Did anyone watch Supervolcanoe last night?

[Brent]

depo,

what I was saying was that not all of Yellowstone's eruptions are super eruptions. The last eruption was about 70,000 years ago and it was just a lava flow. So it is possible that the next time it erupts, it may "only" be like Mt ST Helen's or Mt Pinotubo. However, we must prepare for a super eruption.

As an aside, we can kiss our civil liberties good bye if Yellowstone were to have a super eruption due to the threat to our species as a whole. The movie did a great job of indicating just how much the world would change after Yellowstone, including a posisble new calender with Yellowstone as the demarcation point (which would also make some sense as that would show just how different the world became with that one event)

That trip to the moon isn't looking so bad now...

[Derek Ortt]

not saying its a definite, just wondering why all of a sudden we have started to have many educational shows on this very topic

[AirmaN]

not saying its a definite, just wondering why all of a sudden we have started to have many educational shows on this very topic

Makes ya wonder....

[kevin]

Well because they made too many movies about asteroids hitting the earth I guess.

[Kelarie]

Well I think part of that program was to inform and to scare. In the geological record, there have been regular erruptions from Yellowstone and currently it is "overdue" for one. If Yellowstone were to errupt it would change the anatomy of the US as we know it. Fall out would be felt all over the world. It would be possible that the global temperture could change by 1 to 2 degrees F. Ash fall could be carried by the winds down south, possibly as far as Texas or even farther south.

The US hasn't seen an erruption besides Mt. Saint Helens, but there are several active volcanoes in the states. One of my old geology profs studied one in New Mexico, and he theorized that it could go at any point from now until 50,000 years. On the geological time scale, that is a drop in the bucket. Mount Shasta in the northwest is active and would be devasting if it went.

The USGS has a website, http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/update.html, where you can keep track off the volcanic activity for US volcanoes.

[Derek Ortt]

these shows are doing a good job of educating people as to what would happen if Yellowstone does blow. Would have liked to see more on the aftermath around the world, which is what we would have to endure if the recent Sumatra quakes are Toba acting up. Prior to seeing these documentaries and the movie, I had no clue that Yellowstone was a super volcano and just how bad it would be.

my concern is that some won't be understanding as to the measures that would have to be enacted if a real eruption warning for Yellowstone was issued (such as kissing our constitution good bye and the enactment of martial law, to ensure the survival of not only the nation, which the odds would be somewhere between slim and none since the food producing midwest would be unusable, but for the species as a whole). I would have liked the move to start to discuss these aspects of a super eruption