Topic: Yellowstone activity

[Idaho Corsair]

Don't know if this is "more of the same" or if things are 'heating up' for the big one over in Yellowstone.
can anyone offer perspective on this that's been watching the YS caldera for a while?

http://www.whenshtf.com/showthread.php?p=72175#post72175

[WTF]

20 so far

http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/Yellowstone.html

nothing to get worked up about, just shitting moving around getting adjusted.  But then again if I'm wrong, we're screwed!!!!!!!!!

[NGO]

This is one of those things that if it goes, you may die, kind of like if they drop a Nuke on Boise, not much you can do about it. Even if you don't live in town and in the outlying area the wind may blow the hottest fallout right on your house and kill you anyway...

Some things you can do something about, other (and there are always others) things, their is not a dammed thing you can do about it!

For this kind of thing you can just do the same thing you should be normally doing....Prep!

And if you live thru it... then you have supplies to live off of while others are running around looking for food, electricity, and water, etc. etc.

[bourneshooter]

Just saw that myself.


Definitely something to be on the alert for - make sure you have your 72+ hour kits ready and fuel tanks full. But you already knew that.

[WTF]

If the Yellowstone Caldera blows, 1/3 of the US will get wiped off the map period! the pyroclastic flow will hit us in a matter of 2-3 hrs. in the next several days, the ash will pretty much cover most the world and choke off a lot of life. temps will drop, and winter will come within a months time. crops fail, people fail, etc etc, sure some people will live, but A LOT will perish.

we are in the 600 mile radius if it blows.

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q115/sneitzke/supervolcano-blast-area.jpg


http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/interactive/interactive.html

[Jeff]

Too bad it won't just take out the coasts.  And France.

[Idaho Corsair]

So judging by the link you provided we'd actually be ok (not like a nuke where you get melted) since we're not in the lava-flow or mud slide area. We'd just have an hour or two before deep ash hit us (1-20ft). So it blows, pack up the essentials and book it west to the Pacific on a non-crowded route?

[WTF]

So judging by the link you provided we'd actually be ok (not like a nuke where you get melted) since we're not in the lava-flow or mud slide area. We'd just have an hour or two before deep ash hit us (1-20ft). So it blows, pack up the essentials and book it west to the Pacific on a non-crowded route?

No, we wouldn't be ok, we'd be cooked! I imagine the only way to survive it, is to have a real underground bunker, or something like an abandoned missile silo (That would be Uber cool) to live in, while the blast and ash passes us by. and even if the roads were empty, I doubt you'd be able to out run it. once the ash hit you and your vehicle, the ash will clog your air filter, and suffocate you in a matter of mins, even if you had a face mask on.

If I was gonna try and book it, I'd head south. as the "west" only goes so far. the south goes all the way to south america.

[e11charlie]

Wouldnt that be a switch, thousands crossing the border "into" mexico.

[WTF]

Wouldnt that be a switch, thousands crossing the border "into" mexico.

Did you ever see that Scene from the movie "the Day after Tomorrow" that shows Americans illegally crossing into Mexico? freaking hilarious!

[9Shooter]

Did you ever see that Scene from the movie "the Day after Tomorrow" that shows Americans illegally crossing into Mexico? freaking hilarious!

Exactly what I was thinking    Americans cutting the border fence and wading across the Rio Grande, Mexico closing the border because of too many illegals.  That was ironic.

[Idaho Corsair]

Did you ever see that Scene from the movie "the Day after Tomorrow" that shows Americans illegally crossing into Mexico? freaking hilarious!

yeah, that was one of the only good parts about that movie... i think i was laughing for like 5 minutes afterwards.

ok, am I missing something? (probably ) cause the immediate blast in YS area where lava and stuff would hit was projected at only 40 square miles according to one of the links you gave... the area shown on the maps suggested that ash would start falling in 2-4 hours up to 20 feet deep (SHTF for those guys) close to the YS blast area and only a foot or so on the peripheral... though that means it was a foot or more of ash in like half of the US. I guess where I'm confused is, let's say it's like 20 or 50 times what St. Helens was in '80. Portland didn't get drowned in lava, though it did get a lot of ash. Friends in Moscow, ID were shoveling ash like they would snow... but no SHTF there. So Let's say St. Helens was 50x worse. Moscow gets 3 ft of ash, Portland would seriously suffer... but translate that into YS, and there are no major cities to wipe out though lots of smaller ones would be toast. I guess from the evidence I have, I don't see it doing more than a couple feet of ash over a few days in Boise? I'm not claiming that you guys are wrong, you just haven't shown me why you're right.    Make sense?

[MarkinIdaho]

If Yellowstone were to blow, we'd probably have to be more concerned about earthquakes here than anything else.  It's all connected.

[WTF]

Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera

The major features of the caldera measure about 34 mi by 45 mi

That's a big fucking Caldera. and if it blows in our lifetime, it'll take out everything within a 50-60 mile radius instantly from the blast itself.

Then the pyroclastic flow will probably extend another 50-100 miles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX2HqAqmF1c

then in a couple hours, Hot ash will fall and choke off all life within several hundred miles. even the best of filters will clog up.

and of course we'll have major earthquakes to deal with as Mark mentioned.

Mind you, we are only 300 miles from it.

so I doubt you would have time to out run it. even if you have a 2hr head start (assuming the roads are clear) but you're free to try it if it does blow, and report back here on your results.

[Idaho Corsair]

but you're free to try it if it does blow, and report back here on your results.

nice. I'll have to think about trying it sometime... not sure you'll be around to report back to though. Do you have kin living abroad I could notify? 

[WTF]

nice. I'll have to think about trying it sometime... not sure you'll be around to report back to though. Do you have kin living abroad I could notify? 

nope, my kin will fry with me.

[NGO]

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/01/01/earthquakes-at-yellowstone-supervolcano-update-.html

Earthquake Swarm at Yellowstone Supervolcano: Update


January 01, 2009 03:21 PM ET | James Pethokoukis |

So what is the latest with the ongoing earthquake swarm at the Yellowstone supervolcano caldera? Here is my just-completed email chat with Dr. Jacob Lowenstern of the U.S. Geological Survey, top scientist at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory:

How would you characterize the recent level of seismic level? Terms like "swarm" are pretty alarming. How would place this level of activity in historical context to what the USGS/YVO have tracked before?

Lowenstern: Swarm refers to seismicity when there isn't a typical mainshock/aftershock sequence. In other words, the events are more similar in size. Swarms are very common at Yellowstone. This one is clearly bigger than normal, and is the largest since 1985. There were also some large swarms in the 1970s, but the seismic network was much cruder at that time and we weren't able to locate earthquakes as well.
Me: What might be the markers/indicators leading up to a major volcanic/seismic event? Do you think this is leading to a volcanic eruption of some sort? What does your gut tell you?

Lowenstern: The most likely "bad" things that could happen would be triggering of a larger earthquake or some sort of steam explosion set off beneath the lake. At this point, any kind of volcanic eruption is a long shot. That's why we haven't called for a volcano advisory. None of our other monitoring indicators show anything that is nearly so anomalous as the earthquakes. At this point, the most likely thing is that the swarm will continue, perhaps for weeks, and then will end without any other related activity.
Me: It is all or nothing? I mean, do we either get lots of small quakes leading to nothing vs. a supervolcano? Could there be grades of eruptions or events?

Lowenstern: There are LOTS of things in between. There have been 80 volcanic eruptions at Yellowstone since the last "supervolcano" eruption 640,000 years ago and hundreds of large steam explosions, some near the Lake. It is FAR more likely that we'd have a steam explosion or a small volcanic eruption than a supereruption. By the way, the last time a volcanic eruption occurred at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago.
Me: So if we were leading up to a major event, what sorts of indicators might we expect to see? We haven't seen one in a long time.

Lowenstern: It is certainly an issue that the truly major events are not known on a human timescale. We've mostly witnessed the precursors to smaller eruptions. But before any kind of an eruption we'd expect a whole lot of change in the ground deformation as measured by GPS. Nothing has changed over the past week. We'd also expect larger earthquakes and a bunch of steam explosions before magma ever made it to the surface.

Me: What do you make of this comment from one of my readers: "It's not that there's lots of quakes or even that they're all within a mile or two of each other, the worrisome part is that they are all a few hundred yards apart from the surface down to 7.2 km defining a single chimney under high pressure causing radial fractures along its entire length. NPS says the magma chamber is as high as 8 km and if it is that close to the chimney reaching to 7.2 km, we may be in for an eruption. We need more info on this location and USGS should deploy the best seismic testing equipment in the Lake NOW."

Lowenstern: That is pretty fanciful. We've got a team of seismologists looking at the data. The swarm is over a 7 km length right now. None of the earthquakes are that big, so it may be that fluid pressure is moving around as rocks break and thus breaking new rocks. It's also important to realize that when your seismic stations are 10s of kms apart, you can't get good resolution on the depth. The best located earthquakes right now are shallower than 5 km, but greater than 3 kms. Most of the shallower reported depths are probably inaccurate.
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[Orbital-Burn]

yes, the ash cloud will make it here, but it wont be the pyroclastic flow.  That wont go for more than 100 miles, even if the whole thing blew at once.  We are probably in one of the better places in the US for surviving this.  Unless we get nuked after we are mostly rendered defenseless when the missile fields in Nebraska and the Dakotas are covered.

[hawkiye]

Take it with a grain of salt!

   

"As it stands, scientists from YVO monitoring Yellowstone say it's extremely unlikely that a huge eruption will occur in this century or even millennium, however, they expect that Yellowstone will erupt at some point in the future...

    Meanwhile, every year there are active ground deformations and anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes of varying magnitudes occur at the park"

http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/07/05/08/how-close-is-the-yellowstone-supervolcano-to-blowing-its-lid-and-how-would-it-impact-us.htm

I wouldn't worry about it, Scientist have never been able to predict an earthquake much less a volcano eruption. If it did happen there is nothing we could do about it and the fact that there are steam and lava vents venting pressure etc. make it unlikely to be a major blow out. We got more important things to worry about IMO.

[SNAFU]

Anyone Remember this movie?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419372/

[TrooperBrian]

From what I understand, we are in the secondary zone. Where the majority of fatalities and casualties are indirect. Meaning they are a result of caving in roofs and whatnot.

[Nomad]

 Fires, lost power, broken water mains, lift pumps not working,
bridges failing, over passes falling, damn breaking, roads splitting.
gases, dust clouds,  this is secondary zone...........

[pv74]

Damn...I don't know if I want to buy a house in this area anymore....

Maybe I better move back east...where my house could get swallowed up by the rising oceans (according to Al Gore).

As for the missile fields...we got the subs as a backup for the canned sunshine


As for predicting eruptions....the scientists predicted Mt. St. Helens...right?

Of course...the scientists really don't know what to make of Yellowstone at this point...anything could happen....in the next few hundred thousand years...

[WTF]

As for predicting eruptions....the scientists predicted Mt. St. Helens...right?

Yes, but that is within days of it blowing, the rapid rising of caldera and thousands of earthquakes is a good tell tale sign. but beyond that, they have no clue.