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Instances of volcanic eruptions are their highest for 300 years and scientists fear a major one that could kill millions and devastate the planet is a real possibility. Experts at the European Science Foundation said volcanoes - especially super-volcanoes like the one at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, which has a caldera measuring 34 by 45 miles (55 by 72 km) - pose more threat to Earth and the survival of humans than asteroids, earthquakes, nuclear war and global warming. There are few real contingency plans in place to deal with the ticking time bomb, which they conclude is likely to...

With enough warning, the states near Yellowstone could be evacuated, which would largely avoid a tremendous loss of life caused by the downpour of ash, the scientists said. But that's just in the short term; the aftermath would be the rub. For several days, ash would hang in the air, making it difficult to breathe. And that blanket of ash covering the country would smother vegetation and pollute the water supply, quickly leading to a nationwide food crisis. "A lot of people would perish," said Stephen Self, director of the Volcano Dynamics Group at the Open University in the U.K....

A U.S. judge on Friday approved a deal between conservationists and Montana officials to restrict road-building and logging in roughly 22,000 acres of state forest lands that make up core habitat for federally protected grizzlies. The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by conservationists after the state had sought to open 37,000 acres , mostly in the Stillwater State Forest, to timber harvesting despite what environmentalists said would be the destruction of prime grizzly bear territory. ... U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in a decision last year found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by...

Some surprising news out of Yellowstone National Park: Giant Geyser, one of its most powerful, erupted early this morning (Monday) around 5:03 a.m. MST. This is all the more amazing because Giant, reportedly the second tallest active geyser in the world behind Steamboat Geyser, has a remarkably spotty eruption record. Indeed, it has several different eruptions, according to the Geyser Observation and Study Association. Unlike Steamboat, however, Giant Geyser has been known to veer into periods of remarkable activity for much longer periods. For large swaths of 1997 and 1998, Giant Geyser erupted every three to four days, with some...

April 23, 2015 – University of Utah seismologists discovered and made images of a reservoir of hot, partly molten rock 12 to 28 miles beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, and it is 4.4 times larger than the shallower, long-known magma chamber. The hot rock in the newly discovered, deeper magma reservoir would fill the 1,000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times, while the previously known magma chamber would fill the Grand Canyon 2.5 times, says postdoctoral researcher Jamie Farrell, a co-author of the study published online today in the journal Science. “For the first time, we have imaged the continuous volcanic plumbing system...

The thrill of shooting real handguns, rifles and machine guns attracts Chinese visitors by the busload — often 20 to 30 tour buses a day, says co-owner Eric Yarger. Shooting firearms — at a cost of $25 to $350 — is something they can’t do legally in China. Chinese tourists make up about 80 percent of the range’s summer business. It’s not unusual for Chinese customers “to shoot every gun we have,” Yarger said. “They can spend over $1,000.”

The wind shifts. The stench of rotten eggs makes it nearly impossible to breathe and the hot fog clouds my view. I hold my breath and close my eyes, imagining the fog growing thicker, crushing me. Then without warning the wind clears and I’m enveloped once again in the cold, dry air. The heat feels like a lost dream. I shiver as I analyze my surroundings. Before me lies a steaming blue spring with concentric rings of green, yellow and dark red. I turn around to see another pool. But the rising fog is so dense, I can only guess...

SALMON, Idaho — A man hiking through a national forest in Idaho suffered severe burns and his two dogs were scalded to death when both canines plunged into a hot spring and he jumped in after them to try to save his pets, authorities said on Tuesday. The freak accident occurred last week in the Panther Creek Hot Springs, a popular spot in the sprawling Salmon-Challis National Forest, about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of the tourist town of Salmon in east-central Idaho. Temperatures at Panther Creek, usually mild enough for human bathing, had apparently grown dangerously high, possibly from...

Preliminary results of the investigation into the recent death of a hiker in Yellowstone National Park show that the man was attacked by a grizzly bear. While the exact cause of death has not been determined, investigators have identified what appear to be defensive wounds on the victim’s forearms. The victim’s body was found partially consumed and cached, or covered, in the vicinity of the Elephant Back Loop Trail near Lake Village on Friday afternoon. Based on partial tracks found at the scene, it appears that an adult female grizzly and at least one cub-of-the-year were present and likely involved...

A supervolcano in the heart of America's northwest has the potential to blanket the US in a 'nuclear winter'. If it were to erupt, the Yellowstone supervolcano would be one thousand times as powerful as the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption, experts claim. While it has lain dormant for more than 70,000 years, scientists say that we can't rule out the possibility eruption this may some day take place - although they say the chances are extremely slim. The eruption, the scientists say, could kill as many as 90,000 people almost instantly and release a 10 ft (3-meter) layer of...

The sheer size and wildness of Yellowstone National Park's signature bison provide a magnificent subject for camera-toting tourists. But officials caution visitors not to come within 25 yards of the animals, noting that they are unpredictable and able to sprint three times faster than people can run. A 62-year-old Australian man who ventured to within 3 to 5 feet of one bison was seriously injured Tuesday when the animal charged and tossed him into the air several times, park officials said in a statement. This is the second such incident within weeks. A 16-year-old Taiwanese exchange student was gored by...

A massive chamber holding enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon more than 11 times over is hiding beneath the steaming volcanic system of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. We knew of a smaller magma chamber closer to surface, holding some 10,000 cubic kilometres of magma and feeding heat upwards. The newly discovered reservoir sits under it and has a volume of 46,000 cubic kilometres. Together, the two form the largest known magma reservoir in the world. "We can't say definitively that this is the biggest magma reservoir in the world, but we currently don't know of any other that...

Konstantin Sivkov has previously spoken about expecting to see American society "decay" and has elaborate plans for how that could happen.What would happen if the Russians tried to launch nuclear bombs onto American soil, aiming to trigger a giant tsunami or the eruption of a supervolcano? That was precisely the plan one Russian military analyst laid out to combat the West, and it's fit for a Superman comic book or an Eisnehower-era James Bond caper. "The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States — a country just disappears," Konstantin Sivkov, director of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems in Moscow,...

April 2015 – YELLOWSTONE - Russian geopolitical analyst says the best way to attack the United States is to detonate nuclear weapons to trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault-line on California’s coast. The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, Konstantin Sivkov said in an article for a Russian trade newspaper on Wednesday, VPK News, that Russia needed to increase its military weapons and strategies against the “West’ which was “moving to the borders or Russia.” He has a conspiracy theory that NATO – a political and military alliance which...

Grizzly bears were the leading category among the 385 total conflicts between humans and large carnivores in Wyoming last year. Black bears were second with 134 conflicts, followed by wolves (64) and mountain lions (23). ... grizzly bears continue to expand their range. "They've far exceeded the expected geographic recovery distribution ... The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to decide this year whether it will lift protections for some 1,000 grizzlies that scientists say live in the Yellowstone region of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Removal of the protections would transfer jurisdiction over grizzlies to states

If the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park ever had another massive eruption, it could spew ash for thousands of miles across the United States, damaging buildings, smothering crops, and shutting down power plants. It'd be a huge disaster...

 The above sign was reported outside public restrooms in Yellowstone Park, by stephenwright.com. In 2005-7, intense lobbying by grassroots activists resulted in a move to change National Park Service (NPS) regulations so that state rules for concealed carry permits would apply in the National Parks.   The push for a rule change became strong enough that the NRA became involved.   It appeared that the new rule would go through in the last days of the Bush administration.   But the disarmists in the government pushed the bureaucrats in the National Park Service to keep extending the rule making period.   The...

Rod Coronado, a convicted eco-terrorist, is the leader of the controversial “Yellowstone Wolf Patrol,” a new environmental group that plans to shadow legal Montana wolf hunters during the state’s fall and winter wolf season and document the hunts with a video camera. Coronado, a resident of Michigan, is a radical environmentalist who “sank whaling ships nearly 30 years ago in Iceland and later went to prison after torching a Michigan State University lab in 1992 for conducting research for the fur industry” according to The Buffalo News of Buffalo, NY. He also serves as a spokesman for the radical, militant...

Recently, rumors have been swelling of a danger at Yellowstone National Park. That danger? A brewing supervolcano eruption. The fear of a Yellowstone supereruption, which ultimately went viral, may have begun back in February when a seismometer called B944 began sending senseless data to a public viewer at the University of Utah's seismographic station, as George Black reports in The New Yorker. Luckily for most of the U.S., the likelihood this eruption would happen is pretty low: about one in 100,000 any given year. If it did happen, it would be pretty devastating, though.

<p>If Yellowstone erupted into a massive, ash-spewing volcano, how far might the plume travel across the continental United States? From coast to coast, blanketing every city in ash, according to an unsettling new study.</p> <p>Geophysicists developed a computer model of a Yellowstone “super eruption” that would spew 330 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash into the sky. The resulting ash cloud, depending on wind conditions, would blanket the continental United States in ash deposits of varying thickness, according to the study, published late August in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.</p>