super volcano?

[Matthew5]

What is a super volcano?
A super volcano is the most destructive force on this planet. Only a few exist in the world and when they erupt they do so with a force tens of thousands of times greater than other eruptions. They lie dormant for hundreds of thousands of years as a vast reservoir of magma builds up inside them before finally they unleash their apocalyptic force, capable of obliterating continents. They threaten the survival of mankind.

What happened during the last eruption of a super volcano?
The last eruption of a super volcano was in Toba, Sumatra, 75,000 years ago. It had 10,000 times the explosive force of Mount St. Helens and changed life on Earth forever. Thousands of cubic kilometres of ash was thrown into the atmosphere - so much that it blocked out light from the sun all over the world. 2,500 miles away 35 centimetres of ash coated the ground. Global temperatures plummeted by 21 degrees. The rain would have been so poisoned by the gasses that it would have turned black and strongly acidic. Man was pushed to the edge of extinction, the population forced down to just a couple of thousand. Three quarters of all plants in the northern hemisphere were killed.

What causes super volcanoes?
Super volcanoes differ from normal volcanoes in many ways. The stereotypical volcano is a towering cone, but super volcanoes form in depressions in the ground called calderas. When a normal volcano erupts lava gradually builds up in the mountain before releasing it. In super volcanoes when magma nears the surface it does not reach it, instead it begins to fill massive underground reservoirs. The magma melts the nearby rock to form more extremely thick magma. The magma is so viscous that volcanic gasses that normally trigger an eruption cannot pass, so a massive amount of pressure begins to build up. This continues for hundreds of thousands of years until an eruption occurs, which blasts away a huge amount of ground, forming a new caldera.

Where are there other super volcanoes?
Not all super volcanoes have been found, but one of the largest is in Yellowstone Park, USA. Scientists searching for the caldera in the park could not see it because it was so huge - only when satellite images were taken did the scale of the caldera become apparent - the whole park, 85km by 45km, is one massive reservoir of magma. The idyll landscape of Yellowstone (below) could soon explode with devastating consequences.

When will it next erupt?
Scientist have discovered that the ground in Yellowstone if 74cm higher than in was in 1923 - indicating a massive swelling underneath the park. The reservoir is filling with magma at an alarming rate. The volcano erupts with a near-clockwork cycle of every 600,000 years. The last eruption was more than 640,000 years ago - we are overdue for annihilation.

What would be the effect of an eruption?
Immediately before the eruption, there would be large earthquakes in the Yellowstone region. The ground would swell further with most of Yellowstone being uplifted. One earthquake would finally break the layer of rock that holds the magma in - and all the pressure the Earth can build up in 640,000 years would be unleashed in a cataclysmic event.
Magma would be flung 50 kilometres into the atmosphere. Within a thousand kilometres virtually all life would be killed by falling ash, lava flows and the sheer explosive force of the eruption. Volcanic ash would coat places as far away as Iowa and the Gulf of Mexico. One thousand cubic kilometres of lava would pour out of the volcano, enough to coat the whole of the USA with a layer 5 inches thick. The explosion would have a force 2,500 times that of Mount St. Helens. It would be the loudest noise heard by man for 75,000 years, the time of the last super volcano eruption. Within minutes of the eruption tens of thousands would be dead.

The long-term effects would be even more devastating. The thousands of cubic kilometres of ash that would shoot into the atmosphere could block out light from the sun, making global temperatures plummet. This is called a nuclear winter. As during the Sumatra eruption a large percentage of the world's plant life would be killed by the ash and drop in temperature. Also, virtually the entire of the grain harvest of the Great Plains would disappear in hours, as it would be coated in ash. Similar effects around the world would cause massive food shortages. If the temperatures plummet by the 21 degrees they did after the Sumatra eruption the Yellowstone super volcano eruption could truly be an extinction level event.

[ROCK]

that was a wonderful post but you forgot to mention about the moon turning to blood, and the horsemen guys....sheesh...cant we talk about warm and fuzzy things...

[drudd1]

Alrighty then, just what I wanted to hear after three hurricanes, and still swimming in mud. Guess me boarding up the windows for the Super Volcano wouldn't help much, huh?

[Guest]

Do you smell what the rock is cookin???

Warm & fuzzy things?????????????

Great post Matthew!

[ROCK]

Do you smell what the rock is cookin???

Warm & fuzzy things?????????????

Great post Matthew!

Yes it was informative however I didnt realize this forum was to post our "end of the world" theories. Personally, Id rather not die anytime soon.

[abajan]

that was a wonderful post but you forgot to mention about the moon turning to blood, and the horsemen guys....sheesh...cant we talk about warm and fuzzy things...

But it is a warm and fuzzy story. Just think - With all that cooling there won't be another hurricane in sight for thousands of years!

[WeatherNole]

Or better yet - if you're going to plagiarize - errrr - I mean cut and paste an entire page, from that highly accredited scientific web site known as ARMAGEDDON ONLINE, how about giving it credit, or better yet, just a link?

http://armageddononline.tripod.com/volcano.htm

Now we can all go there and learn about Mega Tsunamis, Alien Invasions, or the best one - read how the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC - in operation at Long Island) could crush us "into a microscopic black hole" and convert "the whole planet into a form of matter that would leave no substance". Whoo-hoo!!! I can't wait!!

http://armageddononline.tripod.com/science.htm



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[ohiostorm]

Its 40,000 years overdue. Why not wait a few thousand more when all of us are gone.

[Brent]

Yellowstone in all likelihood won't erupt again until every single one of us on this board is long gone.

[rainydaze]

That would fit in perfectly with Revelations.....and then wow, guess what? God would be right.....and that would mean alot of people on this earth would be in alot of trouble........

[CaluWxBill]

That would fit in perfectly with Revelations.....and then wow, guess what? God would be right.....and that would mean alot of people on this earth would be in alot of trouble........

Well regardless we would all be in alot of trouble. What happens after I'll let God decide that.

[CaluWxBill]

I wonder if you look at all possible cataclysmic disaster and there probabilities. What is the probability of one of them occuring in an average human lifetime.

[Aslkahuna]

The threat from Yellowstone (as well as another volcano-the Long Valley Caldera in CA) is real but to say that a volcano erupts on a tight schedule is incorrect. Like earthquakes, eruptions occur randomly and we can only say that the average interval between eruptions is X number of years much like we can say that Florida gets a major landfalling hurricane about once every three years or so. Mega Tsunamis are for real as there is evidence for 1000 ft high tsunamis having occurred in Hawai'i in prehistoric times due to debris flow avalanches off of the unstable slopes of volcanoes there. But again, the occurrence is random. The last mega wave BTW occurred in Lituya Bay AK in 1958-it was some 400m (1300+ft) high. Fortunately, the mountains surrounding the Bay contained it for the most part-two eyewitnesses encountered the wave and miraculously lived to tell about it.

Steve

[Derecho98]

To say maga "waves" and supervolcanos are just myth and a bunch of crap people make up is one of the dumbest statements i have ever seen. That shows just how stupid some of you really are.

[CajunMama]

To say maga "waves" and supervolcanos are just myth and a bunch of crap people make up is one of the dumbest statements i have ever seen. That shows just how stupid some of you really are.

Derecho98, I don't know who you are but your "stupid" comment is totally uncalled for.

[NWIASpotter]

Agreed, I don't believe anybody has said they were myths on this board. This is actually a good subject to talk about. There is evidence of things such as these happening, but hopefully not in the near future. Derecho98 please do not post comments such as that, I know the moderators frown on that, as well as a lot of members do not appreciate it. This is sort of a "family", and we need to treat each other that way, thanks.

[Stormsfury]

To say maga "waves" and supervolcanos are just myth and a bunch of crap people make up is one of the dumbest statements i have ever seen. That shows just how stupid some of you really are.

So, in other words, you're more qualified than USGS, and a good many of scientists that have fundamental evidence of such events have occurred in the past, and the advances in technology today and more fundamental evidence that such events could and will happen again ...

History shows that this events do happen, and the very fabric of life on Earth came about from such cataclysmic events ...

Well, anyway, before calling anyone stupid (and this is a warning to you, that such comments like that are NOT tolerated on this board), do you have any shred of evidence that would dispute why the supervolcano is a bunch of crap ...

SF

[Rainband]

To say maga "waves" and supervolcanos are just myth and a bunch of crap people make up is one of the dumbest statements i have ever seen. That shows just how stupid some of you really are.

Please don't insult our members. That was uncalled for and I think everyone deserves an apology from you!!

[Aslkahuna]

Derecho did not say that the supervolcano idea was a bunch of crap, someone else did. The important thing here is that just because something hasn't happened in the near past doesn't mean that it can't happen-especially when there is geological evidence that it HAS happened in the prehistoric past. Events of this nature occur on geologic time scales and not human time scales as we all try to make them to. Just because this is the case though is not reason to consign the idea of such events to the conspiracy theory trash heap which shows a lack of scientific thought.

Steve

[azsnowman]

Or better yet - if you're going to plagiarize - errrr - I mean cut and paste an entire page, from that highly accredited scientific web site known as ARMAGEDDON ONLINE, how about giving it credit, or better yet, just a link?

http://armageddononline.tripod.com/volcano.htm

Now we can all go there and learn about Mega Tsunamis, Alien Invasions, or the best one - read how the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC - in operation at Long Island) could crush us "into a microscopic black hole" and convert "the whole planet into a form of matter that would leave no substance". Whoo-hoo!!! I can't wait!!

http://armageddononline.tripod.com/science.htm



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I KNEW I had read this someplace before, don't know if that was the EXACT place but YES.....this IS an already published article!

Dennis