Posted on 04/11/2005 10:15:24 AM PDT by runnerdog
I agree. The best way to find out that something is going to happen is when the animals suddenly leaves for no reason. The animal leaves, I'm leaving too..
No kidding! I was hoping it'd be at least entertaining. What a bunch of crappola. When the were saying that the ash would short circuit electrical things (don't remember the exact word) and the ash would get into people's lungs and the moisture would turn it into cement, my husband & I just laughed.
Having lived through Mt. St. Helen's and 2-3 inches of ash...we never lost electricity, nor did anyone end up with cement lung. That's not to say it was safe to breathe.
Also the cars kept functioning (although the air filters were filthy and had to be changed) and the crops did produce that year and as far as I recall we didn't lose any livestock.
It could have been an interesting show, but they chose to walk the line of lies and scare tactics. And if I had written the story, the head geology guy would have been put in jail for endangering the public, for being such a weenie, and saving no one but his family.
"Science questions: Wasn't the eruption and massive explosive volcanic release that blew the top off of Crater Lake even larger than Yellowstone?"
There are a couple dozen calderas similar to Yellowstone all over the world, and many eruptions have occurred that dwarf the largest Yellowstone eruption.
There are a bunch in Indonesia alone, and several others in North America as well. Sooner or later they all go off. It may be the end of the USA, but life will go on elsewhere. Only 74000 years ago the Tambora explosion practically made Sumatra look like the moon, but now it is a lush tropical paradise.
That was pretty much my impression too. The movie wasn't an instant classic nor particularly exciting, but it was interesting. The Brokaw part of the show was actually pretty balanced and non-alarmist with the conclusion that while it's possible an eruption could take place, the warning signs aren't really pointing to it.
If Discovery had shown the movie without following it up with some real "science" then maybe there could be a case made for lack of credibility, but that's not how it went.
It would have been a good movie if it was on the SciFi Channel and they didn't have Blather at the end suddenly becoming a volocano expert.
Our planet has all kinds of nasty little suprises. There is a string volcanic lakes in Africa that occasionally realease huge amounts of gas. Lake Nyos bubbled over in the 80s and killed some 1,700 people.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/savageplanet/01volcano/01/indexmid.html
My cat left last night............and I can't find my aluminum hat!
HELP!!!!
Err, sorry I meant the Toba eruption, not Tambora
Actually the NG special I saw said the volcano wouldn't initially kill us. Just the ash would eventually suffocate us.
A little known fact is that Mammoth Mountain sits on the west edge of a old caldera. There are occasionally little quakes, telling you that magma may be moving.There is a "Hot Springs" and a geothermal electricity plant within 5 miles of the ski resort.
To see recent little quakes, and outline of the ancient eruption:
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/Long_Valley.html
"Will you stop talking about the Skid marks!"
On the other hand what are we really going to do about it..,nada zip zilch, if it pops it pops, end of story...just make sure you've got some provisions and enough ammo to go around...
I don't believe so. If I remember right, the last supervolcano erupted 77,000 years ago(Toba). Crater Lake I believe was 7-8000 years ago.
Was the Crater Lake volcano over the same "hot spot" that is now heating up Yellowstone?
That I'm not sure.
well, at least it wasn't Dan Rather..
LOL, that is precisely when I took my dog for a walk and went to bed. The storyline was lame, the effects childish and the acting sub-boring.
Maybe because that is a reflection on his credibility?
> ash would get into people's lungs and the moisture would turn it into cement, my husband & I just laughed.
Why laugh at one of the more painful ways to die? With sufficiently fine ash, this is what happens.
> Having lived through Mt. St. Helen's and 2-3 inches of ash...we never lost electricity, nor did anyone end up with cement lung.
2-3 inches of ash just isn't that much. Remember, Herculaneum was buried under *yards* of the stuff. Yellowstone going "foom" would cover Nebraska in yards of the stuff as well. It's happened before, it'll happen again.
I saw the part where it showed how the crust is constantly moving over the caldera. I predict by the time of the super-eruption Hollyweird would have moved to top dead center (One could only hope). I mean why would God allow this to happen to the most beautiful part of the USA and spare the cesspool of southern California?
Well, if the Crater Lake blast was only 7,000 years ago (Indian tribe witnesses, if they passed through Washington/Oregon towards Clovis 12,000 years ago) then the two would definitely be two different hot spots.
The multiple volcanic blasts from the Yellowstone-source that created the Snake River plains are much, much older than that.
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