If Yellowstone Blew...

[Lancer]

Everyone would go there.

No! That's not it.

What would be the global result of wiping most of the US/Canada/Mexico off the face of the earth, leaving no organized political system?

Could the dollar still function as an international currency without a country behind it?

Would the US military overseas try to get home or set up little warlord states all over the place? What about the carrier groups? Each one has the destructive power many times most countries. Gotta give those sailors a home, yes? Or would they take one, and where?

Would the Russians and the Chinese go after each other over untapped Siberian wealth? Would the Germans and French go one more round for old times sake? Are they equally matched these days?

Would there be a mad rush for the 'New World', the repopulation of North America? Who would be the winners and losers?

Would little nuke wars break out? India/Pakistan, Russia/China...

Would Israel go down in a sea of invaders and take alot of arabs with them in a final blaze of nuke glory?

Tiawan would go communist Chinese, but what of the rest of southeast asia, absorbed into China?

What else might happen?

[alva]

What else might happen?

A party?

[Lancer]

No doubt



Actually that might be the way it starts in many places, until things got rolling.

[Lorizael]

From what I understand about the Yellowstone caldera, the predictions are that it would only "wipe out" about half the United States. Unfortunately, it would be the food-producing half that was wiped about. Six feet of ash on your crops makes for a less than satisfactory harvest.

[Zkribbler]

My favorite part is that, if you breath in volcanic ash, the moisture in your lungs turns it into the functional equivalent of concrete.

I betcha Lancer is glad he lives upwind

[Lancer]

Good fertilizer.

No, that's a good point. Add global starvation to my litany of effects, food wars. Germany goes for the Ukraine sort of thing.

[Lancer]

Zkrib, upwind, you bet.

So much of the US that is upwind is useless desert full of useless movie stars...

You come up north though and grow potatoes with us. You're not union are you?

[lord of the mark]

1. Folks would stop complaining about Europe's Common Agricultural Policy

2. Argentina, Brazil, Australia would be in very favorable positions. Or occupied by China

3. Assuming China cant take over lands overseas, theyd go for the SE Asia rice bowl countries.

4. China would have a recession. More or less immediately. Ditto, Japan. Actually, a global recession.

5. Things in Central American countries would get bad, very bad, considering the loss of both export markets, and remittances. Ditto the Caribbean.

6. Israel will remind everyone they have nukes. With clever bismarckian diplomacy, they can probably make it. Though their economy is screwed. But then so are the economies of their neighbors.
Taiwan is history though, probably. Esp if China needs a distraction from recession.

7. US navy can head for Guam, I suppose. Or Hawaii for that matter. Theyve got their own nukes. They can stop any foreign state from entering the terr of the US. OTOH they no longer have an economic/financial support base. They can either A. Go pirate and blackmail for money on a huge scale B. Organize a repopulation by immigrants, but under their auspices. C. hire themselves out to other states. D. give up and quit

[Lancer]

Very good points lotm. Regarding Brazil/Argentina, the Monroe doctrine would be pretty much history.I wonder how long they would survive?

China would have a hell of a run, they would have to go for food and not stop.

Hawaii might be able to supply the fleet with food, but not oil. Where might they get that?

[East Street Trader]

If I may say so, Lancer, from the perspective of a non US citizen that is a bizarre view of the role played by the North American countries in the world.

You seem to think that the USA, Canada and Mexico somehow keep the lid on what would otherwise be a mass of armed conflicts.

My own experience over the last half century has been that Canada and Mexico are two civilized countries who don't seek excessively to influence others.

The US, on the other hand, has engaged in the Cold War with the USSR, interfered extensively in Asia (Korea and Viet Nam), regularly sought to overthrow the Cuban government, provided money to terrorists in my own country (the UK), interfered extensively in the middle east because of its support for Israel and interest in oil production and been obstructive to such attempts as the rest of the world has made from time to time through the UN to grow out of petty nationalistic squabbling.

Meanwhile the rest of us, by and large, have been doing quite well at growing up. In Europe we are managing through the Union so to entangle our interests that war between us is getting to seem a very remote prospect. The people of the USSR found a way to dismantle it with hardly a shot fired. The Chinese and the Japanese, the Indians and the Pakistanis, even North and South Korea are at least talking to each other.

The disappearance of N.America would most certainly have enormous political and economic consequences. But the notion that it would remove a stabilizing influence is a bit daft.

Optimistically I am going to predict that one substantial consequence would be for the UN to be thrust into the role of co-ordinating the massive humanitarian effort which we would all embark upon and that subsequently the event would be recognised as marking the birth of world goverment and the end of the age of the nation state.

[Lancer]

Very hopeful! I don't believe the rest of the world wouldn't go nuts, but I like that there is such hope.

I think US citizens are by far the biggest contributers to such relief efforts, but who knows? Maybe the world would unite to relieve the suffering.

Yeah, yeah...and maybe Santa Claus will bring all the little boys and girls a bag of rice.

(Sorry)

[Lorizael]

It is extraordinarily naive to believe that countries besides the United States are not involved in the same kind of interference the US engages in. The only real difference - and this is important - is that the US has the greatest ability to conduct the sort of rampant interference it does.

But the United States is a stablizing force. For many reasons. For the fact that it and the Soviet Union managed to keep the Cold War relatively cold in the aftermath of World War II. For the fact that it supplies the world with a tremendous amount of food. For the fact that it supplies the world with a tremendous amount of money and aid.

If the United States disappeared in a cataclysm such as this, the entire global political and economic system would face massive and instant upheaval and change. And such enormous change in such a short amount of time is inevitably bad.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
The US, on the other hand, has engaged in the Cold War with the USSR, interfered extensively in Asia (Korea and Viet Nam), regularly sought to overthrow the Cuban government, provided money to terrorists in my own country (the UK), interfered extensively in the middle east because of its support for Israel and interest in oil production and been obstructive to such attempts as the rest of the world has made from time to time through the UN to grow out of petty nationalistic squabbling.

Can i merely suggest that we agree to disagree on whether the US involvement in the cold war (generally with the eager support of its NATO allies) was a good or bad thing, and similarly on whether US support for Israel is a good or bad thing? To avoid a major threadjack, while pointing out that some quite serious, reasonable people dont share your charecterization of the US role since 1945?

And to point out that the US govt never supported the IRA, some private citizens did (and no, I dont think it was at all ok that that support for 'the humanitarian wing' of terrorist groups was tolerated - im just clarifying the record)

I agree that the absence of the US wouldnt cause such things as a Franco-German war. The absence of the US, in combination with the massive economic dislocation and resource shortages, might well lead to some fairly nasty wars, though.

[Lorizael]

Here's a silly analogy: You and several hundred passengers are on a big, heavy train with a ****load of inertia carrying it forward.

Evil President Bush kills the train's engineer and is taking the train out of control! It's going to fly off that cliff over there! Oh no!

But evil President Bush is a ****ing moron and didn't see that massive wall his out of control train is heading for. Woops! You all crash in to it!

Hurray, the train stopped! Hurray, Bush is dead!

Oh wait. It stopped really quickly. Oh man, that's messy. I'm going to the bathroom.

[Wittlich]

Simply put: The world would change as we now know it.

IMO, a worse scenario is: How would global civilization handle a flip in the Earth's magnetic field?

It has happend before in our distant past (a couple of times - before the arrival of mankind) and it WILL happen again...some even believe that it could happen as early as December 2012 (Aztec Calendar, Prophets, Oricles, etc). - Although for myself, I am not ready to believe that the world will "flip" as it were, in only 5 years from now.