Surving Yellowstones Super Eruption..

What would you do to survive the inevitable Yellowstone Super Eruption? Me? I'm going to start stock piling food. That's the main thing that's got to be done. But what would you do knowing that within a year afterwards, the entire World would be ground to an economic halt???

My understanding is that it would black out the sun for years and that most life would die off from nuclear winter. I mean I want to say its a global killer. Stockpiling food is a good start, but it will take a lot more preperation as well as being nowhere near North America.

Chances are when it erupts it'll set off a chain reaction within the ring of fire as well which may make survival even more remote. But good luck...

Im not sure on the length of time before the entire earth would be encased in a cloud of ash, but i do know it would be fast enough - and last long enough to cause absolute chaos.

As soon as the sunlight stops hitting the earth then all photosynthesis stops, no fresh crops, animals can no longer survive and then we all die.

Stockpiling food will keep you alive for a while, but its gonan get ugly when your stockpile starts being looted.

As soon as anything like that happens it would effect the entire globe pretty much all at once. The USA has effectively been wiped out, its not going to take a year for it to start to take effect, its gonna take a few hours at best for currency to become worthless. it might come back a little if governments can restore some sort of order but i dont see that lasting forever.

If you have the misforture to be located far enough outside the are where you would have been vaporised but still inside north america then you really are in it up to your neck already.

I presume that you have read the threads detailing what good tactics are for a survival situation so you migth aswell start implimenting those if you are serious, and even if yellowstone doesnt go up in our lifetimes then you will be prepaired for anything that may happen.

Well to survive a Yellowstone Eruption you need to be more than 100km away at least (I think that is the figure), where everything will be either killed by the blast, or by the Pyroclastic flows. Surviving in that area isn't really a possibility, unless you can get away really quickly when it starts (like with a helicopter for instance).



Further than that in terms of distance, the ash fall will be heavy, and with rain as well, all but the strongest building's roofs will collapse, as volcanic ash is, after all, rock for all purposes. It is also very small and can get in your lungs as well. So any sort of mask that can stop ash is very useful in such a situation, because you may have to move around outside. Of course roads may or may not be useful, depending on how much ash there is, and how much warning and panic there was to evacuate before the eruption, in which case the roads may be gridlocked.

The Ashfall might extend like this:



As you can see, the area affected by the ashfall is huge, however not all areas will be catastrophically affected and some will only have a small amount of ashfall. Thats not to say it won't be a hazard though. In places the ashfall will settle in a high up valley, and then when rain does come a lahar can be generated. A lahar is basically the ash mixed with water and it comes flowing down the valley, and is pretty much unstoppable.



The best way to survive a super eruption is not to be within at least 1000 miles.

Yellowstone doesn't have to erupt in a super eruption though, it could be smaller, but the potential is there.

I made a thread about the possibility of such a super eruption here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[edit on 27-1-2007 by apex]