Posted on 08/29/2015 5:30:26 PM PDT by markomalley
The rest of the world just dies slower.
Through some cosmic injustice, this caldera is not located directly underneath either DC, or anywhere in the middle east.
Not necessarily. Depends on the winds, atmosphere, large weather storms, time of year and if it’s a full scale eruption. But you can probably count on folks 500 or more miles north of the detonation into Canada, the Midwest and much of the northwest not surviving. Get ready for world wide cooler winters with supplies of everything being scarce.
I don’t think it would be a species killer, but a whole lot of people wouldn’t make it.
Try The Moose Ponds at the south end of Jenny Lake in the Tetons. Also the marsh on Signal Mountain. We saw lots,of moose there four years ago.
I see it like this... Yellowstone would destroy the “bread basket” of the world—the Great Plains. Those closest would die first. Those further away would starve, then cannibalize each other. Which would be a fitting demise for those in DC.
In the last roughly 2 million years Y has had 3 major blowouts and around 70 lesser ones.
http://www.livescience.com/33330-yellowstone-caldera-supervolcano-eruption.html
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/08/yellowstone/achenbach-text
The “hot spot” responsible for the Yellowstone caldera has erupted dozens of times in the past, going back some 18 million years. Since the hot spot is rooted deep in the Earth, and the tectonic plate above it is moving southwest, ghostly calderas from the more ancient explosions are strung out like a series of gigantic beads across southern Idaho and into Oregon and Nevada, the subsequent lava flows forming the eerie moonscapes of the Snake River Plain.
Then again the last one the human race lived through 74,000 years ago nearly did. The kill zone would be a radius of 100 miles or more (maybe 500, but that seems to be in dispute), depending on just how much stuff comes out and how long the eruption continues. That’s 11,000 cubic miles of stuff ... up into the air, down on your head, and into your lungs.
Most people think that an eruption would be like St Helens but bigger, just one blast and that’s it. However, Yellowstone has the potential to keep those blasts going for months or more. And those blasts would be orders of magnitude larger than the comparative St Helens eruption (a 5 VEI [Volcanic Explosivity Index] o 10 or greater VEI - each step is 10X the previous number.
If you live far away but within the ash fall zone, remember that ash is not wood ash or snow, but stone ash. You will have to get it off your roof, while not inhaling any of the rock dust. Else your roof can collapse and you will die. You’ll just adore the acid rain that follows ...
After that there will be a very long period of cold as the temperature begins to drop all across the Northern Hemisphere, and later the Southern.
If that eruption were to happen soon, and coupled with the decreasing activity on the Sun, expect very short summers and very long winters.
Food will be at a premium nationally and then worldwide after a few years, as the biosphere tries to recover. Millions upon million will die, year after year.
Only a handful, maybe a few hundred, made it last time around. Civilization as we know it, will be only a distant memory as people struggle to survive, each out for themselves and theirs. Most of what we know now will be lost, as only survival will matter.
Make no mistake Yellowstone is a killer, and there really is no place to hide, not anywhere. You do not want this to happen, no matter how bad things look politically, and pray it does not, not ever.
That is an enormous amount of energy. I wonder if it could be tapped for use like they do in Iceland
I am not mistaken or underestimating here. I think you should read my post a bit more carefully.
Just returned from four weeks on the road, including two weeks in Yellowstone/Tetons. Only moose we saw was a cow and calf at Moose Pond at Jenny Lake.
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