United States Yellowstone's At It Again.

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So as if the Wuhan Flu situation wasn't enough for the world to deal with, Yellowstone's been showing increased activity and pulsing over the last two years.

A chunk of Yellowstone the size of Chicago has been pulsing. Why?

TL;DR: Volcanic or super-volcanic eruption unlikely to be imminent. However large steam explosions shouldn't be ruled out if the Norris Geyser Basin continues to experience increasing activity.
 
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Normally I just sigh about doomsday scenarios, but volcanic eruptions on the level of Yellowstone are always something that'll make me alert.

Because I'm pretty sure an eruption nearly did wipe us despite humanity being almost as determined as cockroaches in living to see the next day. Can't remember which eruption did it though.

As long as it keeps making small eruptions or releases of gas, it's less likely to build up to a Big One.
That reminds me. Is it possible to figure a way out to let the Yellowstone and other supervolcano areas softly release their farts?

You can't have a super apocalyptic explosion if you never let the fuckers build-up to begin with.
 
Normally I just sigh about doomsday scenarios, but volcanic eruptions on the level of Yellowstone are always something that'll make me alert.

Because I'm pretty sure an eruption nearly did wipe us despite humanity being almost as determined as cockroaches in living to see the next day. Can't remember which eruption did it though.


That reminds me. Is it possible to figure a way out to let the Yellowstone and other supervolcano areas softly release their farts?

You can't have a super apocalyptic explosion if you never let the fuckers build-up to begin with.

Oh, it's certainly possible, but we're not at a level of technology where it's economically feasible just now. It's the same as poking dough that's rising, except the gas is magma, and the dough is part of the Earth's crust.

And the scale is millions of times larger.
 
Normally I just sigh about doomsday scenarios, but volcanic eruptions on the level of Yellowstone are always something that'll make me alert.

Because I'm pretty sure an eruption nearly did wipe us despite humanity being almost as determined as cockroaches in living to see the next day. Can't remember which eruption did it though.


That reminds me. Is it possible to figure a way out to let the Yellowstone and other supervolcano areas softly release their farts?

You can't have a super apocalyptic explosion if you never let the fuckers build-up to begin with.
It was called the Toba event and it happened. Circa 70,000B.C.
 
Honestly, Yellowstone scares me more the nukes. Mostly because 99.999% of the people who have nukes aren’t stupid or crazy enough to use them.

Mother Nature on the other hand...
 
I don't normally post Reddit memes, but this one seemed fitting when I saw it:
56c720c.jpg
 
Welp, looks like we might need a different campaign slogan for the apocalypse candidate:
Sweet meteor o' death 2020
Sweet Yellowstone go boom 2020
A Yellowstone eruption really would be a hell of a capstone to the decade these last three months have been.

More seriously...I recall BS'ing with a fellow who was living in WA during the Mount St. Helens' eruption--stories of shoveling inches of ash like it was snow, engines and electrical grid failing because of the stuff, and health concerns forcing the same 'shelter-in-place' style of stuff as this recent viral stuff has caused...And, per my rough understanding, St. Helens is a popgun compared to what Yellowstone could manage were it to decide to go up. US and Canada would be functionally screwed into a state of emergency for years, I'd presume.

Glad the prevailing sentiment seems to be it'll continue slow-release steaming and bubbling instead of building pressure, but it is a somewhat perpetual reminder to the US in particular that geologic research and trying to come up with some early-warning systems and models have some pretty prime value.
 
Welp, looks like we might need a different campaign slogan for the apocalypse candidate:
Sweet meteor o' death 2020
Sweet Yellowstone go boom 2020
A Yellowstone eruption really would be a hell of a capstone to the decade these last three months have been.

More seriously...I recall BS'ing with a fellow who was living in WA during the Mount St. Helens' eruption--stories of shoveling inches of ash like it was snow, engines and electrical grid failing because of the stuff, and health concerns forcing the same 'shelter-in-place' style of stuff as this recent viral stuff has caused...And, per my rough understanding, St. Helens is a popgun compared to what Yellowstone could manage were it to decide to go up. US and Canada would be functionally screwed into a state of emergency for years, I'd presume.

Glad the prevailing sentiment seems to be it'll continue slow-release steaming and bubbling instead of building pressure, but it is a somewhat perpetual reminder to the US in particular that geologic research and trying to come up with some early-warning systems and models have some pretty prime value.

This is something of an understatement. If the Yellowstone Supervolcano actually erupts, not has a channel open, not has a lava tube open, but full-up erupts.

Here's a link to the deadliest-known Volcanic eruption Mount Tambora in 1815, which killed a minimum of 70,000 people, probably more than a 100,000, directly.

Indirectly
it caused the worst famine of the 19th century, and 1816 was known as 'The year without a Summer' as a consequence.

Mount Tambora was an eruption with a Volcanic Eruption Index (VEI) of 7. The scale is logarithmic, so each step is 10x as strong as the level below it. For comparison, Vesuvius and Mount Saint Helens were VEI 5, so around a hundredth the size of the Tambora eruption.

Two of the known major eruptions from the Yellowstone Supervolcano, were VEI 8, literally the highest category that Vulcanologists track. To be clear, those were two separate eruptions from the 4 different major caldera of Yellowstone.

A VEI 8 eruption would kill everyone in Yellowstone more or less instantly, most of Wyoming, Yellowstone, and Idaho would probably be rendered uninhabitable, with pumice (hot stone) falls probably killing thousands, and ash burying entire towns as people evacuate.

The ash in the atmosphere would almost certainly cause a famine across the entire northern hemisphere, and depending on the force and direction, it might get into the southern hemisphere too. The famine in the northern hemisphere could last years.

If all four caldera erupt at once?

That's a literal act of god, obliterating most of North America, and possibly scaling up to a near-extinction event.


Now, most likely by far, we'll just see a continued simmering. The constant simmering makes even minor eruptions less likely, and full eruptions very improbable.
 
This is something of an understatement. If the Yellowstone Supervolcano actually erupts, not has a channel open, not has a lava tube open, but full-up erupts.

Here's a link to the deadliest-known Volcanic eruption Mount Tambora in 1815, which killed a minimum of 70,000 people, probably more than a 100,000, directly.

Indirectly
it caused the worst famine of the 19th century, and 1816 was known as 'The year without a Summer' as a consequence.

Mount Tambora was an eruption with a Volcanic Eruption Index (VEI) of 7. The scale is logarithmic, so each step is 10x as strong as the level below it. For comparison, Vesuvius and Mount Saint Helens were VEI 5, so around a hundredth the size of the Tambora eruption.

Two of the known major eruptions from the Yellowstone Supervolcano, were VEI 8, literally the highest category that Vulcanologists track. To be clear, those were two separate eruptions from the 4 different major caldera of Yellowstone.

A VEI 8 eruption would kill everyone in Yellowstone more or less instantly, most of Wyoming, Yellowstone, and Idaho would probably be rendered uninhabitable, with pumice (hot stone) falls probably killing thousands, and ash burying entire towns as people evacuate.

The ash in the atmosphere would almost certainly cause a famine across the entire northern hemisphere, and depending on the force and direction, it might get into the southern hemisphere too. The famine in the northern hemisphere could last years.

If all four caldera erupt at once?

That's a literal act of god, obliterating most of North America, and possibly scaling up to a near-extinction event.


Now, most likely by far, we'll just see a continued simmering. The constant simmering makes even minor eruptions less likely, and full eruptions very improbable.
So a few misconceptions I need to correct here.

1) Yellowstone does not have 4 separate eruptable calderas. It has one hotspot that has erupted and formed seperate calderas as it the plates moves over top of it. So we'd only have a single caldera forming eruption ever happen at once.

2) Caldera forming eruptions happen over a longer timespan that things like Mt. Tambora. A full scale eruption at Yellowstone would happen over weeks at minimum, more like several months. Not one big boom.
 
So a few misconceptions I need to correct here.

1) Yellowstone does not have 4 separate eruptable calderas. It has one hotspot that has erupted and formed seperate calderas as it the plates moves over top of it. So we'd only have a single caldera forming eruption ever happen at once.

2) Caldera forming eruptions happen over a longer timespan that things like Mt. Tambora. A full scale eruption at Yellowstone would happen over weeks at minimum, more like several months. Not one big boom.

1. Yes it does, and there were separate eruptions forming separate Caldera.

2. You get build-ups to it, but the cataclysmic eruption is a climactic event.

 
1. Yes it does, and there were separate eruptions forming separate Caldera.

2. You get build-ups to it, but the cataclysmic eruption is a climactic event.

I have a degree in General Geology, none of this is new to me.

1) Only a single eruptive caldera is possible, not 4. The hotspot only feeds a single chamber, not 4. So you could never have 4 going at once, like you theorized.

2) The caldera forming eruptions are created by releases from multiple vents, which then fall in when the magma chamber has emptied. That is the end of the eruptive cycle, not a big boom at the beginning.
 
I have a degree in General Geology, none of this is new to me.

1) Only a single eruptive caldera is possible, not 4. The hotspot only feeds a single chamber, not 4. So you could never have 4 going at once, like you theorized.

2) The caldera forming eruptions are created by releases from multiple vents, which then fall in when the magma chamber has emptied. That is the end of the eruptive cycle, not a big boom at the beginning.

If you're a subject matter expert, I'll bow to your superior ability to interpret the data.
 

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