Explosive situation in Yellowstone

I agree with you Mag. I think a big explosion is brewing. If it does, does anyone have any idea what kind of affect it will have on us here in the states?

Is there anyway to prevent this from happening? Dump tons of ice on it? Cover the whole park over with cement ?

If there is a super blast in Indonesia, we could expect an end to any talk of global warming. There would be less of the sun's light ans warmth getting through to the earth.
I would imagine crops would suffer. We would not suffer nearly as much as the eastern hemisphere, fo course.

Hello, I just joined this place to join this conversation.

What's "TOBA" mean?

But what I wanted to say was that my local mad scientist informed me that if Yellowstone did go off like it did before, he seriously believes that it will absolutely kill all life on this planet without exceptions. That's dire anyway you look at it, also the reason I'm just a wee bit concerned.

Well, there's been a couple earthquakes there in the last week, I don't know what that means:
earthquake.usgs.gov...

[edit on 16-4-2005 by Incognita]

Toba.... Toba is/was a stratovolcano on Sumatra that blew some 74,000 years ago. The eruption was larger that the Huckelberry Ridge event at Yellowstone. I'm thinking it was 2400+ cubic km. Toba also happens to be only miles east of where the two massive quakes were. It is hard to say whether the quakes will stir Toba back to life but it certainly is of concern. Seismographs seem to be picking up harmonic tremors but its really hard to tell where they are coming from since you can't get a seismo very close to the caldera. There was a 6.1 quake near Toba today that was only 10km deep.

Yikes, that's really unfortunate. Although, the nice thing is that if something really terrible happens, there's nothing we can do, so we won't have to worry about how to save ourselves, right?

Actually I don't know if you can really call Toba the volcano itself. Yes and No. This is why I say...

"Samosir Island and the Uluan Peninsula are parts of one or two resurgent domes. Lake sediments on Samosir indicate at least 1,350 feet (450 m) of uplift. Pusukbukit, a small stratovolcano along the west margin of the caldera, formed after the eruption 75,000 years ago. There are active solfataras on the north side of the volcano."

Source: volcano.und.nodak.edu...

Is Toba really the volcano itself or just a name used to generalize the area. Like Yellowstone. Yellowstone and Toba are known because of the caldera. Strangely enough both have had 3 major events. With Mount St. Helens you are naming a cone shaped mountain that spews ash from a point at the top. With Toba and Yellowstone you are talking about a vast area being fed by a large magma chamber that may have more than one eruptive point. So do you name the whole area and treat it as a single volcano or do you treat each eruptive point seperately?

Honestly I wouldn't lose sleep over it. Just because Toba may erupt doesn't mean it will be a super eruption. And even if it is I think we have advanced enough now that we'll be able to (most of us) survive the conditions afterwards. I think life will be harder than it was. It may be like rewinding your watch back 200 years but with technology.

I guess you can't know what's going to happen with the area so you should probably assume the worst to be safe. Not that that's the happy thing to do.

I'm curious, do earthquakes around volcanic areas signify release of tension, OR possible future eruptions? I know with Mt. St. Helen's the particular earthquakes they registered signified movement towards the surface. It's disturbing to think that earthquakes could cause these giant volcanos to become active, but atleast that gives some warning doesn't it?

I suppose you're right, but severe weather changes might wipe out many "3rd world" countries and blanket others with horrible conditions that wipe out most people there. It's exciting isn't it.

Well in my opinion the bad thing about Sumatra is the incomplete data. There was a 6+ quake not too many days ago near Toba and I tried to get seismograph readings. Unfortunately the closest one I could find that reported the big quake was well over 1000km away. So you really don't know what kind of quake activity is happing in and around the volcano. From what I have been told people in that area are very stand-offish to outsiders. That may be more towards westerners. So I don't know what they really have. Could it be that an area so loaded up with volcanos has little or no seismic monitoring? I seriously doubt that. So when I see when putting certain mountains on alert status I must assume they have a reason to. I have no idea what the quakes are really doing over there. I can also assume that if something is happening that the reports may be sanitized by ours or their government.

But to sum it up... quakes + volcanos are NEVER good.

A "superbelch" from Toba would cause many fatalities, cause crop failures and people will starv. However, I doubt it will "kill all life on this planet without exceptions". Humans will survive. The world population will be reduced and the temperatures will drop and stay low for years to come after such event. It will be tough, but mankind will most likely survive this. Toba´s eruption 74000 years ago was about 2800 times bigger than Helens "belch" in 1980.
I suggest you take a look at some other threads here on ATS:
The clock is ticking in Sumatra
Volcano Watch 2005
An Earth Plate Is Breaking in Two
Super Volcano Will Challenge Civilization, Geologists Warn

I was just looking at the Yellowstone Seismogram displays for the Yellowstone area. Everyone of the siesmograms went off line yesterday (8 May) at 1250 MST and didn't come back up until 1015 MST this morning (9 May).

I can't believe that there was a massive power failure that could take out every siesmograms at the same time, so what does anyone think about this??

The end result of global warming is global cooling. Global warming is just a process that speeds the Earth ecosystem into an ice age.

It is not a matter of if the Yellowstone Calerda erupts , but rather when.

In fact it is overdue for an eruption , below you will find posted the graphics of the


2.1 million years ago
1.3 million years ago
.63 million yars ago


Yellowstone's geology is composed of glacial deposits and three main welded tuffs (volcanic pyroclastic lava flows) from eruptions beginning approximately 2.1 million years ago. The Early Pleistocene (Ice Age) tuffs found in Yellowstone National Park are especially important because they make up much of the whole area. The catastrophic eruption forming Huckleberry Ridge, first of the last 30, ejected 2,400 times as much material as did the 1980 Mt. St. Helens eruption. Ash went as far west as California, east as Iowa, north to Saskatchewan and south to the Gulf of Mexico. The second half of the Pliocene, 3.2 and 2.1 million years ago, was warmer then. These global climatic changes were synchronous with those in the North Atlantic (and maybe caused by this eruption). Then Earth's wind patterns were like those of today, with stronger winds blowing out of the northwest.

The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff was followed by the Mesa Falls Tuff (1.3 million years ago) and the Lava Creek Tuff (0.63 million years ago). During the Lava Creek eruption, ground-hugging flows of hot volcanic ash, pumice and gases swept across an area of more than 3,000 square miles. These enormous pyroclastic flows formed the Lava Creek Tuff. Its caldera actually started to evolve 1.2 million years ago when the magma started rising to create a bulge with many fractures. The rhyolitic flow created ring fractures all around the caldera. These fractures went straight into the magma chamber where they started to relieve the pressure by means of three eruptive pulses 150,000 years ago, 110,000 years ago and 70,000 years ago. The total rhyolitic rock produced was about 1000 cubic kilometers.

Yellowstone's magma chamber is believed to be about 45 by 85 kilometers across, similar in size to the overlying caldera. The top of the chamber is about 8 km deep while the bottom is around 16 km deep. However, the chamber is not completely filled with fluid magma. It contains a partial melt, meaning that only a portion of the rock is molten - about 10 to 30%. The rest is solid rock. Still, a massive amount of magma, about 10,000 cubic-km (2,400 cubic- miles) is present in the chamber.

external image

Yellowstone will erupt again, and when it does, it could be a disaster for the United States and eventually, for the whole world. Volcanologists believe it would begin with the magma chamber becoming unstable. Observations of larger earthquakes and greater uplifting of the caldera will occur as magma intrudes closer to the surface. An earthquake could rupture the brittle surface layer and it would be similar to breaking the lid off a pressure cooker. This would generate sheets of magma, which will perhaps rise 30 to 50 kilometers, sending gigantic amounts of debris into the atmosphere. Pyroclastic flows would cover a widespread region, killing tens of thousands of people in the surrounding area.

The ash, carried in the atmosphere and deposited over vast areas of the United States, would have devastating effects. The plume of material ejected high into the atmosphere from the eruption would produce global climatic effects. It would soon spread worldwide and have a cooling effect that would almost certainly destroy Earth's growing seasons on a global scale.

The eruption would throw out hundreds to thousands of cubic kilometers of rock, ash, dust, sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere. There, it would reflect incoming solar radiation, reducing temperatures on the Earth's surface. It would be the equivalent of a nuclear winter - or worse. Much of the air might not even be fit to breath. The effects would last for four or five years causing crop failures as well as a breakdown of the whole ecosystem.


LINK: www.barry.warmkessel.com...


As Dr. Ted Nield, of the Geological Society of London, stated once, “When a supervolcano goes off, it is an order of magnitude greater than a normal eruption. It produces energy equivalent to an impact with a comet or an asteroid.” “You can try diverting an asteroid, but there is nothing at all you can do about a supervolcano

Just wondering if anyone could tell me if there is a nuclear war and warheads hit in Cheyene or somewhere close by, would the effect cause a major eruption of yellowstone?