looking, so I guess you would get a bunch of morons on the other coast complaining about the cost (despite the fact they would be quite in favor of such action if the calamity affected them instead - and the fact the country would be rather worse off with a sudden wiping out of so many citizens).
It seemed crazy to me that in the New Orleans situation, it was expected of everyone to get out under their own steam by private car or regular transport. Even for many who did have private cars, it should have been preferable for them to be specifically evacuated by special mass transit services. There should *never* have been a need to provide "centres of last resort". Anyone left should have been forcably evacuated. Of course some people's reluctance to leave is an indictment of the ability of the forces of law and order to protect people's property (i.e. from thieves rather than natural forces) even under normal circumstances in the US.
It seemed like they did things more along the correct lines the second time around (masses of special bus services, etc.), but it's actually distressing that they didn't get it right first time around when it was not an unanticipated problem.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Interesting)
well, if that does happen then there will certainly be major food shortages around the world and severe infrastructure damage (reservoirs becoming silted up, dams breaking, entire towns covered by meters of ash, power lines in other areas snapping from the weight of ash cover, etc.) in the US, but i think science & technology will prevail. my city happens to be within the ash cover area, but i think the city population would still be able to survive.
first off, we would need to get respirators and gas masks, then we would have to secure a water supply. next, we'd need to repair the power lines or build our own little power plant. since no one is going to be driving on the roads, we would have plenty of gasoline to run a large gas turbine capable of powering a small community for a couple of years.
with basic infrastructure restored, we can then focus on securing a food supply. with careful rationing (America is the land of waste and excess after all), existing food supplies that were produced before the disaster would probably last a good year or so. that would be just enough time to establish a local food supply. lack of sunlight and cold weather won't be a problem with a power plant available. it's not too hard to build a greenhouse (or use an existing one) and set up a hydroponic system and grow lamps to produce artificial sunlight & heat.
it will take some hard work, but it's nothing that a little human ingenuity can't overcome. if anything, it'll encourage people to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, foster cooperation and a sense of community, and create a more efficient and egalitarian society in the long run. if Americans want to survive this kind of disaster, they'll have to learn to cooperate with and help one another. rather than depending on agribusiness and corporate farms hundreds of miles away to produce one's food, local communities will have to get together and set up farming co-ops and learn to be more self-sufficient.
if this were India, China, or Africa, then there might be a large death toll. but America has a lot more material wealth and natural resources. we also have a more educated population and the technological and scientific knowledge that brings. our biggest challenge is simply overcoming our culture of selfishness and ignorance. if mass hysteria breaks out or society degenerates into lawless chaos, with everyone fighting over immediate resources, each person blindly pursuing their own selfish interests rather than working together, then we probably won't survive. but chances are most communities will be able to make it through such an ordeal.
personally, i'd travel to the nearest university where there are the highest concentrations of:
additionally, college campuses have large libraries, digital knowledge repositories, advanced research labs, scientific equipment, and many even have greenhouses and seed banks. so you have the human resources, information resources, and material resources to survive the catastrophe. and you'll also be connected to a global academic network.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, when St. Helens erupted, the majority of the ash fell in a relatively small agricultural region. I know, I lived right in the middle of that farm country at the time. When it happened, everyone assumed a total loss for the year, since the ground was caked in inches of the ash cement. The region looked like a wasteland, and mobility was very limited.
But the agricultural disaster never happened. The crops bounced back with a vengeance and produced spectacular record yields. Not just for that year, but for several years thereafter. It turns out that the several inches of ash acted as incredible fertilizer and helped the soil retain moisture, and the crops poked their way through the ash after a couple good rains. Most of the US would get that kind of dusting of ash across its agricultural belt, and while there might be some cooling it will likely be offset in part by a massive agricultural rebound that compensates for a significant part of it. We expected the worst when St. Helens erupted, but the reality was far less than that in terms of food production.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
personally, i'd travel to the nearest university where there are the highest concentrations of:
progressive civic-minded & altruistic individuals
intellectuals and knowledgeable experts in assorted fields
innovative freethinkers and fresh young minds
Awesome. I'll travel to meet up with some hunter friends of mine who have guns and wilderness survival skills... we'll shoot you and your newly found progressive buddies, eat your vegetables, and have a long pig BBQ!
Re:Global Warning (Score:4, Insightful)
In WW2, only 15% of soldiers actually shot at the enemy - and they were under fire and had been explicitly trained to kill. Even in a truly life-or-death situation, humans are not nearly as violent as disaster melodramas like to make out.
In times of hardship and disaster, the default mode of most humans is cooperation not competition. People pull together in hard times, which can be verified in Britain by talking to people alive during the war.
You are wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
It is widely documented that during natural disasters people organize themselves and help each other.
Some people in the US have an irrational love of guns, violence and oppression as a way to confront any major crisis.
In most situations what is required is human kindness and good organizational skills.
The brutes that will try to go hunting and make themselves strong, will not be allowed back in the village and will be left to rot psychologically by being ignored by the rest of the new community. Or will be organized by the clever people (i.e. politicians) as they had always been.
People with a gun just become the tool of somebody else's bidding.
Um, no. (Score:5, Informative)
Volcanic "ash" is not burning wood "ash". Volcanic ash is actually pulverized, powdered rock that only superficially resembles wood ash as it falls and collects on the ground. It's not the result of any burning process.
Re:Global Warning (Score:4, Informative)
small amounts of volcanic ash might only irritate your lungs, but if a supervolcanic eruption took place, it would likely throw up tremendous amounts (~1000 cubic miles) of tephra/pyroclast, the finest particles of which could circle the globe and remain suspended in the atmosphere for years. if you're immediately downwind from such an eruption, you'd be breathing in heavy amounts of what is essentially microscopic shards [uidaho.edu] of broken glass [usgs.gov] for weeks or months.
archaeological evidence has been uncovered showing that the mass deaths of plains animals [rense.com] 12 million years ago during a supervolcanic explosion at Yellowstone were due primarily to lung disease from volcanic ash inhalation. even many animals that survived the initial ashfall were still killed by the ash [google.com] stirred up by their own movements or wind.
Re:Global Warning (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, your "dead" on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory [wikipedia.org]
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't "burn/melt most of the populated areas of Canada and Mexico", not even close. The magma/lava discharge will simply stay in and around the area of Yellowstone +/- at most 100 miles (heck, the longest known magma/lava flow in the solar system is only ~160 miles, and that is on Jupiter's moon, Io). The only thing that people outside that area have to worry about is ash and volcanic gasses which will be discharged. Unfortunately, the jet stream will force that eastward across the USA (and around the world, in the event of a major eruption). Get your facts straight. And the people modding the parent up for informative should also get their facts straight...
There is also no direct evidence that the eruption of Mt Toba was the cause of the drop in human population. For all we know there could have been a major epidemic which was highly contagious which would slowly kill someone over the course of a year or more (think something like an AIDs virus which was transmitted simply by close contact, not sexually transmitted). We simply don't know for certain. We are now, however, much more technologically capable of dealing with a mini-ice age if it was triggered by an event like this. While it would be difficult, if we really had to work for something, we would develop filters for removal of the particles of ash and soot in the air, and eventually also devise methods to remove or trap the volcanic gasses.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Sometimes typos are beautiful!
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but only if someone hears it.
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Global Warning (Score:5, Funny)
The deaf won't. But there will be people from the govt going around making the "BOOM" asl sign.
It WILL blow up on... (Score:5, Funny)
Dec 21, 2012
Re:It WILL blow up on... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It WILL blow up on... (Score:5, Funny)
Those Mayans were a smart bunch.
Yup - they figured out how to design a calendar system that would provoke all sorts of speculation and running around in circles in the future.. I nominate the Mayan calendar system for "best troll ever!"
Re:It WILL blow up on... (Score:5, Funny)
No, that one's going to go to the Bible or the Quran.
Suddenly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Suddenly the economy doesn't sound like such a big problem after all.
Re:Suddenly... (Score:5, Funny)
Are you nuts?!? With 2/3 of the country gone, my 401k is going to be completely ruined! RUINED! It would be a financial catastrophe (in addition to an actual catastrophe)!
Re:Suddenly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, I heeded the advice to SELL SELL SELL all of the stocks in my 401(k) portfolio and invest in Guns, Ammo, and Booze. I should be in pretty sweet shape if the Apocalypse occurs in the next few months.
Peter
Re:Suddenly... (Score:5, Funny)
Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years events (Score:5, Funny)
Why not? All the mathematical models claimed that the US Financial credit market and the Housing Bubble wouldn't burst at the same time- they calculated that was a once in 75 million years event. Given the luck of the United States lately, a 1/600,000 year event going off right now would just be the icing on the cake.
Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score:5, Funny)
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
(This is only true if the volcano blows within the next 5 hours, and I have to say - if it's going to blow, it should do it then, just for the humor value.)
Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score:5, Funny)
God: "Pull my finger..."
Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, this is true, but what you have to remember is that those "mathematical models" were created by imbeciles who believed that all events in the financial market were independent (i.e no event in the market affects any other event), that the market can grow forever without limit, and -- worse -- still believe that when an event that the models say is a once-in-a-hundred-years event happens three times in six months, it's not an indication of a basic flaw in the model, but rather a rare fluke that means it's now statistically certain it'll NEVER happen again. The global financial sector's "mathematical models" are worthless, and always have been. They built a house of cards using imaginary money as cards, and the question was only one of when the house of cards would collapse.
The financial market and the Yellowstone basin are hardly related. Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood, and based on what is -- on a geological scale -- a very short period of observation, a mere century and a half or so in the case of Yellowstone. But they are at least based on observation and study, not wishful thinking. Yes, many of the models indicate that there could be another supervolcanic event at Yellowstone "any time now". But on a geological timescale, that "any time now" could be a thousand years away.
This is interesting news, and absolutely bears close monitoring, but I think it's a little premature to run around shouting that the sky is falling. But regardless of the actual risk from Yellowstone, I don't think that the failure of the consensual delusion passed off as mathematical models of the global economy constitutes anything that can be used as evidence for anything except for how stupid a whole lot of ostensibly really smart people can actually be, when they're blinded by greed.
Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score:5, Funny)
Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood
We just need to think more logically.
Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score:4, Insightful)
You elect an imbecile to the most powerful office in the world. Twice.
You spend/borrow your way into a financial crisis.
You alienate and disgust 99% of the rest of the world with (just off the top of my head) Guantanamo, bombings inside Pakistan, extraordinary renditions, the whole Iraq fuckup, Kyoto, etc.
You remove more and more of the basic rights of your own citizens.
Apart from that, please think about the majority of humanity around the world, count your fucking blessings, and shut the fuck up. Try living just one day as an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese.
Re:Two multiple hundreds of thousands of years eve (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure you're posting to Slashdot from an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese household. On a high horse, no doubt.
bombings inside Pakistan (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe that has something to do with that region of Pakistan harboring the people who murdered almost 3,000 Americans?
Using that line of reasoning, is it reasoning?, the US should then be attacking Saudi Arabia. Most of the 911 hijackers were Saudis.
Kyoto is a flawed treaty. It will cripple the economy of the developed World while giving a license to pollute to the developing World (China/India). Why the hell should we cripple our economy if they aren't going to be on board with solving the problem?
Though I didn't want to see a President Gross, er Gore, I voted against Bush by selecting Gore on the ballot because of Kyoto. Having said that, after President Bush came out against Kyoto something he said provoked me to do some research. I didn't know it before but Kyoto did not have limits on GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions on either China or India. And both countries are building a lot of coal fired power plants. So from one perspective Bush was right, however he still could have encouraged or pushed businesses to cut emissions and develop renewable energy sources. What does he do? He instead tries to relax emission regulations, so power plants can emit more pollution.
You remove more and more of the basic rights of your own citizens.
Citation?
Warrentless wiretaps [salon.com] and searches as well as the PATRIOT Act [wikipedia.org].
Falcon
Warning (Score:4, Funny)
Well, if it's going to be the apocalypse (and I'm not going to be responsible, much to my chagrin), can you just make sure I get a few weeks' notice? There are... things... I want to do.
Re:Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Totally (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, I could be so bold as to state some asinine comment on Slashdot and not care about Karma or mod points:
I love MS, hate Apple, think Linux is cute but just a toy, and man enough to admit I own a copy of the Joy Luck Club on DVD. ...I feel liberated.
Re:Totally (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Warning (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if it's going to be the apocalypse (and I'm not going to be responsible, much to my chagrin), can you just make sure I get a few weeks' notice? There are... things... I want to do.
Those 'things' are girls and they've already told you they wouldn't have sex with you even if the world were ending.
Oh wait on second thoughts this is slashdot. You do realize that at the end of the world, no one's going to care if you put out a new beta of your new Robocode [sourceforge.net] robot, even if it is unbeatable.
Look at the bright side... (Score:4, Funny)
... when the global cooling occurs, it'll get Al Gore to STFU for once.
Well damn... (Score:5, Funny)
Recent Earthquake map (Score:5, Informative)
"would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental US" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental (Score:5, Informative)
One
Re:"would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental (Score:5, Interesting)
The three last eruptions [yellowstonepark.com] were 6000, 700, and 2500 times Mt St Helens 1980 (MSHE), which released 1.67 exajoules [wikipedia.org] (1.673 x 10^18 Joules). According to the esteemed Christopher Thomas [slashdot.org] 1 Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) is equivalent to 4 petajoules (4 x 10^15 Joules). Converting MSHE to BLoC gives 1 MSHE = 418.25 BLoC. So the last three eruptions were 2509500 BLoC, 292775 BLoC, and 1045625 BLoC, respectively. Since we don't know how big the next eruption will be, let's just assume the mean of the last 3, and that's 1282633.3 BLoCs, or 39% of the total solar energy that strikes the surface of the Earth [wikipedia.org].
No boom today. (Score:5, Funny)
Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
Re:No boom today. (Score:4, Funny)
"Where's the Kaboom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom!"
Sensationalism at its best (Score:5, Insightful)
The linked articles do not really raise any cause for concern. The title sure has a ZOMG!!! factor to it, but in reality it's just a bunch of what-ifs. Move along, nothing to see here.
Too late (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously Slashdot, you need to work on your reaction time. This was news two days ago.
These earthquake swarms happen frequently in Yellowstone, and this one has already ended. Yellowstone has dropped back to its ordinary low rumble [utah.edu].
Re:Your link doesn't seem to support your contenti (Score:5, Interesting)
At times like these (Score:5, Funny)
At times like these, I feel it's appropriate to start rocking back and forth singing:
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
Taco Department (Score:4, Funny)
Figured taco would post this story from the "maybe the volcano might warm me up dept"
Some scientific perspective... (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, the Yellowstone volcanic system shows no signs that it is headed toward such an eruption in the near future. In fact, the probability of any such event occurring at Yellowstone within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low.
...
Lava flows and small volcanic eruptions occur only rarely--none in the past 70,000 years. Massive caldera-forming eruptions, though the most potentially devastating of Yellowstone's hazards, are extremely rare--only three have occurred in the past several million years. U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah, and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future.
(emphasis mine)
As for that "several million years" figure for a devastating explosion of the kind TFA is describing, consider that the United States as a nation is still less than 250 years old. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the idea that "it hasn't happened in a long time so it must be ready to happen now" is just a popular Las Vegas delusion.
Re:Can't decide (Score:5, Insightful)
After the fact.
Re:Can't decide (Score:5, Funny)
Please do not panic. Resist the temptation to read or talk to loved ones. Do not attempt sexual relations, as years of TV radiation have left your genitals withered and useless.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(posted safely far away from the Netherlands at 01:07)
Re:GW linked to volcanic activity ?! WTF (Score:5, Funny)
"Climate change may actually increase the probability of volcanic and earthquake activity!"
Come on get off the fence, does it or doesn't it.
Re:Somebody call Crono! (Score:4, Funny)
That's just the sort of "bend over and take it up the arse" that has gotten you Americans into the mess you're in right now. You should be out protesting in the streets about this impending supervolcano! If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem. Won't someone _please_ think of the children? Maybe next time you'll vote in a government with a firm policy platform on the whole supervolcano issue. If this supervolcano goes off then the terrorists win.
I've got plenty more!
Re:Somebody call Crono! (Score:5, Funny)
And all this time I thought that if you weren't part of the solution you were part of the precipitate...
Re:drilling (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably not, but Yellowstone is a very geologically active area, and my first thought when I hear about new activity there (which comes and goes all the time) is of hydrothermal effects.
There's a lot of water moving around underground there, lots of faults, and lots of heat to drive it. When water or ground moves it can change the pressure in other areas, which may allow existing fractures or faults to slip and cause earthquakes. (The hydrostatic pressure of water and CO2 in cracks in rocks can reduce the effective confining pressure holding the rocks together, so they slip more easily -- understanding fluid effects is critical to understanding earthquakes.)
It seems like every time there's an earthquake, or change in geyser activity, or some ground inflation, or whatever, the popular press starts barking about gigantic volcanic eruptions. Before you pay attention to them, consider that a volcanic eruption requires molten rock to reach the surface. On its way it will have to push lots of existing rock out of the way, and that rock will have to go someplace, probably up, which we would detect as significant ground inflation. On its way volatiles would be released which we would expect to detect as unusual concentrations of various volcanic gases and changes in water chemistry. Significant changes in the behavior of existing geothermal features would also be expected.
We also hear a lot about Yellowstone's largest eruptions, but most eruptions are small.
Interestingly, it has been calculated that as much as almost 1/3 of a cubic kilometer of basalt is intruded beneath Yellowstone each year, which if I recall correctly is similar to the amount entering the magma system beneath Hawaii. In Yellowstone, however, it's trapped beneath a gummy layer of molten silica rich rock which itself eventually erupts and partially accounts for Yellowstone's famously explosive outbursts. The basalt, for its part, tends to cool and solidify underground, over time forming a long track of high density rock that is easy to see on any topographic map of the western US as a feature we call the Snake River Plain, terminating with the Yellowstone Caldera as the head of the snake.
Re:Geothermal time, people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice sounding idea. There's lots of energy down there. If we take it away, then everything down there ought to cool down, and become safe. Easy, no?
Well, not really. What we have here is something like a giant steam engine boiler twenty miles across with the safety valve stuck down. In the days of steam locomotives, if you thought there might be a crack in a boiler, then you filled the whole system with water and pressurized it. That way, if the boiler gave a little, the water would escape and the pressure would rapidly drop. Water is not elastic, so you have little stored energy, and you don't get an explosion. Gas is much more springy so you would get much more bang and flying bits with pressurized gas. Superheated steam is like a really compressed gas with liquid densities, so that is even worse still.
If you have an old-fashioned boiler with rivets, then as the pressure builds up, it will creak and the rivets will give a bit, and the steam will leak, a bit, but the whole system does not fail explosively. However, suppose you went around patching all the tiny leaks, and made the boiler rigid - it then has no way of failing other than by splitting in half. I have a nasty feeling that taking heat energy out of the weak places in the Yellowstone dome - if we could extract heat on that scale - would make it stiffer and more rigid, while the reduction in temperature may cause the gases to come out of solution, which would make the big explosion more likely.
For safety reasons, what we need a series of local eruptions that release pressure and gas like a safety valve or a weeping rivet, but that won't do the environment much good ( though if we recover some of the energy and use it to replace coal-fired power stations, it might not be that bad either ). However, you aren't going to get me to climb onto a 20-mile long steam boiler with a stuck safety valve and drill little holes to relieve the pressure.
We could build geothermal power stations, but the energy they are likely to be able to extract will be so tiny when compared to what's down there that they won't make any difference, unless you are talking of planet-scale engineering. On the plus side, I don't think we risk making things significantly worse either. Right now, and such power stations are in the wrong place for the US power grid.
Nice idea, though. I hope someone, somewhere is seriously looking at ideas like this. However, in the particular case of Yellowstone, we don't know of other volcanoes like this, so we can only look at the past history of this one. Most of the supervolcano theory is pretty young, and I don't think we really know enough about the materials at the pressures and temperatures to be able to dick with it with confidence. We know it doesn't blow up often, so we would be very unlucky if it blew up tomorrow. Right now, the best plan is probably to measure it very carefully, and learn all we can about how volcanoes work in depth. These little earthquakes tend to come in bursts, but we don't really know why.
Thank you for reading. We now return to our regular Internet schedule AAAGH! THIS IS IT OMFG WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE! And the angel sounded the trumpet a forth time and one third of the world's Zune players fell silent... Nostradamus has written: it's gonna be the Y2K bug all over again. Buy guns! Buy ammo!! THESE ARE THE END DAYS! (etc)...
Re:just speculating (Score:4, Interesting)
Short answer OK for you?
Yes.
I am, and I've written enough pages on this topic already to not want to write much more unless you're seriously interested.
Yes, there are ways to do it, both on the drawing board and under active development. But there are also significant hazards to doing it precisely here. Read my other replies in this thread (filtering out the ones where I was being funny), and you'll be better informed and could probably work out some of the issues yourself. Bear in mind the old joke that "if we knew what we were doing, we couldn't call it research".
Re:In Unrelated News ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What would be in the least bit mysterious about that? That would be as mysterious as a geologist living at 80-several metres above sea level (around 10 m above the approximate wash level of the Haltenbanke Tsunami) on a 1:7 slope (meaning that rainfall runs away and floods some other poor schmuck), in an area that has never been subject to mining (and hence has no mining-related subsidence) and hasn't got enough slope to generate its own solifluction movements. That's as mysterious as the stable boy making a nice profit by betting on the horses that he's training. That's as mysterious as a not very mysterious thing.
If I were a seismologist, I'd be keeping a weather eye on this little lot. I don't see any particular advantage to moving to Africa though - too many people. I've already declined to post my destination, if this gets more "interesting".
mind you, one of my class mates from University did his PhD in seismology ; I might try to find an email address for him, check out where he's living these days. Worth knowing that.