Slashdot Mirror
Researchers: Global Risk of Supervolcano Eruption Greater Than Previously Though
rbrandis writes "The eruption of a 'supervolcano' hundreds of times more powerful than conventional volcanoes – with the potential to wipe out civilization as we know it – is more likely than previously thought, a study has found. An analysis of the molten rock within the dormant supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park in the United States has revealed that an eruption is possible without any external trigger, scientists said."
Any spare ( one way ) tickets for Mars left?
You mean that up til now it has been widely believed that a super volcano required an external "trigger" before it erupted? I'm no vulcanologist, but I've been intrigued with super volcanoes for over ten years now, and in everything I've read or seen I don't recall anyone saying that some sort of external trigger was needed to "light the fuse", so to speak.
Proverbs 21:19
If we know where the magma chamber is, why can't we tap the chamber to create pressure relief wells, allowing the pressure and magma to drain an semi controlled fashion?
NSA is on the east coast, Yellowbone will just kill the west coast, and starve the rest of the world a little.
Sharkcano!
In this case, "likeliest" is a subjective term, since there are so many factors at play and it's difficult if not impossible at this point to try to predict what roaming variable will arise that will push the volcano over the tipping point. The best we can do is compare previous events with current factors, but even then our predictions will fall further on the guessing side of the line.
So, on a serious basis, I think a higher priority at this point should be placed on developing ways to protect ourselves from an imminent disaster like that relative to the size of that potential disaster. Worst case scenario, we need to pursue solutions which involve leaving the planet entirely if it is rendered uninhabitable for a period long enough to exterminate us.
Forget the super volcano, there's a typo in the title!
Quiet! That typo could be enough to trigger it!
It's still only happening about every 100,000 years. Will it eventually happen? Yes. Can we do anything about it? Nope. This planet is still the dog and we are still the fleas.
Depends what you mean by "do anything about it" - if by "do anything" you mean "preserve the human race", then we could easily have a permanent and self-sufficient base on the moon within a few decades if we dedicated half of our military budget to it, and a base on Mars a few decades beyond that. The entire Apollo project "only" cost around $170 billion in 2005 dollars -- the USA Military Budget is around $700B annually.
No, airflow is to the south and east. Mostly would kill the South and the East, anything west of the Rockies will be fine.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Supervolcanoes represent the second most globally cataclysmic event - next to an asteroid strike - and they have been responsible in the past for mass extinctions, long-term changes to the climate and shorter-term 'volcanic winters' caused by volcanic ash cutting out the sunlight."
Your failure to predict it will still get you arrested in Italy.
The risk of typos in the story headline are the same as always.
It's like Rob programmed a bit of himself into slashcode before he left.
It's the though that counts.
No amount of "bunker" is going to save you because most of North America will be knocked over and/or on fire. Even if you get out (as youll be under feet of hot ash) there will be no place to go, no way to get there, the grounds itself will be baren for a dozen years like Mt St Hellen's.
Listen to you, Mr. glass-half-empty.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Someone has actually written a novel called Sharcano .
Airflow has little to do with it. That part is what gets leveled by a shockwave. Multidigit gigatons equivalent. The dust layer chokes out most of the worlds' plants for decades, but not all of them. Humanity is adaptable enough to survive as a species even at current tech levels.
You're not including the protective smog layer from China
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Mount Rainier wouldn't be a cork in the giant bottle that is Yellowstone.
Also, sorry you don't understand the level of output from a supervolcano. For a 1/100 scale, go look up Mount Pinatubo.
Quick, we don't have much time, lets end this on a high note...
It would cost a lot more than the Apollo project to get a permanent self-sufficient base on the moon or mars, probably hundreds of times more, maybe thousands, especially is it has to be truly self-sufficient (no external supplies ever, no margin for error).
And a super-volcano is not going to wipe out the human race. Maybe 99% (mostly via starvation) but that still leaves millions. Same for a comet/asteroid strike, nuclear war, etc. (a super-virus might do it). As far as knowledge preservation, a lot could be done regarding that on Earth.
Ah, another day at Slashdot.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While I do agree with the first thought (why worry if you can't change it), I have to point out that your second doesn't follow. Here's your list:
jobs, debt, destruction of currency (gov't caused inflation), destruction of your freedoms.
Jobs are a function of the economy, and unless you're Warren B, I don't think you can individually do much. Maybe you can start a business and hire a few people. Kind of like buying a Prius. You get to feel like you're helping, and by way of a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction, you probably are.
Debt is a fact of life for most people, and inescapable for most of our governments world wide. These days they talk about reducing the deficit, which only means less debt. But the debt is assured. Now as an individual you can avoid going into debt, probably, but there are arguments for and against doing so. And your personal net worth isn't exactly a 'change the world' thing in most cases.
Destruction of currency falls pretty much along the lines of that above.
Freedoms can be defended as an individual, but they're going to make you a martyr for taking such action. It probably isn't recommended.
Anyway, those are all horrible examples of what an individual should worry about. Maybe next time go with 'try not to be a dick to people', 'drive safely', and 'help each other out'. Those are not only attainable, but also have Prius-size impacts on the planet as a whole.
No amount of "bunker" is going to save you because most of North America will be knocked over and/or on fire. Even if you get out (as youll be under feet of hot ash) there will be no place to go, no way to get there, the grounds itself will be baren for a dozen years like Mt St Hellen's.
Listen to you, Mr. glass-half-empty.
Actually these 2 graphs ya ya strange site show past eruption damage. People as far away as Houston and LA would die.
It is a fact. The dust is broken up glass particles and traces of rock that will cut up your lungs from the inside out and then cement into rock inside them! A very painful and awful death as this is what killed the Romans in Pompeii rather than being burned to death. There lungs got eaten away and it rained the next day or two and cemented their bodies with the ash and preserved their bodies for 2,000 years.
Now even if you live in Europe and feel you are safe the global nuclear winter will come complete with a full glacialization ice age. Crops will die and food will be scarce. Snow and freezing temperatures will fall well north and south into the tropics. Unless you live near the equator you wont be fine at all. Expect everyone to invade your country and kill you and your neighbors for food too as this land will be highly prized mixed with a new world where there wont be enough food for 6 billion people as 1/3 of it will be frozen tundra.
http://saveie6.com/
"Dr Perrillat said there are no known supervolcanoes that are in danger of erupting in the foreseeable future."
Tricked again! The hysterical headline is exaggerated, and society as we know it survives another day.
It's still only happening about every 100,000 years. Will it eventually happen? Yes. Can we do anything about it? Nope. This planet is still the dog and we are still the fleas.
Depends what you mean by "do anything about it" - if by "do anything" you mean "preserve the human race", then we could easily have a permanent and self-sufficient base on the moon within a few decades if we dedicated half of our military budget to it, and a base on Mars a few decades beyond that. The entire Apollo project "only" cost around $170 billion in 2005 dollars -- the USA Military Budget is around $700B annually.
Or we could just do nothing, as humanity survived the last Yellowstone eruption just fine (or we wouldn't be around today). And they managed that without any of our modern technology or scientific knowledge. A base on the moon or Mars is definitely in the long-term survival plans for humanity, but we don't need one to survive a once-in-a-million year event like a supervolcano eruption, it's the once-in-a-hundred million events like asteroid collisions (or eventually the sun expanding) we need to worry about.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
If Yellowstone erupts, it's the end for the USA. And even if the country by some miracle survives, it won't have the resources to waste on either playing superpower or gathering data "just because". It would be hard pressed to even power the data center.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
To be fair, they were convicted because they actually they DID predict there would be NO earthquake, and encouraged people to return to their homes. For political/economical interests.
The journalists got it wrong, no one ever checked the sources.
Krakatoa is the more apt example. It's eruption (explosion) was heard 3000 miles away and its shockwave reverberated around the earth 4 times. The 20ft tsunami it created killed 40,000 people. The explosion was equivalent to 13,000 of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. And it's still significantly smaller than Yellowstone.
Prevailing winds if not disturbed by it, and they probably will be, will send the ash cloud east. Various estimates put the layer of ash on an Iowa cornfield from 6" to 40 feet deep. One estimate is as good as the next in this case because the magnitude of the Yellowstone blow cannot be known much before it blows. The correct term is S.W.A.G., which many here are familiar with.
And if as big an event as some have written, it will do more than "slightly" impinge on the world food production. While I'm not saying it will happen on such a scale, the potential to starve 99% of this planets population of all genus combined genuinely exists. IOW, an extinction event on a par with the KT Boundary 65 million years ago. Or worse. But the record seems clear that it will not be benign, there are known valid records here on this continent between the last blow 640k? years ago, and the arrival of the first humans perhaps 25k to 50k years ago. The rock layer between the surface today, and the KT boundary is a bit short on major bone finds.
And short of drilling into it, and removing that heat by using it for geothermal power on a scale that will run the rest of the planet, probably not a thing we can do about it.
Cheers, Gene
Mt pinatubo and krakatoa where both a VEI6.
The only real eruption in recent history was the eruption of mt Tambora in 1815.
That was a VEI7. There was no summer in 1816 and the summer of 1817 wasn't much better.
A supervolcano eruption wil probilly be a VEI8
You seem to be forgetting one important factor, those armed groups that will roam taking what they want, shooting people pretty much for something as little as a single meal or bottle of water.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
No. To be *accurate*, the scientists said there was insufficient evidence to suggest than an earthquake was imminent. The politicians said there would be no earthquake. Then, when there *was* an earthquake, the scientists were convicted because of what the politicians said, and the politicians got off scot-free because they "just said what the scientists told them".
I understand that you're looking at the raw numbers, and they're damned impressive.
However, shock waves can be deflected - and multiple mountain-sized deflectors (from my POV, the Rockies and Cascades, featuring Mt. Hood) are more than sufficient to do the job of keeping my house and office from flattening.
Now that said, Anything North and East of the spot is gonna get it pretty hard for hundreds of miles in radius. But the shock wave isn't really what you have to worry about - odds are perfect it'll blow in stages anyway.
Nope - the really big dangers are twofold:
First, we have metric shitloads of volcanic ash (anything North of Salt Lake City is gonna get buried in the stuff rather deeply, it'll likely put a coating of some depth on everything eastwards from Yellowstone to New York City, and breathing microscopic glass shards is not going to be fun).
Second, as others have stated? Welcome to Volcanic Winter. Unless you have something like 2-3 years' worth of food stashed away (and some means of filtering water the whole time), you're gonna be screwed (and cold.) Global Warming will be not much more than a distant memory and the butt of every joke around (among the survivors, anyway. The dead don't joke much.)
Some good news, though: Once the skies clear up enough and the temperature comes up to normal again, that's going to be some damned fertile soil to grow stuff in.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If by "those armed groups" you mean "the new government", then no, I'm not forgetting. The largest, most organized group wins fights. If that group isn't lead by the old government (and it most likely would be), then it would swiftly become the new government, as no one likes being shot back at. That's where most governments come from, after all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So what you're saying is we need global warming to cancel it out?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
So... the flyover states that produce our food would be wiped out, but NYC, DC, and LA would be spared. Great.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
People must take precautions to avoid breathing ash. While even wet cotton can help, the use of respirators is recommended because the finest particles can be as small as 10 microns.
While dry ash is not conductive, even a small amount of moisture produces a paste that is conductive enough to cause high voltage flash-overs. Tall pylons with ceramic insulators may manage to stay clean but electrical substations where ash can form piles, are especially vulnerable.
And if insulators accumulate ash after a rain or already have ice on them it's pretty much flash-pow grid down.
BBC did a great two hour docudrama depicting possible effects, Supervolcano [2006] along with a companion program Supervolcano.The Truth About Yellowstone
Beyond the ash fall there are long-term climate concerns. There have been two major eruptions that have affected climate severely in the Northern Hemisphere with a clear historical record, Tambora (1815) and Krakatoa (535AD). I cover these in this recent Slashdot post.
My plan, and I am being pretty annoying about it in the hope that it becomes everyone's plan -- is to fast-track the two-fluid Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor to commercial deployment in North America AS SOON AS IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, specifically the 1GW unit design with multiple on-site units sharing core salt reprocessing infrastructure -- that is a best-fit for our base load grid supply. These plants would deliver an unprecedented level of safety even if they are modularly constructed and mass-produced, will continue to operate even if rail or roads are damaged, and can store years of fuel on-site.
In short, a best hope for survival under many disaster scenarios, both natural and man-made.
The electrical grid is more of a problem since its points of failure cover a wide area and the vulnerability extends to the transformers in your neighborhood. For the grid I advocate a build-out of buried High Voltage DC conduits to interface between the three major North American interconnects, and to progressively deliver bridge junctions that can route around regional failures.
In short, we should be powering up new base load energy and building cross-country energy pipelines -- in addition to oil pipelines.
Re-tooling the grid will take much more time and capital than the deployment of LFTR but it is no less important. One of the advantages to LFTR is that it need not be sited near a large source of coolant water, so (unlike water reactors) there is NO region of North America that cannot accommodate this technology, and these plants can be built as far away from population centers as desired.
But it cannot and will not happen without your help.
See my letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
And see the fascinating Thorium Remix 2011 presentation.
Also, here is an excellent overview on HVDC pipelines: Roger W. Faulkner [2005]: Electric Pipelines for North American Power Grid Efficiency Security
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
First, the pyroclastic flow (superheated gas and ash) would play havoc with the western half of the U.S.:
It would kill all life within roughly a 300 mile radius, in a matter of minutes.
It would most likely melt or incinerate anything with a boiling point equal to or less than that of iron.
After about 300 miles the heat would gradually start dying out, leaving people alive, but suffering first, second, and third degree burns.
About that time, the shockwave should hit. There's really no way to predict what kind of damage will happen, but it will likely leave almost anyone in the western half of the U.S. deafened, or with severely damaged hearing. Ironically, this will be the least of the troubles, because...
Though the gas has cooled enough to only scald people, for the remainder of the roughly 600 mile radius, people will have to also deal with their air being poisoned and acidic. Those not killed outright will soon have a very bad day, however, because...
The next effect will primarily cover twice the 600 mile radius in ash, most likely in an eliptical pattern to follow windflows, up to about 4 meters. A good portion of this ash will also come from the previously incinerated landscape. Those not killed by heat, poison, and acid, will now find breathing and moving extremely difficult as they wade through a 12-foot sea of fine powder.
Global Effects would be felt the same day and continue to worsen for the next 3-14 days, depending on the weather patterns. The would include things like.
Little, if any, government assistance. The largest disaster FEMA has ever had to face is 9/11, which stretched their resources to the limit. The affected area of the supervolcano is an estimated 10 million times greater than that of 9/11. To date, FEMA does not have a contingency plan for a disaster on the scale of a supervolcano. Though they have shown an interest in developing one, it is doubtful they will ever have the resources capable of dealing with such an event. So you might want to be prepared, either with supplies, with guns, and/or with your god.
Another problem that will have to be dealt with is the gas sulphur dioxide which forms sulphuric acid when it gets into the stratosphere. This has two main effects, one is blotting out the sun, the other is, of course, sulfuric acid rain.
Within a day or so, temperatures would plummet 15-20 degrees, on average, across the globe. While this wouldn't exactly cause the end of the world, it is likely to turn many temperate climates into arctic ones. Strangely, the greatest differences would be in the southern hemisphere, though thanks to the normally high temperature, it would probably make them a cool average of 72-degrees year-round, thus remove San Diego's monopoly on such temperatures.
Since most foodcrops depend upon a particular temperature and sunlight range, and most foodcrops are grown in temperate climates, and the breadbasket of the U.S. will be under a 12-foot layer of ash, and the damage to global infrastructure, one can expect that a lot of people will starve--roughly 1 billion, at best estimates.
Travel using engines would be severely limited for a while, though the time and location would depend largely on the ashfall. The enormous amount of particulates in the air would not only impair visibility on an unprecedented scale, but also clog air filters within a very short amount of time.
Anyone with breathing problems or allergies can count on a miserable life. Those with perfectly healthy lungs can count on developing breathing problems and allergies.
Most of North America would become uninhabitable until the ash had been beaten down by the acid rain, and hardened enough to walk on. Even then, the poisons within the ash, the topsoil covered with volcanic roc
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Couldn't we all just dress warmer and eat seals and seaweed instead?
It's easier to move with the food.
I'm not much for underground....and seals are quite tasty as long as you have garlic or onions.
Yellowstone super volcano is a planetary killer - or best scenario: many, many, many years of the equivalent of nuclear winter.
With "many, many, many years" meaning about 10 if you read the article (yes, I know it's slashdot...). However if you are worried about the more immediate effect then I'd rather be west than east of the super volcano given that the prevailing winds are westerlies and will distribute the ~1,000 cubic kilometres of ash mainly to the east of the eruption.
However there is some hope for the long term. With global warming predicted to hit +4C by around 2100 having a super volcanic eruption may actually be a good thing in a century or two.
A super-volcano isn't just a giant volcano. Different types of volcanos are different. Super-volcanos are like a giant lake of magma coming to the surface. There may or may not be localized explosions at the start of the event, before it opens wide; that depends on the amount of gas in the magma. That can range from lots of big explosions, to none at all. Once it starts to open wide into a super-volcano, the pressure is already being released. There would be a huge amount of out-gassing, but since it isn't forcing up through a narrow tube, it doesn't need to create a shock wave at all; it can just gas out like a giant boiling pot of toxic soup, blocking out the Sun.
I wouldn't write too much into a wine-glass analogy. ;) It probably only makes sense that way if you understand the subject. Nobody watching is likely to say it happened like a champagne bottle, or beach ball underwater.
"Planet Killer" is a bit extreme. Unlike, say, an asteroid strike, Yellowstone wouldn't do much to the other side of the earth (or even the east coast) besides block sunlight and bury soil in a foot of de-facto concrete sludge. In other words, nuclear power plants will still work, and so will anything else not directly destroyed by the explosion. We have something the dinosaurs (and early humans) didn't -- food that's edible for years, and the means to (expensively) grow it without sunlight. Life would suck, to be sure (especially in poorer countries), and war would probably erupt across the globe, but it's unlikely that it would literally kill all human life -- let alone all life -- on Earth.
The biggest immediate consequence would probably be the de-facto end of air travel (jet engines have insurmountable problems flying through ash) -- at least, for a few years. If cruise ships had to fill the gap, Miami would probably become the main port of entry for passenger travel into and out of the US... mainly, because it's one of the only cities that actually HAS the port facilities to handle large volumes of passengers RIGHT NOW. I'm guessing that Barcelona, Montpellier, and probably Rome, would become the main passenger terminals at the "Europe" end (by virtue of having cruise terminals of their own, as well as HSR connectivity to the rest of Europe). I'm sure there would be direct service between New York and Southampton (UK) too, but I don't see New York being capable of assuming a role as the main port of entry for passenger ships if it's under martial law and one major food riot away from civil breakdown.