[HiTech RedNeck]

Not the blast, but the FALLOUT! 5 inches of volcanic junk dumped on our head in a few hours would suffocate just about everything.

[Libertina]

I was in Spokane during the Mt. St. Helens eruption... volcanic ash inches thick on everything... Lot's still in that area. No one in our area died, but farmland products were hurt, car engines clogged and stopped, which meant no grocery deliveries... ON the bright side, there was lots of "volcanic ash" pottery for sale soon aferwards ;)

[Hank Rearden]

Not the blast, but the FALLOUT!

Ummm, yes. Good point.

[Finalapproach29er]

I have an "ASH WARNING" sign from Mt. St. Helens in 1980. Cool.

[RussianConservative]

Hmmm, did not areas around Hellens get so much and yet most peoples survived?

[Darksheare]

Heck, the last time the Yellowstone supervolc blew up, it buried half the US from yellowstone to the Mississippi river in half a foot or more of ash.

Had a small discussion with some enviro twist, and they wanted to drill in yellowstone to 'valve off' the pressure.
*sniggle*
I think that was the only time I'd heard an envirotwit advocate drilling anything or anywhere.

It'll be interesting to see what their 'quake map' shows as the borders of the magma chamber.
Especially since the last time Yellowstone blew, it collapsed into itself roughly 1000 feet.
So it's 100 foot bulge at the bottom of the lake (There's two bulges actually) isn't anywhere near filling it's magam chamber.
This will be interesting.

[r9etb]

Not the blast, but the FALLOUT! 5 inches of volcanic junk dumped on our head in a few hours would suffocate just about everything.

Not true. Mt. St. Helens deposited several inches of ash in some parts of eastern Washington, including (IIRC) at least a couple of inches in Spokane. The ash deposition corridor was fairly narrow: my hometown got ~1/4", while 10 miles away they got dumped on. There was no notable suffocation, and I don't think the wheat crops were significantly affected even that year.