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Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow?
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, Yellowstone National Park has been having a very unusual number of earthquakes. Many of the most recent tremors have been deeper underground, an ominous sign. Combine that with a rapid rise in elevation over the past three years, and the possibility that earthquake activity from surrounding areas could trigger such an eruption on its own, and you've got the possible warning signs of a supervolcano eruption that would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental US, plunge global temperatures, and wipe out a very significant chunk of world food sources. Here's a little more info to make your New Year brighter!"
After all, if we are going to have the sun blocked out by a huge cloud of dust, it would be fantastic to have as much heat trapped on earth as possible!
Dec 21, 2012
Suddenly the economy doesn't sound like such a big problem after all.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why not? All the mathematical models claimed that the US Financial credit market and the Housing Bubble wouldn't burst at the same time- they calculated that was a once in 75 million years event. Given the luck of the United States lately, a 1/600,000 year event going off right now would just be the icing on the cake.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
When should I start to panic?
I for one welcome our new Seismic overlords.
Well, if it's going to be the apocalypse (and I'm not going to be responsible, much to my chagrin), can you just make sure I get a few weeks' notice? There are... things... I want to do.
humm... i don't think my stores of ammo will help with that....
any one want to sell a nuke battery good for 100 years??
bored? try this http://jadmadi.net/blog/2005/01/27/linux-wine-how-to-running-windows-viruses-with-wine/
I wonder if this could be caused by drilling. There have been cases of volcanic activity triggered by drilling. Of the top of my head, I remember that the Air Force got caught pumping waste chemical weapons into the subsurface under Rock Flats, CO without a permit. They were detected by the increase in earthquakes. Couple that with George Bush's legislation to allow drilling in preserved areas, that Republican mantra of Drill Baby Drill may not have been so smart after all...
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
... when the global cooling occurs, it'll get Al Gore to STFU for once.
The year can go out with a... bang!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
We'll still have a seat on the Security Council.
So because one unlikely thing happened, another unlikely thing is going to happen? I think I see why you're a marxist.
(kidding of course)
I wasn't going to party tonight but this gives me a valid excuse to stop by the liquor store on the way home.
If a volcano erupts, is it considered part of global warming?
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
Ultimately, there is nothing we can do but warn people. ...and wait....
I am open source, and Linux baby!
hey wait...
..it's releasing more energy then its storing. The fact that the park is so geothermally active may be a good thing. It's much better for us if its releasing it's energy slowly rather then all at once. Sort of like a pressure relief valve on a hot water heater.
Map showing recent earthquakes is over here http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/43.45.-112.-110.php
How many Library of Congresses is that?
Of the top of my head, I remember that the Air Force got caught pumping waste chemical weapons into the subsurface under Rock Flats
Hey, here's a thought - PUMPING STUFF UNDERGROUND increases pressure.
PUMPING STUFF OUT OF THE GROUND reduces pressure.
Given that magma wells are many miles below the surface, tapping a bit of oil that sits relatively near the top is doing nothing for a massive supervolcano.
So basically the top of your head is an idiot, hopefully it's not spread any further than that.
Couple that with George Bush's legislation
Too late! He thinks George Bush is congress now!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
We need to stop Lavos from destroying the world! Though I think that happened in 1999.
Happy new year! * Put on tin-foil party hat * (And I guess it's time to plan to move ...)
Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
The linked articles do not really raise any cause for concern. The title sure has a ZOMG!!! factor to it, but in reality it's just a bunch of what-ifs. Move along, nothing to see here.
blah blah blah
Well, either that or I'm the type of gambler who believes that bad luck draws more bad luck.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Climate change may actually increase the probability of volcanic and earthquake activity!
See article below:
"The Earth fights back ..
Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/07/disasters/
Seriously Slashdot, you need to work on your reaction time. This was news two days ago.
These earthquake swarms happen frequently in Yellowstone, and this one has already ended. Yellowstone has dropped back to its ordinary low rumble.
But then again, I could be wrong.
plunge global temperatures
Well, that would fix global warming.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Somebody from US News & World report blogged about it here. Not quite to the "run in circles scream and shout" stage, but I might go and spend $100 on rice and beans, just in case.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
(This is only true if the volcano blows within the next 5 hours, and I have to say - if it's going to blow, it should do it then, just for the humor value.)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
With a apocalypse right around the corner, its a good thing that I am spending many hours in the perfect post-apocalyptic simulation, Fallout 3.
Super Volcano or Nuclear War, the net effect is the same, just one has less radiation.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
That's ok. It'd take out red states much more than blue ones.
Well, either that or I'm the type of gambler who believes that bad luck draws more bad luck.
When probability talks about independent events, it fails to take into account anecdotal superstition.
Nah, won't happen till Mayan doomsday. Enjoy your New Year. (Though at least we won't have to fix the 2038 bug).
[Insert pithy quote here]
I see 3 3.0+ quakes today after a couple of days off. From what I've been reading, it seems like quakes greater than 3 are somewhat unusual period. Granted, I know squat about geology, but it still seems a bit anomalous. (Unfortunately, the U. Utah page doesn't seem to go back more than a few days, so I can't really tell for sure how unusual 3.0 quakes are. I'd welcome being corrected with real data.)
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
At times like these, I feel it's appropriate to start rocking back and forth singing:
Life's a piece of shit
When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
Nah, the fundamentalists will just blame Gay Marriage.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
To Move from Santa Ana, CA to near Denver, CO (I.E. about 1000 miles closer to Yellowstone then before). Oh well been nice knowing you all...either that or is it time for that Mexican vacation yet?
...in bed
Actually, a significant percentage of one year's crops would be wiped out if it happens during the growing season. If it happens now, during winter, it would be quite a task for each farmer to scrape off all the ash -- and how much has to be removed depends upon how much ash can be plowed into the earth without affecting a crop plant (I'm being ambiguous because if a single crop is known to grow in such land then it would get planted rather than usual crop selections).
It's kind of interesting, how the Slashdot crowd has really nothing meaningful to comment on this possible and according to some scientists "overdue" event.
Hard to believe, but the article below makes a scientifically plausible case for a link between global warming and increased earthquake and volcanic activity!
"The Earth fights back"
"Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/aug/07/disasters/
One
Considering the LoC is just about as far to the east of Yellowstone as you can get in the continental US, and if we're lucky about ash and fallout patterns, hopefully it would be none. In fact, if I hear that it has erupted, I will make maximum haste to reach the LoC to potentially increase my chances of survival.
http://www.physorg.com/news149951583.html
Given the expected result of an eruption, that would be 1.0 or so Libraries of Congress. ;)
...you underestimate how ugly I am.
Well, this is true, but what you have to remember is that those "mathematical models" were created by imbeciles who believed that all events in the financial market were independent (i.e no event in the market affects any other event), that the market can grow forever without limit, and -- worse -- still believe that when an event that the models say is a once-in-a-hundred-years event happens three times in six months, it's not an indication of a basic flaw in the model, but rather a rare fluke that means it's now statistically certain it'll NEVER happen again. The global financial sector's "mathematical models" are worthless, and always have been. They built a house of cards using imaginary money as cards, and the question was only one of when the house of cards would collapse.
The financial market and the Yellowstone basin are hardly related. Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood, and based on what is -- on a geological scale -- a very short period of observation, a mere century and a half or so in the case of Yellowstone. But they are at least based on observation and study, not wishful thinking. Yes, many of the models indicate that there could be another supervolcanic event at Yellowstone "any time now". But on a geological timescale, that "any time now" could be a thousand years away.
This is interesting news, and absolutely bears close monitoring, but I think it's a little premature to run around shouting that the sky is falling. But regardless of the actual risk from Yellowstone, I don't think that the failure of the consensual delusion passed off as mathematical models of the global economy constitutes anything that can be used as evidence for anything except for how stupid a whole lot of ostensibly really smart people can actually be, when they're blinded by greed.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0584.html
Shit, I can't remember -- is this a job for Pierce Brosnan or for Tommy Lee Jones?
Human behaviour is connected due to active observers. Natural behaviour is less so. This is a question of criticality. If you pour sand, then a pile forms that creates "avalanches" in an exponentially unpredictable fashion. Small avalanches occur more than large ones. both seem to be inherently random in their timing.
I noticed that too, and the local distribution of the cluster does look somewhat like pre-volcanic activity. But if it were the supervolcano. I'd expect activity along the caldera margins. This looks more like something that would result in a new cone or maybe just some new hot springs under the lake.
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
the planet earth was not that great in the first place. billions of people dont have clean drinking water, while people who could afford to let them work for it, instead spend money on drugs and trinkets.
i feel bad for the innocent people, but the ones who will mostly be fucked by this are the world powers... and it really wouldnt be such a horrible thing if they were all wiped out. for the people living on 2 dollars a day in some place that is filled with landmines from the 'civilized' world, starving to death in the midst of chaos and disease would be nothing new to them... in fact, they are the most likely to survive, perhaps feasting on the bloated, fatty corpses of americans who dont know that bread is made of wheat or which direction the sun comes up.
One says the last eruption was 640,000 years ago, the other says 70,000.
The argument always seems to be how wildly unlikely it'll happen. The problem is we are due for an eruption and what is stopping it from happening now? Anyone ever hear of Mt St Helens or Krakatoa? The entire ring of fire has been more active in recent years than any time on record. Yellowstone is showing every sign of increased activity and there has been a lava dome rising from below for a number of years, exactly what happens before an eruption. The only thing alarmist was the 2/3 quote, never heard that one before. The quote I heard was 1/3 of the US would be affected directly. Possibly 2/3 would have ash falls but so would most of the world since the ash would reach the stratosphere. Denver is toast as well as any city within 500 miles with severe damage extending to 1000 miles or more. Millions would be lost in the first hours and millions more from starvation. It would affect the world climate for many years and ironically would reverse some of the global warming for a time. The world won't end but it will be devastating.
People should be concerned since it WILL erupt eventually. What are the odds of it erupting within the next 10 years? 50/50. Rediculous? look at it this way, it's showing every sign of an eruption and it's due for one. It either happens or it doesn't, 50/50. That's the God's honest truth. Any other statistic is pointless because they all assume it may never erupt. Once an event like this comes due it will happen whether it's tomorrow or in a thousand years. Is there a chance it'll be in a thousand years? Of coarse but the whole point no one will admit to is it's just as likely to be next year as in a 1000 years the odds are exactly the same.
Tremors are beginning and that means the quake swarm is no longer "ordinary". http://www.seablogger.com/?p=12519
Didn't they have a mohole digger in one of Thunderbird 2's pods? Release the pressure on the magma chamber slowly and discover The Hood is behind the whole thing as a bonus!
I recall Countdown to Doomsday was on the SciFi channel a while back. (Sorry, 600,000 triggered the memory) It went over the 10 most likely doomsday events and was kind of unsettling. Most of the events that were "time-based" (supervolcano, meteor, giant solar flare) were real close to the interval they seem to occur at.
I take it with a grain of salt though, my lifetime is a very tiny percentage of any of those intervals.
Figured taco would post this story from the "maybe the volcano might warm me up dept"
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
Holy crap! I better get off slashdot and go out and get laid....
ok, who am I kidding? Bring it on!
How many Library of Congresses is that?
1 or 0 depending on which way the wind blows.
Its not the end of 2012.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Combine that with a rapid rise in elevation over the past three years
How much of a rise are we talking about?
You elect an imbecile to the most powerful office in the world. Twice.
You spend/borrow your way into a financial crisis.
You alienate and disgust 99% of the rest of the world with (just off the top of my head) Guantanamo, bombings inside Pakistan, extraordinary renditions, the whole Iraq fuckup, Kyoto, etc.
You remove more and more of the basic rights of your own citizens.
Apart from that, please think about the majority of humanity around the world, count your fucking blessings, and shut the fuck up. Try living just one day as an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese.
He will lose a few pounds when he is foraging for berries and bugs, and running away from hungry wolves like the rest of us.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Um no, dude, you don't really get it. If Yellowstone blows, there is no volcano eruption in human history that even remotely comes close. Mt. St. Helens would look like a fart standing next to Chernobyl. Areas 400 miles away would get covered in a foot of ash. There is just nothing like it.
Here is a nice, graphical link for you to look at:
link
The number of deaths could be staggering. That foot of ash, even 400 miles away in Denver, would collapse most roofs, and any with people in them would get severely injured or die. It would be the end of the U.S. as a global superpower, and there would be wars. You are naive.
Japanese scientist: Technically, sir, tomatoes are fags. Military scientist: He means fruits.
What? I predicted they would break together.
They're linked and any mathematical model that didn't take that into account wasn't worth the paper it was written on.
The Year God Decided He Really Hated America
Lemme correct that for you ....
The Year God Decided to show how much He Hated America
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
One article says last eruption was 70,000 years, the other says 640,000 years ago. Someone seems to be a bit off...
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
There's only one thing I fear more than Mount Rainier burning 250,000 to 500,000 people alive (with an equal number suffering from severe burns) and that's Yellowstone.
Good thing the winds go east ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If it happens during his term, and he doesn't do anything to help, you're damn right he'll be blamed. George Bush doesn't care about ash-covered people.
After all, I am strangely colored.
It will blow the day after the cubs win it all!
Hell, I could be so bold as to state some asinine comment on Slashdot and not care about Karma or mod points:
I love MS, hate Apple, think Linux is cute but just a toy, and man enough to admit I own a copy of the Joy Luck Club on DVD. ...I feel liberated.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
I'm sure you're posting to Slashdot from an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese household. On a high horse, no doubt.
Fortunately, the Yellowstone volcanic system shows no signs that it is headed toward such an eruption in the near future. In fact, the probability of any such event occurring at Yellowstone within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low.
...
Lava flows and small volcanic eruptions occur only rarely--none in the past 70,000 years. Massive caldera-forming eruptions, though the most potentially devastating of Yellowstone's hazards, are extremely rare--only three have occurred in the past several million years. U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah, and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future.
(emphasis mine)
As for that "several million years" figure for a devastating explosion of the kind TFA is describing, consider that the United States as a nation is still less than 250 years old. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the idea that "it hasn't happened in a long time so it must be ready to happen now" is just a popular Las Vegas delusion.
Breakfast served all day!
Yellowstone has been "about to blow" for a while now. Hasn't anyone here taken Geology?
How many Library of Congresses is that?
All of them
Has tapping this as an energy source ever been considered ? i am not a geologist but I am thinking if there is so much geothermal energy right beneath our feet (probably very deep) of such enormous magnitude there could be a way to tap into this.
This will obviously occur on Jan 19th, 2009 to round out the Bush administration.
Honestly, this probably won't be a big deal once geo-scientists can approximate when to expect large explosions.
We would just need to tap the geothermal energy under yellowstone at a rate equivalent to the energy created from a pressure build up.
Even though the yellowstone caldera is geographically vast, the amount of time it takes for the yellowstone to build up enough energy to erupt probably means that the rate at which the geothermal energy is accumulating is fairly low.
Even if scientists said yellowstone would blow up within 5 years, we could probably fix the problem with current geothermal technology.
So not the drama.
Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood
We just need to think more logically.
Here's what YOU said:
Pumping waste chemical weapons into the subsurface under Rock Flats = Pumping stuff underground = Increases pressure.
Here's what I said:
Hey, here's a thought - PUMPING STUFF UNDERGROUND increases pressure.
You may want to read what *I* actually said before you make some pitiful attempt to insult me and shoot yourself in the foot instead.
Since the basic premise was that drilling for oil would somehow cause a volcano, I thought I might point out that the example he gave (known to cause small movements of earth) was of PUMPING STUFF INTO THE GROUND. Which is the opposite of PUMPING STUFF OUT OF THE GROUND.
I hope that was simple enough for your obviously tiny brain to comprehend as you seem to have missed it last time round.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All the mathematical models claimed that the US Financial credit market and the Housing Bubble wouldn't burst at the same time...
Huh? I know a lot of economists were surprised by the collapse of the financial markets. But you talk as if they collapse of housing prices is a mysterious coincidence. It's not. When it's hard to borrow money, it's impossible to speculate in real-estate.
Honestly, this isn't that big of a deal. Even though the Yellowstone caldera is geographically huge, the very fact that it takes half a millennium to build up enough pressure to erupt shows that the geothermal energy is stored under yellowstone very slowly. Or at least the majority of it is released via the geysers and shift in tectonics. If geoscientists had firm evidence that yellowstone had a high chance of eruption within the next 10 years, all we would need to do is build geothermal plants and suck up as much geothermal energy as the mantle puts in. So not the drama.
How likely would it be that this could set off that potential earthquake on the California coast? (or vice-versa)
So the whole "2/3 of the US destroyed bit" is kinda irrelevant considering an explosion of that magnitude would affect the atmosphere such as to ruin life for the whole planet. I figure it would involve the death of the human race.
But then again, I also don't believe this eruption is going to happen.
What is it with things named/called Caldera
The three last eruptions were 6000, 700, and 2500 times Mt St Helens 1980 (MSHE), which released 1.67 exajoules (1.673 x 10^18 Joules). According to the esteemed Christopher Thomas 1 Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) is equivalent to 4 petajoules (4 x 10^15 Joules). Converting MSHE to BLoC gives 1 MSHE = 418.25 BLoC. So the last three eruptions were 2509500 BLoC, 292775 BLoC, and 1045625 BLoC, respectively. Since we don't know how big the next eruption will be, let's just assume the mean of the last 3, and that's 1282633.3 BLoCs, or 39% of the total solar energy that strikes the surface of the Earth.
from the last link in TFS: "too weak to be felt by humans for the most part but picked up by the seismometers at the University of Utah", and "the giant caldera we affectionately call Yellowstone has blown every 600,000 years or so..."
Slashdotters, I'm disappointed you didn't make the connection yet...
No.. Liberals will blame Bush even if it doesn't happen for 10,000 years. Don' you know he is the official cause of everything bad according to the Democrats?
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
That time of the month....
Wrong. We'll still have to fix it, but we'll be a road warrior-hacker battling zombies and tribes of cannibalistic crazed humans in order to patch the code which will prevent the remaining active missile silos from crashing and launching during the epoch-fail of the Unix servers.
Why my Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses just went dead black.
Now where the heck is my towel?!!
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
Unfortunately we don't have firsthand data on what a very large caldera forming eruption looks like in its earliest stages. ;-)
If we look at smaller eruptions elsewhere, such as Mt. Mazama in Oregon when it erupted to form Crater Lake, there's enough information to piece together a pretty good narrative. (Unfortunately I am not familiar with much research from Yellowstone documenting the geologic evidence for precursors to its climactic eruptions, although I am aware of the many smaller eruptions that preceded the big ones.)
At Crater Lake the narrative is a bit disconcerting in that it appears to have started off like any other bog standard plinian eruption, which is admittedly not a trifling event, but then as that eruption wound down and you might have expected the eruption to end, it was then that the caldera collapse began which unleashed the main show. The point is just because an eruption starts out small doesn't mean it will end that way -- especially in this kind of volcanic system where you have a good sized reservoir of fairly explosive silica rich magma. On the other hand, just because there's a small eruption it doesn't mean a large one is imminent.
Mt. Mazama was a large complex edifice built of countless prior eruptions, and even fairly large lava flows that erupted only shortly before the caldera forming event; a couple hundred years prior to the climactic eruption a very thick rhyodacite lava flow squeezed down the flank to form what we now call Llao Rock.
Well... then if it DOES blow up in the next couple of days it'll all be YOUR fault that I stopped packing for Australia.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
Interesting. I wonder if that also explains Z2K9? Of course it's also possible that God's hatred for Zunes has nothing to do with his hate for America.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
OK, so the worlds about to end. All I'd like is to go out with a little karma on here. I've tried hard but gained none regardless because of some funny comments I've made. Please...please...its not like your going to need it after a few hours!
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
Is Yellowstone about to blow its wad?
What a wonderful and inspiring story!
Thank you and happy new year!
There seems to be an agreement that this supervolcano will blow... there seems to be an agreement that it is overdue... What if we found out that it blows - let's say - in 2012? How would it change history between now and then? Although we can't be certain, should not we do it anyway?
See Old Faithful while you can...
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...One?...
just don't tell congress or we might send in troups to find the source of the earths weapons of mass destruction
Talk about bad luck! First the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world, and now this...
Um... 2/3 of an LoC?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
I worship you. Great post!
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
By then, hopefully, Dick Cheney will be back in his home state of Wyoming. :)
I hope the aliens at Devil's Tower get outta there before it all blows to hell, though. I wouldn't want those widdle aliens being hurt...I hear they're really into mashed potatoes, so they can't be all-bad, right?
The articles says an eruption happens every 600,000 years but the wikipedia link says "142 or more caldera-forming eruptions have occurred from the SRPY hotspot within the past 17 million years" which suggests an average interval of only 120,000 years for a caldera-forming eruption.
"...using imaginary money as cards"
They were using complex derivatives of imaginary money
Honestly, this isn't that big of a deal. Even though the Yellowstone caldera is geographically huge, the very fact that it takes half a millennium to build up enough pressure to erupt shows that the geothermal energy is stored under yellowstone very slowly. Or at least the majority of it is released via the geysers and shift in tectonics.
If geoscientists had firm evidence that yellowstone had a high chance of eruption within the next 10 years, all we would need to do is build geothermal plants and suck up as much geothermal energy as the mantle puts in.
So not the drama..
Ironically, when the US decided to dispose of its nuclear waste in Utah, the time horizon was that the containment should be for around 75000, while as it takes about 2 million years for most of the radioactive isotopes to decay. I think calculations like this assume something else is going to kill us before our waste does. Who knows, maybe nature will be far more forgiving, and we will poison ourselves first.
The world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
-Read that on the bathroom wall when I was a kid.
How many Library of Congresses is that?
$ units
2445 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units
You have: area-of-usa * 2/3
You want: library-of-congress
conformability error
5.33e12 m^2
1.6e14 bit
I sell real estate in Southern Chile. Give me a call when you are ready.
Sigh. Maybe _because_ we behaived the way we did, we are _not_ like average Somali, etc.?
*** Troll alert ****
Now if only you Americans would learn to keep your airborn pollution to your own borders.
Still look on the bright side - your homemade volcano may actuall win the science fair this year.
God: "Pull my finger..."
Just thought I'd post these up again:
Main global earthquake map
List of EQs in the SouthWest
Display of drum recorders for the Southwest
Cheers and Happy New Years!
There is simply too much glass..
No.. Liberals will blame Bush even if it doesn't happen for 10,000 years. Don' you know he is the official cause of everything bad according to the Democrats?
And conservatives blame liberals. Even after this thing blows up, the world will continue to turn.
Hopefully.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
So first I get a good job, then I fuck my chances up with the girl I love. Then I fail out of my job, get another one. Then I get forced by parents to spend money on a car I don't want (cosigner, no vehicle, need to get to work somehow...). Now I've got an extremely-fucking-cute girl that likes me and I just need to backpedal a bit because I almost fucked THAT up... I'm close... my life might actually not be so bad...
BAM END OF THE FUCKING WORLD
Two words, President Bush.
Did the government tell you to post that??
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
We did, and she's spent her entire life trying to live up to the destructive power of her namesake.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
You owe Bush so much, for keep us safe and for keep the crisises that have happened from going realy bad.
I believe there is an error in the original equation:
115M books * 1 kg/book * 390 kJ/mol CO2 / 0.012 mol C/kg ...or on the order of 4 petajoules.
1 mol of C = 12 grams, or 0.012 g/mol of C. Not 0.012 mol C/kg.
Now, to make things easier, we can apply the value for the energy released by burning wood pulp given by the U.S. Department of Energy which is: 17455.6 J/g. Reference:
This would give us: 115M books * 1 kg/book * 1000 grams/kg * 17455.6 J/g = 2 * 10^15
Which is still on the same order of magnitude as the original equation, but also means we don't have to worry about the mass of oxygen consumed by the burning, or the mass of the CO2 given off. (Thanks to the DoE for giving the Gross Heat of Combustion for cellulose products.)
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
Volcanic "ash" is not burning wood "ash". Volcanic ash is actually pulverized, powdered rock that only superficially resembles wood ash as it falls and collects on the ground. It's not the result of any burning process.
George Bush doesn't like...Catholics?
More likely what happens when you replace a philandering rhode scholar redneck with a beer guzzling frat boy redneck. The best leader is not the one that one wishes to have over to the bar b que.
Many small earthquakes may or may not be a sign of increased pressure, but it's definitely a sign of increased release of pressure. Not being released in small increments could mean a major quake later.
Rather than worrying about lots of earthquakes, maybe we should be worried when there's a lack of them.
There, that should give the professional Doomsdayologists in the media plenty to write about, since the lack of seismic activity almost everywhere may be a sign of impending (sometime, maybe, who knows, but let's call it this anyway) doom.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Who thinks that adds embedded into comments just brought slashdot even closer to digg?
There was a good overview in SciAm 2 years ago: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secrets-of-supervolca
thegodmovie.com - watch it
its not going to blow until the year 2012, That is when the Mayan calendar ends and it is said the world as we know it will end.
Slashdot = Worst news site EVAH!
I checked some of the monitoring stations, http://www.seis.utah.edu/helicorder/heli/yellowstone/Uuss.YTP_EHZ_WY.2008123100.gif for example. The background tremors seem to be picking up, but it might just be wind, as a front recently passed through. I think I'll be watching this one for a few days.
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
Would my 500 GB porn collection survive the initial shock created by the vibrations or do I need to move everyting to DVD's and Flash drives.
Nothing has happened at Guantanamo that hasn't routinely happened to terrorist suspects detained in France for five solid decades. Tell me, how many times have you expressed your alienation and disgust with France? How about how Japan handles domestic crime suspects? Hmmm?
If the actions of the U.S. have disgusted 99% of the world, it's only because somewhere around 95% of the world is wallowing in hypocrisy. So fuck them, and fuck you.
It's a good thing that /. is always up to date with technology! Because this whole late-to-report supervolcano thing is not a concern to geeks :)
The world will keep turning... the other way
If we spanked it with a ground burst of this 50 megaton supernuke, it would behave itself.
Or maybe that would just make it angry.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yellowstone will erupt in this dramatic fashion. The Siberian Traps will too. The 1.5km-diameter (or much more) space rock will definitely strike earth in the future. A comet will too. These aren't tinfoil hat ideas - everybody in the related sciences agrees that these events will occur. It's just a matter of time. Maybe it will be a long time, as we think about it usually, or maybe it will be a short one. Each of these events is neither more likely nor less likely to happen on a particular Monday a million years hence than they are on July 4, 2012.
They will happen and when they happen there's a good chance they'll wipe out all human life still on the Earth. Events like these don't have to wipe out mankind. We can choose to not let that happen. Or not.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Interesting statement, Mr/Mrs. volcanologist.
There will be no humans left to eat them there.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Well played, sir. :)
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
But without Americans who would place God in history books?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Will become valuable intellectual property, and a useful survival skill.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The odds are definitely with the house.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How does that make sense to you? Are you implying people, born into relative privilege, are inherently more capable, responsible, and morally superior to those that were not? Enlighten me.
I am interested in your views and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Are known to be created by dispassionate uninterested observers with no grants at stake or books to publish.
Hell, some of the programmers even studied Earth Science a little.
This is interesting news, and absolutely bears close monitoring, but I think it's a little premature to run around shouting that the sky is falling.
The sky really is falling. Right now it's just firing warning shots but historically it has declared all-out war. This volcano will immolate much of the central US and cover much of the US in ash. It's just a matter of time. Is the time getting close? Hmm...
It seems odd to me that the schedule of ELE for asteroids and comets, and the one for volcanoes is so much in synch. It's almost as if there were a clock counting down...
Are we smart enough to figure this out like the enlightened beings we think we are, or are we doomed to the fate of the dinosaurs? Only time will tell.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Still waiting for the big one in San Francisco and they're meant to happen every 75 years!
But what really makes me curious is the possibility of inducing a volcanic outburt if you were to strike the site with a nuclear bomb (or two or three...)
I mean if China/Russia dumped all of their nuclear arsenal on that one spot, which as a target seems like something you wouldn't care a whole lot about in terms of defense, could they cause a natural event that could do a whole lot of damage without widespread radiation?
I suspect the truth is that even if all those nukes hit that one area, that wouldn't amount to enough energy to change things much...
This article is really overblown. Yellowstone has been having earthquake swarms for as long as records have been kept.
Try:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs100-03/
and
http://www.huliq.com/1/75269/yellowstone-volcano-alert-level-normal
for more info.
The mayor from Jaws and the USGS guy and Seinfeld's "high-talker" condo developer from Dante's Peak assured me that nothing will happen.
Hey, it's snowing again! Snow's kinda gray... (cough)
If all the doomsday theories are right the American fundamentalists would be dead, and we're not all that bad outside of America.
Yeah. The argument goes as follows:
Our relatives screwed over, or helped screw over natives who didnt fight back effectively. Because they are technologically inferior, they must be inferior completely. And that means whatever our relatives did was right, because we're here, and they're not.
Solar energy in what unit of time? A day? A second?
Steve Ballmer threw a chair at it. Vista was deployed to Yellowstone park service and it sucked so hard that the pressure differential sucked the lava out. Is that so hard?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Ya make a couple of mistakes and...no one forgets.
How true ...
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/derivatives-new-ticking-time-bomb/story.aspx?guid={B9E54A5D-4796-4D0D-AC9E-D9124B59D436}
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
its sad but true. killing off life in large numbers hasn't happend in some time. the less people and other life on earth the less resouses used. humans probably wouldn't die off completely but the numbers would have a sharp decline something needed across the world.
You have it backwards. 99% of the world (outside of Pakistan) probably applauds the bombings and hopes for more of them.
Hint: their main export
I need a car analogy, libraries of congress are difficult to understand...
Seriously, dedicate a portion of the land towards geothermal power. Any good cook, and any good engineer will tell you that when you want to keep heat under control, you reroute it elsewhere. Build some geothermal plants on the spot, you know how deep the magma is, then building vent/transfer systems around the caldera will in fact cool it down to prevent an eruption, AND you can sell the electricity generated for, well, generations.
Sheiss, it's so simple, should I really be the one suggesting this? I'm a high school dropout (intellectual as I am), and it's really that obvious.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Or maybe tzolkin-roll.
The *luck* of the United States recently? WTFF?
You elect an imbecile to the most powerful office in the world. Twice.
What are you talking about? Ben Bernanke has only held his position since 2006 and he was appointed, not elected.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
"Still, it would be a good plot for a Roland Emmerich movie. IMax 3D, for sure, so you can watch the pyroclastic flow hit you in the face."
Oh the irony of someone with the moniker Screwmaster delivering that line.
Throw hundreds of billions $ into it now! or we'll be doomeder than 1930's? (More doomed? Higher Doomification?)
Table-ized A.I.
"I also grew up training in martial arts which, after a while, typically includes some medical training (along the way I've ended up helping to treat everything up to and including a gunshot wound)."
I knew we should be keeping our eyes on Ninjas. Now they're throwing bullets.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"They will happen and when they happen there's a good chance they'll wipe out all human life still on the Earth. Events like these don't have to wipe out mankind. We can choose to not let that happen. Or not."
That's it! I'm moving to Mars, where it's safer.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
There's another factor to consider. Not all ash is equal. There's lighter, smaller-grained ash which will stay up longer and travel farther. Then there's heavier, courser-grained ash that will precipitate out sooner. The ratio will determine in part how far and how long this disaster will be.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Ha ... this is my favorite. From the Sci Am article comments...
"Jerry at 12:40 AM on 12/31/08
I am a Geologist, and the time table for sizable activity at yellow stone is over due. With the planets gravitational forces in 2012, I feel there is a strong possibility for large techtonic activity on a scale man has never recorded. Magnetic, geothermal, large scale plates shifts, activity in the Hawiian Hot spot, major plate boundries could all be possible areas of intense geologic uplift and possibly some major rebuilding due to changes in the forces pressing and pushing constantly around the world. Mark my words, as 2012 draws near the global interest will become more accute. The amount of techtonic activity in previously dead or dormant areas will increase. With small to large scale mid atlantic riff activity, alieutian island suduction intensity, Greenland, etc. Many people around the world will be in the way of a possilbe claticlismic event like modern man has never seen."
For most of your message, you sounds like a libtard about ready to erupt. Then right at the end, you appear to make a valid point.
Drop dead you dog fucking sack of shit. Just fucking die. Cocksucking sack of pig shit. Die. Oh, and happy new year. May you not see another.
Dont worry, it wont blow until 2012...
Already theorized and documented on History Channels Mega Disasters.
First, if you think all the major nations don't have an operation plan that covers this and all plausible contingencies, you're naive. It's their job and they're good at it.
If Russia nukes the Yellowstone valley, we nuke the Siberian Traps. If you think Global Climate Change is bad, you should see those models. They're bad .
Nuclear submarines will be unaffected by ash, and both sides have them. Tracked vehicles traverse ash just fine. Some nations are prepared with tanks and ships in underground bunkers as well. Remember that we'll be weak with little influence from our national government for five years or more. That means that after at most four years and at least 30 days, our federal government won't have plausible authority. At that point it's every man for himself. They could nuke us then and get nuked back, but what if South America, which is nuke free, chose that moment to invade? Could we push them back with our bogged down infantry? If we wanted to wipe them out, who would we nuke?
At that point we as individuals will choose. Will we choose rightly? I don't know. There are points of history that can't be predicted because the outcome is decided by heroes. That's what "hero" means.
Let's hope this unpleasant contingency does not occur. But let's be prepared for it, just in case.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The *luck* of the United States recently?
Man, I sure had bad luck being born in the United States.
All those silly things you listed _I'm_ not personally responsible for.
Where do you live, you lucky goose?
Last Post!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Pick any human being past or present at random back to at least the dawn of spoken language. That human alienates and disgusts 99% of the others alive at the time, just for being different. This applies to you personally, to me personally, to everyone around either of us, and to every person in Somalia, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burma. Shut the fuck up.
Discussion of this suggestion
Your laptop has an acceleration sensor. It can be used to detect earthquakes.
http://qcn-web.stanford.edu/
Bert
Ugg. The problems with the Somalis are far worse than merely not being "born into relative privilege."
Mod parent up, please. The grandparent did a nice job but blew it at the end. The numbers he was dealing with all the way through are all energy quantities (Joules) but the last solar tidbit is an energy RATE (Watts).
One simple rule for its versus it's
What kind of /. post are you playing at, AC?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A sarcasm detector, that's a real useful invention.
The three last eruptions were 6000, 700, and 2500 times Mt St Helens 1980 (MSHE), which released 1.67 exajoules (1.673 x 10^18 Joules). According to the esteemed Christopher Thomas 1 Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) is equivalent to 4 petajoules (4 x 10^15 Joules). Converting MSHE to BLoC gives 1 MSHE = 418.25 BLoC. So the last three eruptions were 2509500 BLoC, 292775 BLoC, and 1045625 BLoC, respectively. Since we don't know how big the next eruption will be, let's just assume the mean of the last 3, and that's 1282633.3 BLoCs, or 39% of the total solar energy that strikes the surface of the Earth.
So the energy crisis is solved? What a relief!
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
If the actions of the U.S. have disgusted 99% of the world, it's only because somewhere around 95% of the world is wallowing in hypocrisy. So fuck them, and fuck you.
Thank you for reinforcing your parent poster's point and demonstrating that you don't get it.
Waaaaaay too much text.
At least around here we know we'll always have enough virgins to throw in.
This is on BBC today..
Supervolcano
*wearing tinfoil hat* How did they know?! ;)
He was referencing this:
No existe.
It would be equivalent to the energy consumed by 71.3 billion average United States automobiles in the year 2000.
No existe.
The rest of the world is so nice though.
France and Russia certainly don't produce weapons that they sell around the world. The land mines in Afghanistan weren't produced by Germany. Britain doesn't have a huge defense industry. The European Union isn't corrupt. And OPEC just wants to stabilize prices so the world is happy.
Get real. The US just happens to be the country in the spotlight, but practically every other country is just as bad. And if you don't think so, and somehow your government is honest and loves you, then you are living in a dream world.
Wake up. The US certainly isn't perfect. But are you (and your country) -really- any better? What is your country doing to help the people in Somali, Haitia, Zimbabwe, and Burma?
Al will be speaking about the global cooling and blocked light from the sun, while the republicans will say that it is not happening and insist that nothing be done.
I don't get that from the article posted. One says that there may be stress building on the San Andreas Fault and that's causing higher quake activity..along with the observation that quakes in one place trigger quakes in another.
The wikipedia article describes, among other things rise and fall of the floor of the Yellowstone caldera as something that's routinely tracked, citing experts as saying that recent rises in the floor are not an indication a full-scale eruption is due to happen...stating that more dangerous to people are hydrodynamic explosions (steam explosions) on a smaller scale.
Me, I'm much more concerned with the way that global warming is correlated to the drop in the number of pirates world round.
...and the Americans' charming habit of bombing things like wedding parties isn't backfiring. At all. The Pakistanis living in those areas don't mind the US screwing up and killing innocent civilians, women, and children, even wiping out entire extended families, because they're doing it to prevent terrorism, and they understand that's more important than little things like a few dead Pakistanis. There's no way this could increase support for the terrorists.
(That was sarcasm, by the way.)
Obama Republican. I really hope he doesn't suck.
Hehe, I was a staunch Democrat until I started hanging out on Dailykos and saw just how scary some of those fuckers are. Now I'm applying for my pistol permit and earnestly hoping that Obama is as pragmatic as I think he is and governs from the center.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Thanks for all the fish."
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
You elect an imbecile to the most powerful office in the world. Twice.
The United States doesn't exactly have a monopoly on electing idiots. You do know that he who shall not be named gained power democratically, right? GWB is an imbecile -- but he isn't a genocidal nutjob who came to power after blaming an unpopular minority for all of our problems.
You spend/borrow your way into a financial crisis.
The financial crisis had less to do with borrowing (although that played a part) and more to do with the real estate bubble. When that bubble burst it unbalanced the books of all the institutions that had money invested in the mortgage market. In any case our national debt is smaller than Japan's when looked at vs. GDP. Why aren't you blaming them for the economic crisis?
bombings inside Pakistan
Maybe that has something to do with that region of Pakistan harboring the people who murdered almost 3,000 Americans?
Kyoto
Kyoto is a flawed treaty. It will cripple the economy of the developed World while giving a license to pollute to the developing World (China/India). Why the hell should we cripple our economy if they aren't going to be on board with solving the problem?
You remove more and more of the basic rights of your own citizens.
Citation?
count your fucking blessings
I count my blessings every day that I was born in the greatest country on Earth. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.
and shut the fuck up
You got a +5 insightful for "shut the fuck up"? Guess the anti-American folks have the mod points today.
Try living just one day as an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese.
So which one of those countries are you posting from?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Powering the entire US for a few decades might use all of 1% or so of the energy down there.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
After all, he didn't even MENTION extinction level event planning in his campaign.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
habit of bombing things like wedding parties
Really? A habit of it?
So, we can use your definition of "habit" to also say that Pakistanis have a habit of murdering school teachers for teaching, a habit of blinding women with battery acid for having the audacity to turn down a the sexual advances of an old man who already has three other wives? Ah yes, the Pakistani Habit of sending religious zealots into other countries where they take over villages by force and then march women into what used to be soccer fields and shoot them in the head at lunch time in front of a crowd for... teaching their daughters to read?
What? Those aren't reasonable descriptions of the "habits" of all Pakistanis?
Do you suppose that any Pakistani military operation (say, in the middle of shooting people while arguing over who owns Kasmir, for example) has ever involved the death of anyone other than their intended targets? Ah, so Pakistanis are in the habit of killing innocent people? Or is it that you're just in the habit of being a breathless troll with no perspective whatsoever?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You think the Crab People are pissed now? Just wait until you tap into their giant steamer.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
..when I saw your sig, somehow all the reassurance in the world just comes unstuck for some strange reason.... :/
--bornagainpenguin
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
"plunge global temperatures,"
Atleast we wont have to worry about Global Warming and listen to Al Gore go on about it.
Think positive people!
Has /. turned into the Weekly World News, or the Enquirer or something? This "lets' be as sensationalistic as possible with absolutely no proof or cause" shit is getting old.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
540 million tons is already a half a billion. 1000 times it would be a half a trillion.
On geologic time scales, "about to" could be 5000 years in the future.
The Might Makes Right Association.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I don't want to die a virgin....
doug
-a.thought.crushed.my.mind-
Where's the Divine Beano when we REALLY need it ???
So maybe so, eh? I would still make it out to be less likely than getting hit with asteroid Apophis in 2038.
Your statement is incredibly offensive. I don't have any money of significance, but if my mayor begged me to leave the city, I would grab those possessions I care about the most (my old computer and a few other things), a tent and a bicycle and move it. Your suggestion that I can't take responsible action just because I'm poor is so insensitive that I can't find words for it.
>...the US Financial credit market and the Housing Bubble wouldn't burst at the same time- they calculated that was a once in 75 million years event.
So, how many other times in the last 75 million years have they both burst? ;-)
Mt. Mazama is a different kind of volcano. There the volcano builds a mountain out of unstable layers of lava and ash flows. We have an example of it in the smaller Mt. St. Helens eruption which I think is fairly close to a caldera eruption (ie, a considerable portion of the energy of the eruption probably came from the fall of the top of the mountain). There a landslide or spurt of volcanic activity can trigger the release of pressure needed for a caldera collapse.
Yellowstone is far larger in scale, has no central cone or slope gradient, and hasn't erupted in 70,000 years. That last point is important. It doesn't erupt on a regular basis. It's possible, for example, that after all this time any eruption will escalate to a caldera eruption.
The models were not to blame for the financial crisis. The analysts at those firms ever believed them in the first place. You've been reading too much Taleb. The whole argument is a strawman.
Whine. Whine. Whine. And here I thought the Obama election would immunize us against this sort of stupidity. So why is the US required to be considerably smarter, less hypocrtical, and more popular than anyone else? Why shouldn't the US pursue its interests? Every other country does.
A divine new year's eve firecracker...
the seismologists studying this earthquake activity all mysteriously resigned and moved to Africa.
and immediately restore all of civilisation, just like they did after the fall of Rome, only much quicker this time and the quality will be so much higher and it will be ten times more efficient...
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
On the level of a society, behavior dictates prosperity, not "birth into privilege".
For example, Argentina was among the five wealthiest countries in the world in 1923. Taiwan was an impoverished, exploited, and oppressed imperial holding of the Japanese Empire at that time, and for the next two decades. Argentina also has significantly superior natural resources. And yet, by 1983 . . .
I no longer reply to those that are too chicken shit to be logged in.
I'll travel to meet up with some hunter friends of mine who have guns and wilderness survival skills... we'll shoot you and your newly found progressive buddies, eat your vegetables, and have a long pig BBQ
Six weeks, six months?
Guns need powder and ammunition. Lubricating oils. Spare parts.
Although nice firearms aren't needed for game. Besides using firearms I've also hunt with bow and arrows and have trapped wildlife. Though I don't like fish I have woven nets that can be used to fish.
Game becomes hard to find. Edible plants, fruits, nut and berries become hard to find.
Now that depends on the location and population. Even though I live in a major metro area in the north, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St Paul, on the postage stamp sized lot where I live I can grow 10% of my own food food easily in my garden. Though I started my carrots and radishes late this year, I had enough lettuce and cherry or grape tomatoes for salad every day for a month. I had enough tomatillos for one soup, or salsa, a week for months. There was enough rhubarb for a few sticks a week as well. This spring I'll add blue berries and strawberries. And maybe potatoes and corn. This past growing season I got a bunch of remarks about how well my garden grew and was asked a number of tymes how I was able to grow my plants as big as they did grow. A few said they wanted me to help them on their garden next year. And my growing season is short.
And that's just where I live now. When I lived in Florida I was able to grow enough food for most of the year in my mother's backyard. Preserving food, canning, drying or dehydrating, smoking, and using other methods of preserving food allows the food supply to last longer. I mention each of these because I have done all of them, and have lived in survival situations.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Just to be clear, one kilogram of energy is 9e16 joules, which IIRC is considered approximately the equivalent amount of energy released by a 25 megaton nuclear bomb.
1.67 exajoules is only about 20 times this, or in short the equivalent of 20 bikini atoll blasts, or 10 kilos of antimatter. Yes, it will be irritating in terms of the amount of ash lifted, but in terms of raw explosive force it's not that big a deal.
That said, 1.67 exajoules seems a bit low. Are you sure that's the right number?
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Somehow, the message got through anyway.
Food enough to feed a few hundred thousand people - though, that's still about 0.016% chance, or so.
So yeah, to survive you need to kill a hundred people.
However most of those people are in cities not where the food is. And if those people want to survive then they're going to need people who can grow food.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
USA?
Actually all that volcanic ash could make the US even more productive agriculturally. Volcanic ash can significantly improve soil fertility and quality.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Happy New Year first of all (let's be polite) :)
I live one hour from Yellowstone Lake, which is the center of the latest supervulcanic explosion caldera. I haven't felt any tremors and neither have anyone of the residents here. I have worked in Yellowstone and (as anyone visiting the Old Faithful Visitor Center can see from the seismographer there) Yellowstone has hundreds of micro earthquakes every day. On the other hand, Yellowstone's supervolcano has gone off every 600,000 years or so and the last eruption happened... well... about 600,000 years ago. So, geologically speaking it's time. Will it be 2009? I doubt it. And to prove it to you next summer I'll go scuba diving Yellowstone Lake like many people do.
The earthquakes are along the edge of one of three known magma bodies, the one that is slowly obstructing the mouth of Yellowstone Lake. The other two are around Mallard Lake and Norris Geyser Basin.
Okay, I'm seeing two general threads here:
% People who are stupidly calling something like this the end of the world
% People who are stupidly downplaying the threat
This will not be the end of the world. It wasn't the end of life on the planet the last time it happened. We know this.
Now that we got that out of the way, let's be clear here. People seem to think that 35cm of ash is like snow, and that they can handle 35 cm of snow. Here's a hint. Snow eventually melts and is taken back up into the atmosphere or is absorbed into the ground. Water is part of the standard climate cycles we deal with every day.
Ash is not water. Ash does not melt. Ash is fine particles of non-organic solids. If it ends up on your roof, it does not melt off the top of your house, it collapses your roof. Once it is on the ground, it makes a big pile of crap, and then stays there, forever. When you try and plow it or whatever, it will end up in your lungs and choke you.
Pyroclastic flows, magma and all the rest will simply eliminate 13 states. Those 13 states probably produce most of the food in the United States. Even if you evacuate, food supplies would probably be completely exhausted in a few weeks.
After an eruption in the early 1800's we had what was called The Year Without a Summer. Crops failed, people really did starve, and this was just a rather big explosion of a relatively normal volcano. Yellowstone, should it blow, will likely completely eliminate organized agriculture except (if we are incredibly lucky) in the most optimum of places. Those places will might produce food, but not enough for 6-7 billion people. And even if those people were likely to want to export food that they don't have, there would cease to be a transportation infrastructure capable of feeding people across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.
Most people will die. When they die they will rot. When they rot there will be disease. We'd probably be better off resorting to cannibalism so that we can at least do something with matter that will otherwise breed plague.
There is a saying that we are 24 hours from barbarism at all times. This is true. Even if people do the unexpected and all pitch in to rationally help one another, the infrastructure for most modern civilization will likely be untenable in most of North America and quite possibly elsewhere. There is no modern society without energy sources and the means to get it where it needs to go.
People will survive, but those people who believe that the advances of modern society will soften the blow appreciably fail to understand that our advances have taken most people farther away from the skills that they need to survive, rather than made them safer from this sort of threat. Our technology level could be helpful, but no one has really used it to protect against this sort of threat, and therefore, we would be reduced to what still would work when we get sucker punched by this.
If you point at other lesser volcanic eruptions as proof that its not so bad, you fail to comprehend the scale of the threat. These eruptions are survivable precisely because they are localized. They only remove a little infrastructure locally, but only a few miles away, everyone is fine. An explosion of this magnitude can affect ALL of the infrastructure at the same time, within a very brief amount of time. It is quite simply the same thing as if we launched all of our nuclear weapons at one another at the same time, minus the radiation.
It is bad, mmkay?
Happily, nothing is exploding anytime soon. These fools are just trying to make a buck with some good old fashion alarmist journalism. But, let's be very, very clear. If this did happen, you need to put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye unless Jesus loves you and you get taken up in the Rapture. Otherwise, you're dead meat.
Maybe that has something to do with that region of Pakistan harboring the people who murdered almost 3,000 Americans?
Using that line of reasoning, is it reasoning?, the US should then be attacking Saudi Arabia. Most of the 911 hijackers were Saudis.
Kyoto is a flawed treaty. It will cripple the economy of the developed World while giving a license to pollute to the developing World (China/India). Why the hell should we cripple our economy if they aren't going to be on board with solving the problem?
Though I didn't want to see a President Gross, er Gore, I voted against Bush by selecting Gore on the ballot because of Kyoto. Having said that, after President Bush came out against Kyoto something he said provoked me to do some research. I didn't know it before but Kyoto did not have limits on GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions on either China or India. And both countries are building a lot of coal fired power plants. So from one perspective Bush was right, however he still could have encouraged or pushed businesses to cut emissions and develop renewable energy sources. What does he do? He instead tries to relax emission regulations, so power plants can emit more pollution.
You remove more and more of the basic rights of your own citizens.
Citation?
Warrentless wiretaps and searches as well as the PATRIOT Act.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Plan Z: Faced with a cataclysmic event that would threaten to wipe out civilisation, the Government nukes its own population centres.
Eric Baird
Wouldn't the derivative of an imaginary-valued function be itself imaginary?
I have posted from Moscow, Mexico City, Barbados and Ciudad Juárez. Not exactly the best, and not exactly the worst. But some pretty scary shit never the less.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
No, Al Gore won't STFU - He will just go and dig up the Global Cooling scripts from 35 years ago.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood
We just need to think more logically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(mythology)
Exactly. I can recommend The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable to anyone. It's a great book, and written before the current financial and economical crisis. I'm not going to say he predicted it accurately, but reading it again knowing all this has significantly changed my opinion on the book. http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515 Read it -- you won't regret it.
I got the number from Wikipedia, which apparently converted it from this article.
It's a day. The link cites Wikipedia.
So, we can use your definition of "habit" to also say that Pakistanis have a habit of murdering school teachers for teaching, a habit of blinding women with battery acid for having the audacity to turn down a the sexual advances of an old man who already has three other wives? Ah yes, the Pakistani Habit of sending religious zealots into other countries where they take over villages by force and then march women into what used to be soccer fields and shoot them in the head at lunch time in front of a crowd for... teaching their daughters to read?
A lot of Americans do believe that all Pakistanis are like this, and I have a feeling you might be one of them. For example, take the comment I replied to.
But yes, technically I should've said the American *army's* charming habit of bombing things like wedding parties. You can bet the Pakistanis in question won't make that distinction, though - their only interaction with Americans is when their friends and family are being killed by US bombing raids. Also, remember that all the US bombing of Pakistanis was done by US soldiers and authorised by the US president himself - who the US population at large re-elected largely because of his strong decisive military action - so the US population bears some responsibility. You can compare the two when the Pakistani government starts murdering school teachers, blinding women with battery acid, etc.
Do you suppose that any Pakistani military operation (say, in the middle of shooting people while arguing over who owns Kasmir, for example) has ever involved the death of anyone other than their intended targets? Ah, so Pakistanis are in the habit of killing innocent people? Or is it that you're just in the habit of being a breathless troll with no perspective whatsoever?
I'm sure they have, and look how well that war's working out. I mean, India and Pakistan have managed to refrain from nuking each other into radioactive wastelands so far, but that's about the best you can say.
It is widely documented that during natural disasters people organize themselves and help each other.
Some people in the US have an irrational love of guns, violence and oppression as a way to confront any major crisis.
In most situations what is required is human kindness and good organizational skills.
The brutes that will try to go hunting and make themselves strong, will not be allowed back in the village and will be left to rot psychologically by being ignored by the rest of the new community. Or will be organized by the clever people (i.e. politicians) as they had always been.
People with a gun just become the tool of somebody else's bidding.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
IN a volcanic eruption of the one we are talking about you will have no sunlight for several months and most sources of water would be contaminated.
Only people in the other side of the world would have any realistic chance to make it on their own, pretty much everybody else would be doomed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... the one bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq?
You write all that bullshit and one wonders in which planet it is actually true.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The people that will survive will be the ones that organize themselves first.
They will dispose of the loonies that decided to go on their own in the purest survivalist of styles.
Humans thrive when they cooperate with each other. There is no example of humans surviving on their own for any long periods of time, no matter how skilful, and in any case an isolated individual is a failure from a very biological reproductive point of view.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
...still believe that when an event that the models say is a once-in-a-hundred-years event happens three times in six months, it's not an indication of a basic flaw in the model, but rather a rare fluke that means it's now statistically certain it'll NEVER happen again.
So if I flip a coin three times and it comes up tails each time, it will almost certainly come up heads the next time!
You have to find me some of these people so we can start making bets...
Organization gives strength.
Isolate and perish. It is that simple.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I had. A small one close to a smallish volcano.
You simply have no idea what you are talking about.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yeah, I don't think you could pay me enough money to go to Ciudad Juarez :(
As a resident of Los Angeles, reading about the tragedy's occurring south of the border and how the war on drugs has spiraled out of control is quite disheartening.
Wikipedia should be modified. Did not the words "Institute for Creation Research" not give it away? These are the same guys that did the 'science' for the creation museum in Ohio - the museum with adam and eve walking in the garden of eden side by side with vegetarian velociraptors.
The ICR is a known fraudulent non-scientific organization. All information in that article should be considered bogus until confirmed by reputable sources.
That said, I still think 1.67 exajoules is too low. We're talking about moving around on the order of a thousand cubic miles of rock here, where each cubic mile is around 1.5e13 kilograms. Just by this rough calculation, I get 1.67e18 / 1.5e16 which is about one hundred joules per kilo, or enough energy to raise/lower the landmass by about ten meters. Most of the stuff I've read indicates a caldera shift much larger than that, never mind the lava flows and other expunged material.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
Not so much with the coin flip ... it's more closely related to the idea of taking a bomb with you whenever you fly, on the grounds that the odds against there being TWO bombs on a single flight are completely astronomical.
(Side note: Richard Feynman once remarked that the use of "astronomical" to describe absurdly large numbers was really rather outdated, astronomical constants being pretty well defined by now, and that with the increasing absurdity of the numbers being casually tossed around in the financial sector we should instead speak of absurdly large, ill-defined numbers as economical. I think recent events have driven his point soundly home.)
Three in 2008 alone.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Mt. Mazama's cataclysmic eruption wasn't triggered by a landslide, at least to the degree that geologic evidence was preserved (and it was preserved remarkably well given the scale of the eruption).
Mazama and Yellowstone are, of course, dramatically different, but in some critical ways they may be comparable. Both have a highly fractionated relatively shallow magma chambers heated by, and capping, a source of more basic magma.
In Mazama's case the rate of magma emplacement is much lower, and it's a result of subduction combined with significant structural controls. It also developed a very significant edifice, in contrast to Yellowstone. For its part, Yellowstone is the result of a "hotspot" (pick your cause: anomaly related to feedback involving upper mantle convection, mantle plume, etc...) not immediately related to subduction. Mazama is a reasonably long-lived feature but not exceptionally so; the Yellowstone hotspot, as evidenced by its track across Idaho, is probably thirty times older, but activity at its present location is only a couple times older than Mazama.
Differences aside, I suspect that very large caldera forming eruptions share certain similarities with some smaller caldera forming eruptions such as Mazama's. At some point in the process of an eruption some critical threshold is exceeded, the surface can no longer be supported, collapse and ring faulting are initiated, and the process becomes self reinforcing until the magma chamber is emptied.
Unfortunately this is outside my area of expertise so I can only make broad brush-comparisons. I'll try to read up on the current literature.
Umm... yeah... because noone predicted this at all. Ever. It required an Act Of God to defeat our sound financial planners & economists, to end the circle of exploitation that our politicians have ensured for half a century.
Right.
. . .the New Madrid Fault
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
the cluster seems to have flatlined on all the monitoring stations!!
http://www.quake.utah.edu/helicorder/heli/yellowstone/index.html
still think sucking energy out of it kinda proactively now seems like a good idea...
woot
I am glad I moved from Wyoming to Ohio. I have to agree with some about the human race surviving something like this. 75,000 years ago people survived and they had nothing in the way of the technology that we have today. We would adapt. We would start growing food indoors. The US has a stockpile of food that would get us by.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP7Cnx0xoqw
Good catch! I didn't even pay any attention to where it linked to! I was more concerned that the source page didn't actually list the joule estimate. USGS lists "24 megatons thermal energy (7 by blast, rest through release of heat)" which is 1.00416e+17, which is actually less than than the ICR estimate.
That said, I'll take the USGS estimate over some random dude's uninformed opinion. Especially since you grossly overestimated estimate the volume involved. Only .67 cubic miles was actually moved via the landslide, with .046 cubic miles of lateral blast, .26 cubic miles of ash, and .029 cubic miles of lava.
I just reread now and understand the discrepancy: I missed the part about 1.67 exajoules being for the St. Helens eruption; I thought that number was for an estimated 'supervolcano' detonation in Yellowstone. For St. Helens, that number doesn't sound terribly far off, though I would have thought a little high.
That said, I'm definitely uninformed. I basically just took some of the supervolcano numbers off other pages (specifically 40 mile diameter caldera and one mile depth) and did a back-of-the envelope calculation. It was meant to be a quick sanity check only; thanks for catching it.
Alter Aeon Multiclass MUD - http://www.alteraeon.com
The opposite IS true, I can grow my own food without guns or ammo.
On the other hand, you cannot defend same without guns and ammo.
Sure I can. I know how to make traps and trapped animals as a teen. And unless the person has antibiotics they won't live long once they step in an Apache foot trap dipped in human feces. In the army my MOS, Military Occupation Speciality, was 11B, infantry, and I loved setting up booby traps. Though it's been years I used to practice archery and would like to learn to make bows and arrows. I would also like to learn metallurgy and make blade weapons. Prior to moving years ago I was a member of the local kingdom of the Society of Creative Anachronism where I lived.
Even if I couldn't do these things though I could make arrangements with people who could provide defense in exchange for food. Besides if all a person knows is how to shoot once their firearm is inoperable or they're out of ammo, they're out of food too. There are no tools I can't make myself that I need to grow food or trap animals. On top of that, I could fast, go without eating food. I used to be in the natural and health food scene and for health reasons I'd fast occasionally, anywhere from days to weeks. How much strength would many people have after not eating for two or three weeks? Even those weeks I did fast I still rode my bike 200+ miles a week. I admit all this is unusual but for as long as I can recall I've tried to be self-sufficient. Actually now, I'd rather be dead than continue living as I have the past years.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If farming is so easy why are so many people starving? If they could farm they could grow their own food. Fact is is not everyone can garden never mind farm. After looking at my garden this past summer a number of people asked me to help them start their own gardens next year, and I now have brown if not black thumbs when it comes to growing plants. Among other things I lost my green thumb for gardening after an accident.
Most people, in the modern world, don't know what's edible in the wild either. Growing up in the "woods" I learned what was and wasn't edible around where I lived. For instance I used to eat pine cone nuts, seeds from pine trees growing in my backyard. When I shop in Asian food stores, I love cooking also, pine cone nuts are sold there as delicacies. Or palmettoes, the stalks can help a person stay hydrated. As can cacti.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The government is definitely keeping information away from the public in regard the activity at Yellowstone National Park. Read "CNN Oversimplifies The Danger of Yellowstone National Park" http://justanothercoverup.com/?p=314 . This article literally traveled "around the world" and is still being read today - many times per day. To those of us who have been following these events, we know that something is brewing, especially considering that Yellowstone is over 45,000 years overdue for a major eruption, which is an "extinction level event." CNN tried initially to categorize Yellowstone as an "ancient Volcano", when in fact it is the only known "super volcano" on earth. It's also interesting that since this phenomena began, we can directly correlate the beginning of unparalleled corporate greed and the wealthy who are now engaged in building huge underground facilities that have for the most part been accomplished under secrecy so as not to alarm the rest of the population. Also note the President's purchase of land in South America atop the world's largest aquifer. You can't use "Google Images" to see the construction - as it's blacked-out with older images, but it's there, and there has to be a reason for it. Keep in mind that the ground has swelled more in the past three (3) years than it has in the past hundred years - a fact which has to be significant and demonstrates that the Yellowstone caldera is more active now than at any other time in our recorded history. When CNN attempts to pass-off such a blatant lie, we know they are hiding something, and you can bet the wealthy and those who have access to information we don't are hastily attempting to gather the funds to protect themselves at anyone's expense - including theft and murder on a scale that so far has been unparalleled in history. We need answers - but they won't be forthcoming. I predicted a major volcanic/seismologic event before the end of the year for the west coast or Alaska, as well as noting that the earthquakes were moving up from South America to the US. I wasn't disappointed: "Eruption of 3 volcanoes has scientists asking questions" http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/551521.html "How likely is it that three neighboring volcanoes would all erupt at the same time -- as the Kasatochi, Okmok and Cleveland volcanoes in the Aleutians did this summer? About as likely as a storm that only appears once in a thousand years, says Anchorage volcanologist Peter Cervelli, who'll deliver a paper on the subject this winter to the American Geophysical Union. In other words, seldom enough that Cervelli is now exploring the question of whether Alaska's triple eruption was only a coincidence involving three independent volcanoes or whether it was triggered by some common mechanism." On January 18th, 2008, I wrote "Volcanic Activity Appears To Be Working Itâ(TM)s Way Around The âoeRing of Fireâ UPDATED" http://justanothercoverup.com/?p=385 On May 6th, 2008, a Chilean volcano erupted that had been dormant for over 9,000 years. Is that a coincidence? "Thousands flee as Chilean volcano erupts" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/chile/1924533/Thousands-flee-as-Chaiten-volcano-erupts-in-Chile.html It's obvious that we live in interesting and dangerous times, however, it would be fair to everyone if the government would fill us all in as to what they "think" is happening - but we all know that will never happen. William Cormier
I must have missed teh English 101 on Slashdot ...
Vulcanism ? Is that something that happens on Planet Vulcan ? And is Spock aware that he needs to save us ? Again ? Kirk u there ?