If Yellowstone Blew...

[Berzerker]

I was just watching a docu on Yellowstone, the bulge has been lessening lately while it had increased a few feet over the last century or so. Yellowstone Lake has shifted position while the bulge was increasing. Anyone know how the Long Valley caldera has been doing? Last I heard the bulge has been increasing.

[Wezil]

I'm more than 1000 kms away.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Wezil
I'm more than 1000 kms away.

Ahhh, Wezil gets to die from slow starvation.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


Ahhh, Wezil gets to die from slow starvation.

...but I get to watch it all happen on CNN.

[Lancer]

I'd blame Bush.

For me, from the description given in Zkrib's site, at the time of the eruption I'd like to have a front row seat when the thing blew. Get it over all at once. I haven't got a bomb shelter stocked with a few years food, or a tray of seedlings ready to go when the sun pokes through. I'm almost 50 years old and dependant on meds, so dependant on civilization persisting. So too if a comet hit, I'd want it to block out the sun and throw its shadow over me as it came down. Better that way. I'd have a much different take if I was young.


lotm has it right, and the purpose I was using Yellowstone for was not to end the world as much as to enlighten on the place of the US in it, and to discuss what the world would be like without the much miligned cop on the block, and throw in the closing of the nieghborhood's biggest supermarket. A very different world perhaps, and that's the interesting bit.

So maybe we've got to reign in Yellowstone a bit. Perhaps an eruption that isn't its proudest moment, one that leaves the nations of the world in a power vacuum, not a shallow cinder covered grave.

Discuss

[Arrian]

Oh. So it's "The USA magically disappears, but everything else is intact. What happens? Will people cry at the funeral? YOU'LL MISS US WHEN WE'RE GONE!!11!"



-Arrian

[Lorizael]

lol America pulled a faded glory LOL

[Lancer]

Not so much "will people cry at the funeral"? but instead, what will the rest of the world do? It's not about the US.

[Chemical Ollie]

Most of the "Western" countries had at least a year's supply of national food and oil consumption prepared for WW3. I don't know if we still have it, but we probably do. Why scrap it when we have it? Chocolate bars stamped " Made in 1962" rock, I've eaten lots of them in the military.

The problem will be the countries that haven't prepared for something like this. And the massive deaths in USA, of course.

But I think the OP has too much cold war dinosaur in it. US military is not a lid on any conflicts any longer, except on some local civil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And USA is far from the only food exporter in the world. There's plenty of food production capacity in Brazil and similar places.

The problem will be the global multi-year winter, which will require huge WW3-level stockpiles in every nation to avoid global food wars. EU will probably have the stockpiles, but can we hold back a nuclear attack from China or India if they want to steal our food? And will it be meaningful for them to nuke us, if our stockpiles get contaminated and useless from the radioactive fallout anyway?

Anyway, the survivors of USA will not need all food stockpiles they have left if most of the population were killed in the blast, so those stockpiles would be a very valuable trade resource. I suppose the US foreign troops will be sent home to administrate the rebuilding of the nation. And to protect the consumption and global sales of the excess food stockpiles. That money would be a welcome aid in the rebuilding.

[Zkribbler]

IIRC, the Yellowstone Megavolcano blows about once every 800,000 years. Its last eruption was 840,000 years ago ... which means it should have blown 40,000 years ago during the Neanderthal's time. It's long overdue.

[germanos]

But well before such a calamity, warning flags will likely show up on the computers of geologists around the world who monitor an increasingly useful stream of satellite data. There have also been more pushes by scientists in the field to 'wake up' and devote more attention to this, it's truly startling.

Originally posted by Lancer
I'd blame Bush.

That's why he is looking for lebensraum in the middle east ...

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by germanos
/i] in the middle east ...

I guess Iraq does look something like Texas....only hotter, drier, and with more gun play.