Supervolcano beneath Yellowstone update: Caldera Volcano shocks researchers

Connected with each of those historical cases was an invasion by a stronger, hungier foe. What if a decadent society such as ours has no such enemy to take it down, though?

 

To be fair, though, we could hypothetically adjust the course of an inbound asteroid or comet enough to avoid a collision, given enough warning at least. But that's about it.

 

For me, that is very much "after the fact", I think most of the deaths will happen long before climate is an issue. But in the long term, that will kill as many if not more (especially people in areas that are barely self-sufficient in food production now).

 

but what are you going to feed your livestock with?...how are you going to protect your livestock, there absolutely will be hungry people coming for them you can't hide them in a cave...you better than anyone else in this forum know the challenges of farming it isn't going to be easy...

 

If the Yellow Stone Super Volcano actually did erupt you can kiss goodbye about 50% of the Worlds Population at a MINIMUM and that is a CONSERVATIVE estimate.

AboveAlpha

 

you disagree with every expert opinion I've found on the web...who claim Yellowstone is far bigger than anything else and will result in a 10c drop in temp(a full ice age is only 5c than today) for 10 years, they estimate it will destroy food production in the northern hemisphere...

ya like Australia South America and Africa are going to come to our aid?...even if they wanted to they don't have the logistical ability to get any significant amount of food to the northern hemisphere in time to help...

an estimated 10 thousand survivors world wide, likely as many that will survive Yellowstone...

we are, I was just making note of the difference scales of disaster and the short and long term results on climate...Siberian traps were estimated to have lasted 800,000-900,000yrs and the Deccan 30K...

...this is anthropology 101, hunter gatherers exist completely outside of civilization, they have no need of anything and can continue to exist without any help from civilization...my daughter the anthropologist was amused by that comment...

when collapse is obvious and imminent family comes first...this is not a temporary local catastrophe it will be global or at minimum hemispheric there is no recovery...if I'm a cop or military personal and there is no hope of recovery I'm going home to protect my family because no one else will be there to help...

and north america will be Leningrad on a larger scale...

true, watch any episode of survivor man Les Stroud and he often conveys how quickly he weakens and how it affects his thinking, and his adventures are only a week in length...this would be the one time fat people will be happy they're fat, the zero body fat gym rats will go fast...

no other country has the USA's logistical ability to transport food, all the unaffected countries combined could not hope to transport sufficient food in time to feed a devastated North America...even if they had that much food and that's assuming they aren't effected by the catastrophe themselves...

that was a very, very low tech civilization not at all comparable to our enormous highly specialized population and it's dependency on highly efficient technical food production and logistics...

 

We would be LUCKY to be able to survive as a species...although not impossible after such an event but EXTREMEL DIFFICULT.

One thing would be certain....the amount of devastation and falling ash in the U.S. would make the United States mostly uninhabitable for CENTURIES and that also is a conservative estimate.

AboveAlpha

 

I am not arguing that it wouldn't be a very great catastrophe, but why you seem to insist it will continue to make such a huge area as you specify uninhabitable for years baffles me. The immediate Yellowstone area, possibly even much of Wyoming and surrounding states, yes. But to say it would thickly blanket most of the Western States is not in keeping with what the other eruptions did. Nor is the idea of a decades or centuries long eruption consistent with the histories of most Stratovolcanoes. They blow up usually over a period of weeks or months, very seldom over a year, and once the caldera collapses they are quiet again, usually for millennia. Also, isn't volcanic ash a fairly rich soil after a while?

And even if what you believe would happen happened, I don't think it would end or set back civilization

Still, maybe you're right. Let's just hope we never find out

 

Supervolcano
The world's biggest bang
Ash
US television networks would probably bring the first news of a Yellowstone super-eruption to the UK. It probably wouldn't take long for the first physical signs to appear.

Kilauea erupts photo: USGS
River of fire: Lava streams from the Hawaiian volcano Kilauea in 1959.

Although it may look bad, geologists consider such eruptions to be 'quiet'. Explosive eruptions like supervolcanoes pose a much greater threat to humans.




Within 3-4 days, a fine dusting of ash could fall across Europe, according to a UK Met Office computer forecast commissioned by the BBC. The computer model predicts how ash would spread following a nine-day June eruption of 1000 cubic km of ash and gas from Yellowstone.

The model shows that the fallout from a Yellowstone super-eruption could affect three quarters of the US. The greatest danger would be within 1,000 km of the blast where 90 per cent of people could be killed. Large numbers of people would die across the country – inhaled ash forms a cement-like mixture in human lungs. Even the US East Coast could be paralysed by 1cm of ash.

Many people think that lava flows are the most dangerous volcanic hazards, but ash is often the biggest killer. Because supervolcanoes are highly explosive, much of the magma doesn't get a chance to become lava. Instead it is blasted into countless airborne ash particles – tiny scorching particles of jagged rock.

Ash can:

Kill and sicken humans and animals
Reduce sunlight
Trigger rainfall causing mudslides known as lahars
Severely disrupt air, road and rail transport
Crush buildings – 30 cm of dry ash is enough to collapse a roof
Contaminate water supplies
Kill crops and other vegetation
Clog machinery such as air filters.
The worst of these effects would not be experienced in Europe where the ash covering would only amount to a dusting.

A man sweeps ash from his roof photo: USGS
Useful stuff: A Washington State resident sweeps ash from his roof after the eruption of Mount St Helens.

Ash creates numerous hazards, but it also has positive uses. Fertilisers, soaps, household cleaners, metal polish and cement often contain volcanic ash.




Climate change
The most wide reaching effect of a Yellowstone eruption would be much colder weather.

Volcanoes can inject sulphur gas into the upper atmosphere, forming sulphuric acid aerosols that rapidly spread around the globe. Scientists believe sulphuric aerosols are the main cause of climatic cooling after an eruption.

Aerosols in the upper atmosphere would also scatter sunlight making the sky look like a cloudy winter morning all day long. The skies in Europe would appear red in the days after the eruption.

To predict how the climate may be affected, the BBC relied on historic data from the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia about 74,000 years ago and computer model forecasts commissioned from the UK Met Office and the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg.

Experts believe a Yellowstone eruption would inject 2,000 million tonnes of sulphur 40-50km above the Earth's surface. Once there it would take 2-3 weeks for the resulting sulphuric acid aerosols to cloak the globe – with devastating effects.

Global annual average temperatures would drop by up to 10 degrees, according to computer predictions. And the Northern Hemisphere could cool by up to 12 degrees. Experts say colder temperatures could last 6-10 years, gradually returning to normal.

Scientists predict that the Monsoon would fail as a result of even larger temperature changes in the Southern Hemisphere, causing mass starvation in the Asian countries that depend on these life-giving rains.

LINK...http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/supervolcano/article2.shtml

AboveAlpha

 

And like the Armenians in the Near East, and the Jews in Europe they were persecuted for it.

 

I don't know how many people are aware of it, but just one General Support Center in one location has enough food stored (mostly MREs but C-rations as well) to feed an army for 3 months at standard fare of 3,000 calories a day. Properly rationed that army could survive another 6 months without loss of effectiveness. Has anyone any idea how many storage depots like that exist around the world? In one hardened site alone I am familiar with it can take almost anything but a direct nuclear hit, has its own huge water source and a positive air flow filter system to prevent contamination.

Flash forward to a major super volcanic eruption. Will it be singular? Or will it last over time and keep erupting for weeks or even months? No one knows but there are pockets of civilization with the capacity to survive with the technology to rebuild, like the seed depository in Scandinavia, with seeds of virtually every variety of food crops known to man.

Some of the military and some of the police will move to care for their own families as best they can, but it will not be total havoc as military discipline tends to keep things fairly stable.

Couple that with the opposite polar hemisphere which ill likely not be as badly affected as the one in which eruption is located. People will die, but I don't believe it will be mass death and destruction. Like I said earlier, some models are not nearly as serious as others.

 

Oh, hell, lets make it 90%. I never like anything conservative

That still leaves us with SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION. I still don't think civilization will collapse with that many people, especially since they'll probably be very concentrated in unaffected areas with electricity, food and computers. In fact, it would probably recover to present levels within a few generations if humanity chose to let it.

 

I believe Humanity would survive IF it was not a long term eruption because if it was...and too much ash and debris was sent into Earth's atmosphere that could kill off all surface life.

Thing is we really have no idea the extent and length of time of such a massive eruption but it would be NO PICNIC.

AboveAlpha

 

It is the unknown factor of size and duration that would concern me.

 

That's how the Morelochs evolved,
And the mole people.
Or my favorite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykWPyaqbebo


Moi
Future Evolution Expert

No ​

 

Which I've mentioned a couple of times, it could be manageable, a civilization killer or something in between...the trail of destruction previous events the yellowstone hotspot has left across the western states suggest they are major eruptions...but then I'm not a geologist or a volcanologist...

 

Not "were". There is a lot of understandable resentment in the countries of SE Asia. Indonesia and Vietnam in particular have had convulsions of anti chinese action.

 

OK, I can see the problem here.

First of all, Yellowstone is not a Stratovolcano. You are under a gross mistake here in thinking that it is so, because it is not. Basically you are trying to look at the explosion of a firecracker, and not understanding why a nuclear bomb acts so different.

Yellowstone is a Supervolcano, residing over a hot spot that is estimated to be at least 20 million years ago. Stratovolcanos form peaks, Supervolcanos leave gigantic craters. Statovolcanos remain in one place, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is moving (or more accurately, the earth moves over it), during it's lifespan it has created what is known as the Snake River Plain.



And as for the ashfall area, this is also well documented.



This is a historic look at past eruptions from this hotspot. This is not a Stratovolcano, so you can't think of it as such. The fossil bed at Ashfall State Park in Nebraska is from the Bruneau-Jarbidge Caldera, and the remaining strata layer of ash is 8 feet thick. And remember, that is a bed that suffered geological compression as well as weathering and some drifting before being covered. Most estimates placed at least a 15-25' ash layer there when it was originally laid down.

Thing of it as taking 10 meters of sand and then covering most of Europe with that. How much is going to grow through 10 meters of sand? How many animals are going to survive having 10 meters of sand sifted over them? How is anybody going to reclaim that landscape with 10 meters of sand covering it?

These eruptions are that big, and have global impacts.

 

Then you are still talking about a widely scattered population, with roughly the same planetary population as we had back in around 1700. What kind of technology did we have back then? How much true industry? Because that is roughly what we would be thrown back to, because higher technology requires significantly higher levels of population and infrastructure in order to support it.

But here, most of those top tier individuals will be dead. Other then doctors, I would expect that people who "think for a living" will become pretty scarce for a century or two, their skills are simply not needed. When a group has formed together for survival, suddenly the big dumb ox who can dig ditches for hours and intimidate threatening strangers with a club is much more important to survival of the group then a computer programmer is.

Now as for how long this eruption will go on, nobody really knows that for sure. The ashfall in Nebraska, was that a single explosive ashfall, or was it several successive over a period of months or years? Nobody really knows, the geological record is simply not that accurate. But most geologists and volcanologists believe that these events continue from between 2-25 years. First with smaller volcanos around the edges of the caldera, building up and trying to relieve pressure as the magma rapidly increases inside the caldera itself. Then the actual eruption, as the caldera blows itself out (which in this case would include not only all the ash but the majority of Yellowstone Park itself). Then it will settle down as the magma chamber empties, the remains of the caldera collapse in upon itself, and it slowly quiets down for another 600,000 years or so.

But smaller eruptions will likely continue for decades.

And you need to realize that for me, this is not all theoretical. I grew up in the Snake River Plain and the Treasure Valley Rift. And when somebody looks at my home state they are often struck how mountainous it is - except for those funny large flat areas at the bottom.



Well, the Snake River Plain is in fact the path of this hot spot over the last 20 million years. The spur that runs SE to NW is the Treasure Valley, a rift valley where the plate opened up because of the pressure of the Bruneau-Jarbidge eruption. And the entire area is covered with buttes, lava cones, and layer after layer of basalt flows.



This is a pretty typical view of the Snake River Plain today, millions of years after the Hot Spot moved on. And if you were standing there and turned around, this is what you would see in every direction.

Pretty barren, pretty lifeless, and I count at least 12 spatter cones in just this one photograph. Most eruptions seem to have fractured and ruptured areas roughly equal to the island of Puerto Rico.

 

I was just considering alternatives. If we didn't get more than a couple inches of ash and we got a little sunlight and a couple of frost free months there may be a slim chance of survival. But I was the one that said I would rather be right on top of it when it went off.

For the animals I would need salt. I would have to butcher most of them and keep them preserved in salt so no one would know I had them. Chickens and pigs can eat most anything and may possibly survive for a while on roots, bark grubs and earthworms. You can also feed them spoiled food if you had to. And if push came to shove you could feed them dead animals and people. It would be better than cannibalism...but not much better.

As far as people stealing animals or food...shoot to kill.

 

depending on wind direction I'm probably in the dead zone I could escape to europe with my dual citizenship...

so it's looks bleak, but looking further into it I haven't yet found any reference to a mass extinction from previous eruptions, so maybe the worst was confined to north america...

 

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OK, it's not a stratovolcano but a supervolcano . Now, was that entire gray area covered 15-25'? because that would mean the entire continent was covered at least about a foot, and there should be a pretty unmistakable layer over the entire world, like the charcoal layer from the Chicxulub impact, I've never heard of that.

That's one photograph and how far are you from the caldera that caused it? No question it's good evidence of an awesome event but I still don't see it as ending the world or setting civilization back. Like, except for famines, how is it going to kill off everybody in India and China?

 

Wow, really?



That is where that photo was taken. The Caldera is where the Yellowstone Caldera is resting at now, 200 mile East.

 

if estimates for a 5-10c global drop in temp for a decade are accurate there will be crop failures on global scale...that will translate into mass starvation everywhere, large societies are reliant on agriculture, no nation has a multiyear supply of food, they dont even 6 months of food...with the collpase of urban life governments will unravel followed by our societies structure...

 

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