Yellowstone Park

[Skeptik]

There is a whole host of global worries, natural and man made events that could wipe out modern civilization at the least, humankind itself at worst. Here is a summary of some of them.

I remember reading, back when the asteroids hit Jupiter, that such a body hitting the Pacific Ocean would create a tsunami 10,000 meters high.

For the metrically impaired, that is higher than Mount Everest.

It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to see what a really big natural catastrophe would do to humans, but relax, and consider the upside:

Even if 99.9% of human beings were to be wiped off of the face of the Earth, there would still be six million of us left, way to many to even be considered an endangered species.

There, doesn't that make you feel better?

 

[Old Rocks]

Also from discovery channel site:

There is no argument that a major eruption at Yellowstone in modern times would be devastating. It would obliterate the national park and nearby communities, spread ground-glass-like volcanic ash from the Pacific coast to the Midwest, and cause worldwide weather changes from the airborne dust and gases, according to Smith, who described the potential effects in detail in his book Windows Into the Earth, published in 2000.

A modern full-force Yellowstone eruption could kill millions, directly and indirectly, and would make every volcano in recorded human history look minor by comparison. Fortunately, "super-eruptions" from supervolcanoes have occurred on a geologic time scale so vast that a study by the Geological Society of London declared an eruption on the magnitude of Yellowstone's biggest (the Huckleberry Ridge eruption 2.1 million years ago) occurs somewhere on the planet only about once every million years.


Freaky stuff.

Actually, your scenerio is rather conservative. The last eruption of Yellowstone put about 5" of ash all over the state of Georgia. The result of such an eruption today would be the deaths of a couple of billion people because of the rapid cooling of the earth for a few years. A very minor eruption in 1815, compared to Yellowstone, caused the Year without a Summer in America and Europe in 1816. Such an eruption of Yellowstone today would effetively shut down the majority of agriculture in the northern hemisphere.

 

[dilloduck]

Actually, your scenerio is rather conservative. The last eruption of Yellowstone put about 5" of ash all over the state of Georgia. The result of such an eruption today would be the deaths of a couple of billion people because of the rapid cooling of the earth for a few years. A very minor eruption in 1815, compared to Yellowstone, caused the Year without a Summer in America and Europe in 1816. Such an eruption of Yellowstone today would effetively shut down the majority of agriculture in the northern hemisphere.

all the better reason to keep the earth a few degrees warmer than usual-just in case. And the cooling could be for a lot longer than a few years.

 

[Care4all]

The ones being WIPED OUT immediately would be the ones that were blessed, if the super volcano erupts. Just heard today that it has been 640 thousand years since yellowstone erupted and it erupts every 600 thousand years or so.... a little over do.

And YES, it will be much more than a few years of cooling, more like a generation.

More devastating to the world if it is yellowstone that erupts, because all countries buy and sell with/from the USA....for food.

 

[dilloduck]

The ones being WIPED OUT immediately would be the ones that were blessed, if the super volcano erupts. Just heard today that it has been 640 thousand years since yellowstone erupted and it erupts every 600 thousand years or so.... a little over do.

And YES, it will be much more than a few years of cooling, more like a generation.

More devastating to the world if it is yellowstone that erupts, because all countries buy and sell with/from the USA....for food.

So go feed Yogi and Boo boo while you can !! The damn thing may kill us all

 

[Luissa]

So go feed Yogi and Boo boo while you can !! The damn thing may kill us all

Hey Boo Boo would like a picnic basket?

Man I used to watch Yogi every day, I wonder how he is holding up with this economy and the gas prices this last summer!