if the yosemite volcano went off, a lot of people near and far would have their lungs turn to cement. that's outside of the people that would burn from the pyroclastic flow and secondary fires.
the globe would be a very different place after that belch.

If the current trend continues, Yellowstone eruption will be smaller than ever before. I am NOT saying it will be small, don't get me wrong. But it will NOT BE THE VEI 7 WAS SAW A FEW MILLION YEARS AGO.

And you guys do understand that there has been steam explosions at yellowstone before? And since when does uplift mean there's an eruptions? It is true that eruptions average out at every 640000 years or so. But then again, that's an average. Look at the timeline of yellowstone, the time between eruptions has varied by thousands and thousands of years. It would not surprise me if it erupted in 1000 to 50000 years.

I SUGGESTED DRILLING 100 OIL PIPELINE HOLeS
to relieve the pressure....


it was very detailed my thread posted here in ATS but EVERYONE COULD NOT THINK OF IT...

AND SAID NO...

I THINK THEY WANT IT TO EXPLODE SO THEY CAN START A NEW WORLD.

100 pipeline holes would to crap all. The lava in yellowstone is way too sticky to be abled to flow out of holes in the ground. If you actually did drill a hole into Yellowstone then the lava would probabely rise abit and then harden over.

The pressure would continue to rise.

[edit on 9/11/07 by JimmyCarterIsSmarter]

Wasn't there a large volcanic eruption (in India, I think) a few years ago that was so violent it knocked the earth's rotation off by 2 degrees? Our weather hasn't been the same since then. That would be the worst, I think. Having our rotational spin knocked off any more than it already is could very well be an extinction event. There have been some pretty horrific natural and man-made events but there are always survivors. Who could survive a cataclysmic rotational "bump" and how?

great, I live down wind of yellowstone....albeit on the other side of the country

A major yellowstone eruption would lead to an extinction event

everybody pray to your makers tonight

One way of looking at the power of volcanoes is what scientists call the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI) — sort of a Richter scale for eruptions. And like the Richter scale used to measure earthquakes, the power of an eruption increases exponentially from number to number in the VEI index.
The VEI scale runs from zero to eight. The higher the VEI number, the bigger — and less frequent — the eruptions. On one end there are the burbling, rather gentle eruptions that happen on the big island of Hawaii. These happen daily on Earth, and even with their occasional impressive fountains of lava, they rate a zero on the VEI.

At the other extreme is the Yellowstone eruption of 2.1 million years ago, which is described on the VEI as an eight: mega-colossal, with a towering ash cloud 10 miles high that pours out at least a thousand cubic miles of ash. That Yellowstone eruption had 10 times the ejected material as a VEI 7 volcano, which modern humans have never seen either.

In fact, the last VEI 7 eruption was in Toba, Indonesia, 74,000 years ago, and it caused such global cooling that some scientists think it nearly drove humans to extinction.

The largest known eruption in the last several thousand years is believed to be that of Tambora, Indonesia, in 1815. It was tens of times more massive an eruption than Mount St. Helens in 1980. Despite pouring out 7 cubic miles of ash and causing short-term global cooling, Tambora was small fry compared with any of Yellowstone's big eruptions, or even the eruption of Toba 74,000 years ago.

No eruptions of this magnitude have happened since the dawn of civilization, about 10,000 years ago — which is lucky for us, and perhaps one reason civilization has been able to develop.

[edit on 9-11-2007 by syrinx high priest]

This made me ponder a question. If someone was to start drilling and 2/3 of the way to the lava pool set nuclear devices, what would the consequences be of that? Its really a rhetorical question but if you have ideas , feel free to share.




Peace

the thing to remember is the size of the yellowstone caldera 60x40 km i believe,

and that entire region is being elevated by magma 3 inches a year.

so what is the cubic volume of that magma increase per year?(to tired to do it myself).

and how much is building up underneath??

Originally posted by wierdalienshiznit
that would make a good thread....

how to stop yellowstone from exploding!

ideas anyone?

Start with Santorini, it's a lot smaller, and erupts every day so you'll know if you managed to stop it. Yellowstone, if you are assuming a VEI 8 super eruption, is about 10^8 times larger in terms of ejected material.

This uplift in the area of White Lake GPS station (it's not a complete uplift), is probably not a sign of imminent eruption considering it is fairly localised, and there is some subsidence as well, in an area that had previously been rising:

The uplift is most noticeable at the White Lake GPS station, as has been discussed in our monthly YVO updates during the past year. As of late October 2007, the total uplift since 2004 at that location is about 17 cm. Chang and his colleagues credit the relatively rapid rise to recharge of magma into the giant magma chamber that underlies the Yellowstone Caldera. They also used numerical modeling to infer that the magma intruded about 10 km (6 miles) beneath the surface.

North of this region of uplift, another area at Yellowstone has moved downward over the past three years. This north rim uplift anomaly (NUA) had risen during the period 1996-2003, when the rest of the caldera had subsided. The activity was featured in a 2006 article in Nature Magazine with lead author Charles Wicks, one of the co-authors on the new article in Science Magazine. Chang and others hypothesize that magma input after 2004 caused fracturing of the crust that resulted in release of hydrothermal fluids from the north rim area. The loss of fluid pressure then resulted in deflation, or subsidence of the ground surface.

In fact after this Yellowstone will probably continue rising and subsiding. And so this is the most since monitoring began in 1923. So we have monitored it for 0.0131% of the time since it last erupted with a VEI of 8.

Yellowstone doesn't have to erupt hugely either, it might just erupt on a (relatively) small scale, such as similar in scale to St Helens did in 1980. It could even do smaller than that.

And how do you work out we are overdue? The two previous Super eruption intervals at Yellowstone were different, and two is hardly much to extrapolate by.

I had a long reply typed up and it got erased on me LOL
It is 4:30AM, and I am too tired to type it all up again

I wouldn't be worried about a catastrophic eruption for a couple reasons
-We wont be able to stop it... not with the massive size of the Yellowstone caldera
Not to mention, a volcano is like a big pressure cooker, with the magma under massive pressure... interfering with that, if it was even possible, could cause some major problems, possibly much worse then a eruption, in a worst case scenerio
Best case scenerio... the vents drilled into the crust would seal up right away because of the nature of magma

-I may be wrong, but I have seen no indication of increased gas emissions, nor seismic activity, both precursors to an eruption
Actually, I believe October 2007 had the lowest number (34) of earthquakes then any other month in the past year

-USGS has indicated the odds for a hydrothermal eruption are much greater then the odds of a caldera forming eruption like those most of you are talking about
The odds of a calder forming eruption are very slim, as per USGS

-Yellowstone is a living, breathing caldera... it is constantly rising and falling, moving... much like the sleeping giant it is
3 inches per year is alot of magma, but in the whole scheme of things, with how large the caldera is, it really is not any real need for concern
Also, interesting to note... the ground uplift is moving at a similar, or slightly lower rate then the previous year, again, as per USGS

Could there be a massive eruption at Yellowstone? Definately... as a matter of fact, it will happen again, there is little doubt of that
Will it happen within our lifetime? No one knows
No one can really say we are overdue based on 2 previous events

But right now, there is no indication of increased activity at Yellowstone
Now... if there is increased gas emissions or seismic activity... maybe then I would start searching for fireproofed underwear lol

-Marc

Well if this blows anytime soon then I know i'm dead, according to the video posted on page 1, my house would be covered under several feet of ash.

I don't count on it happening anytime soon, the next major disaster I see is and Earthquake at the New Madrid Fault Line, or another hurricane the strength of Katrina.

mankind would survive, but there would be a huge loss of life though. Especially in the surrounding areas, however the world will be deeply effected because the United States would basically be no more.