[karajorma]

For the merkins and other non brits the BBC just did a four part series on what it would be like if the Yellowstone supervolcano went off. Two were a drama based on it and each part was followed by the science show on BBC2.

It was actually pretty good I thought. I loved the way that for once the main character wasn't a Cassandra character warning everyone about the  impending doom that was coming.

You did have to wonder why the US Geological Survey was almost completely staffed by brits though.

[Clave]

Top stuff!  

And scary as hell

Poor America!...

[phreak]

Its on here sometime in April so i'll be recording it on my brother's PC.  As long as his hard-drive isn't full of the new southpark episodes.

[Ford Prefect]

The Yellowstone Supervolcano, or God's Toilet Lever.

Couldn't resist.

[pyro-manic]

Missed both of 'em. Brother's birthday meal thingy on Sunday night, and kung fu training monday night. Most annoying, as I wanted to see it, and our old video recorder is knackered.

I'll see if I can find a torrent or something....

Yellowstone and the Canary Islands collapse will make a nice mess of America (and the rest of the world as well tbh) when they do happen.....

[Dark_4ce]

Hmm. I should keep an eye out for it.

[delta_7890]

For those of us who didn't/will probably never see it, what's the predicted outcome?  Half of the US turned into a smoldering lava lake?

[karajorma]

IIRC it was 22 million US casualties within the first month and a global winter/drought lasting 5 or so years.

The deaths from the pyroclastic flows would actually be a fairly small proportion of that (less than 100,000). Most people would be killed by the ash (which would fall as far away as New York). Either from it building up on roofs and collapsing them, from mudslides as soon as it rained or from suffocation/health problems caused by breathing it in.

[InfernoGod]

there's also a supervolcano in Malaysia. It went off sometime during the early ages of man, and it reduced the world population to about 75,000. That's some scary stuff when you think about that we have to worry about such things.

[delta_7890]

<<;  About time we either make some underground cities/bases (Jaburo!) or expand to the moon and other places, eh?

[karajorma]

Originally posted by InfernoGod
there's also a supervolcano in Malaysia. It went off sometime during the early ages of man, and it reduced the world population to about 75,000. That's some scary stuff when you think about that we have to worry about such things.

Just to set you straight. Toba is in Indonesia, It went up ~74,000 years ago and it reduced the population to 5000-10,000 or so humans on the entire planet.

Personally although Yellowstone is scary I'm not worried about it cause there's litttle we could do about it and the scientists all seem to agree that it's unlikely that an erruption is imminent.

In the show at one point the head geologist said that the chances of an erruption were roughly equivalent to being hit by an asteroid. I worry about that more. Earth gets hit by an asteroid with the power of small nuke every 50 years or so. And it's been 75 years since the last one (Although we have had a couple of very near misses).

That worries me more.

[aldo_14]

I remember reading about Yellowstone in a book; apparently the (um, geological terms fail me) appropriate chambers are crystallizing and releasing volatiles, whereas you need to trap them to have an eruption.  The other thing is that these eruptions might occur in 'bursts', and then spend a long time dormant, and then in more bursts; so we might be in a long dormant time (I think the records for Yellowstone in particular only are calculated for a relatively short time in geological terms...).

[karajorma]

I took a quick look at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatories homepage (seems they loved the show too BTW ) and according to that the hotspot that has filled the magma chamber below Yellowstone is also responsible for 10-15 other supervolcano eruptions in the last 16.5 million years.

So its obvious that they haven't been occuring at 600,000 year intervals for a long time. What we can say of course is that sooner or later there will be another supervolcanic eruption.

[Clave]

I understood that it was overdue but maybe that was just my take on what they said...

But the ash is the real killer - it would basically move all the way across to the Eastern Seaboard and beyond, depending on the scale of ejection, it could cross the Atlantic and cover a good part of Europe as well.  It looks like nothing much - grey snow, but it is highly invasive and abrasive.  So if you breath it in, it turns to a form of concrete in your lungs and you choke to death.  If it lands on a roof, it can build up enough weight to collapse the building.  And also it is fine enough to get into every piece of electronic and mechanical equipment causing catastrophic failure in most cases.

Also, there could be a Global Winter from ejected gases settling in the ozone layer and blocking sunlight.  Temperatures would drop by 16C and basically, nothing would grow pretty much anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere - this is where you may get deaths in the billions as food runs out everywhere.  It would take some time to clear:  The after effects (dust causing spectacular sunsets) from Krakatoa lasted five years

By the way, the best guess for the force of this event is 2,500 times that of Mt St Helens, or 1,000 Hiroshima-size nukes every second! It would be pretty spectacular by anyone's standard...

Lava eruptions are quite different it seems.  You can out-run them on foot, but the explosive type can actually travel faster than sound! 700mph+ which is a tough break if you live within 100 miles of Yellowstone.

All in all, it was a pretty good drama and seeing all the vents in a huge ring spouting lava, rocks, and dust was impressive too.  Good job by the Beeb I think.

[aldo_14]

They think it might be overdue based on the pattern of previous eruptions; but that doesn't mean the observed pattern is the actual pattern... even a 16.5 million year record isn't all that representative on a planet billions of years old, after all.

I remember reading someone at Yellowstone saying exactly the same thing; in Bill Brysons 'A short history of nearly everything' book, which is really good BTW.

[Clave]

Yeah, I suppose..

It's one of those 'tomorrow or in 10,000 years' kind of things...

[Fergus]

Hmm, can't help but wish I could live in complete and utter ignorance of all this, wouldn't life be so much better? (Short as it will be).

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by Fergus
Hmm, can't help but wish I could live in complete and utter ignorance of all this, wouldn't life be so much better? (Short as it will be).

Just don't bother thinking about it.  Nothing you can do, so who cares?  We could all be dead tomorrow from an asteroid, a giant rock in the Canary Islands, or even an alien attack. Once again, nothing to do about it, so just live life as usual.

Speaking about "not being able to do anything about it," though, is this statement really true?  Obviously, this is way out in the realm of science fiction right now, but in 500 years, could we have the technology to stop or greatly mitigate the effects of such an eruption?  That's something I never hear about in all of these disaster reports.  You'd think at least one scientist out there would be theorizing about methods of releasing a pressure buildup under Yellowstone in very gradual stages; there are already theories about breaking up/diverting planet-killer asteroids, for instance.  True, there's no practical use for such theories at present, but I'd still like at least a small part of the scientific community to start thinking about these things, instead of saying, "We're all screwed."

[karajorma]

The asteroid strikes I was on about are from asteroids about 10-100m in size. We could do something about them now.

[Nico]

But that would suck. I want all that to happen, I want to see it
Wipping away half of humanity wouldn't be such a bad thing anyway, if you ask me. "evil laugh"