Yellowstone - Ticking Time Bomb?

I've been in Yellowstone several times, tent camping by both motorcycle and pickup truck. Spectacular, never-to-forget memories.

It will erupt again - no one knows when - and the resulting ash may, repeat may, cover and devastate the bulk of the US east of the park.

I have read that the caldera is targeted by Russian ICBM nukes, just in case in war.
 
I would absolutely like to know if anyone has a realistic solution for preventing that thing from super-erupting again.
There are things bigger than Man, and this is one of them. Maybe we could "relieve the pressure" by drilling deep wells around the perimeter of the caldera then detonating nukes at the bottom of the shafts. But probably not. :rolleyes:

Believers may try prayer.

Otherwise, fugeddaboudit and have a good time while yet you live!
 
There are things bigger than Man, and this is one of them. Maybe we could "relieve the pressure" by drilling deep wells around the perimeter of the caldera then detonating nukes at the bottom of the shafts. But probably not. :rolleyes:
That might set it off.
 
What's that one movie that dealt with this again? I watched in in like 6th grade so I forget. :lol:
 
There are things bigger than Man, and this is one of them. Maybe we could "relieve the pressure" by drilling deep wells around the perimeter of the caldera then detonating nukes at the bottom of the shafts. But probably not. :rolleyes:

Believers may try prayer.

Otherwise, fugeddaboudit and have a good time while yet you live!
So you're fully content with just leaving an effective doomsday device untouched? I prefer to preserve the Earth and its civilizations for as long as possible, and I see this volcano as a defeatable threat. Unlike the sun, which is gonna force humans to evacuate to greener pastures, but that's a story much farther in the future.
That might set it off.
Indeed I wouldn't trust nukes, or any explosives for the matter, with this issue.
 
I highly doubt well ever have to worry about the Yellowstone caldera in the next few generations, while Yellowstone is due for some kind of eruption in the next ten thousand years or so, the last large enough eruption to cause a lasting global effect happened well over a million years ago. The Yellowstone national park page actuality has a FAQ for people who have questions about the volcano.
 
I would absolutely like to know if anyone has a realistic solution for preventing that thing from super-erupting again.
If we can't prevent other volcanoes from erupting, why would we be able to stop this one?
 
Yellowstone, Eifel, Neapel,....

They are everywhere. Super cataclism would be a chain reaction. Then earth is gone, or at least 99% of all life.

Nothing you can do about it, or anyone else. Probablity wise there's more chance earth is wiped out by a asteroid than this though.
There are 500 that are on the watch list and that's just the ones we know off... there's a reason why there was a conference on this subject how to reguide one a few weeks ago rather then conferences on how to release pressure from volcancos...
 
So you're fully content with just leaving an effective doomsday device untouched? I prefer to preserve the Earth and its civilizations for as long as possible, and I see this volcano as a defeatable threat. Unlike the sun, which is gonna force humans to evacuate to greener pastures, but that's a story much farther in the future.
That's a noble sentiment but it's pretty bold to call a supervolcano of this magnitude defeatable. We have no idea how deep the magma reservoir goes, and we're already talking about a ~60km wide volcano at the surface. We'd have to either develop some way to drill into the mantle on a large scale, or induce human controlled earthquakes in just the right way to dissipate the force.

Pressures follow the past of least resistance. From the core, to the mantle, to the crust, to the magma chambers, to the vents, to the eventual place they erupt. Consider that the volcano is 60km wide at the surface and that is the path of least resistance for the magma last time it erupted. There was so much pressure that 60km wide in the Earth's crust was blown open. What makes you think that pressure which couldn't be contained by 60km of the Earth's surface, and was strong enough to bore its way through the crust is defeatable?

It would require either a level of technology that's incomprehensible to us (to the degree we could manipulate plate tectonics), or a literal act of God. It's not really worth seriously considering, it's basically a leap of faith that some day we'll figure it out, right now we have no logical framework to even begin to imagine a solution. Maybe some day we or an alien civilization will figure it out, but there's no reasonably foreseeable way we could ever hope to stop it.
 
Well, you're in Ireland, there's not much to worry about.

North America, on the other hand...

I wouldn't be so sure about Europe being safe. The 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia caused temporary global cooling for a year or so, and that was a VEI-7 event. A supervolcanic eruption would easily be a VEI-8.
 
Yellowstone, Eifel, Neapel,....

They are everywhere. Super cataclism would be a chain reaction. Then earth is gone, or at least 99% of all life.
Pretty sure this false. Civilization as we know it could be set back in the northern hemisphere for along time, but humanity would persist tenaciously in many places.
 
The big Yellowstone eruptions occur on time scales of many hundreds of thousands of years. Smith said the repeat time for a caldera explosion at Yellowstone is roughly 700,000 years. But the smaller eruptions, with lava flowing over the surface, are more frequent. There have been at least 50 such smaller eruptions since the caldera exploded 640,000 years ago. The most recent was about 70,000 years ago.
 
If anything, he's saying that Yellowstone won't explode for another 60,000 years, but a smaller, less destructive eruption could occur.
 
Maybe we could "relieve the pressure" by drilling deep wells around the perimeter of the caldera then detonating nukes at the bottom of the shafts.

I don't think making a lava flow radioactive will help much.

Well, you're in Ireland, there's not much to worry about.

North America, on the other hand...

It's still something to worry about in Ireland. It's still something to worry about all over the world. Sure, us on the other side of the Atlantic won't be covered in molten rock, but the ash cloud would surround the Earth, leaving a winter that goes on for years.

So you're fully content with just leaving an effective doomsday device untouched? I prefer to preserve the Earth and its civilizations

Why? The superplume that is currently under Yellowstone has been erupting, on average, once every 600,000 years. It's just what Earth does. Any civilisation here is merely temporary. We can't predict or neutralise regular volcanoes - a supervolcano is way beyond our current technology.

Yellowstone, Eifel, Neapel,....

They are everywhere. Super cataclism would be a chain reaction. Then earth is gone, or at least 99% of all life.

Pretty sure this false. Civilization as we know it could be set back in the northern hemisphere for along time, but humanity would persist tenaciously in many places.

I would imagine you're both right. Some life, including some humans, might survive, but most wouldn't - I'd be suprised if more than a million humans remained after all the ash and so on had settled.

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In the end, it doesn't matter. At the moment there's nothing we can do about it; that's not to say we shouldn't try and find a way to deal with it, but it's not worth worrying about. There's every chance we'll all be long gone before Yellowstone becomes a hole in the ground.
 
Roo
Why? The superplume that is currently under Yellowstone has been erupting, on average, once every 600,000 years. It's just what Earth does. Any civilisation here is merely temporary. We can't predict or neutralise regular volcanoes - a supervolcano is way beyond our current technology.
This was first brought to my attention when discussing a XC ski trip in high school many years ago to the park. (pretty area!!) I never thought much about it until then.

The Mesa Falls tuff which was from the 1.3 million year ago eruption; it was relatively small. "We" are likely do for a Mesa Falls style eruption within the next 100K-600K years. It was not catastrophic from what I understand. By small I mean much worse tha Mt. ST. Helens but not the end of America...

Lava Creek tuff, which is the last erruption (most recent 600 K back) was very large in relation, similar to the 2.1 million year ago huckleberry eruption possibly the largest ever in North America. From what I see the Mesa falls extended out worse than huckleberry tuff even though it produced a little less ash/debris. It extends out to southern California!!! And Northwest Mexico!! So a very very big eruption "just :lol:" happened and I doubt the next one will be one of the biggest. Could be I guess I dunno.

One thing I'd watch out for in the region is the super heating of the air just above or on the ground. Its been known to boil tree sap, and it will boil your feet or melt the roads! This happens every now and then.
 
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