Posted on 03/09/2005 6:15:28 AM PST by burlywood
An exploding supervolcano would be a calamity to dwarf an asteroid strike or the Asian tsunami
A VOLCANIC super-eruption that would threaten the future of modern civilisation is up to ten times more likely than a catastrophic asteroid impact, yet it has been ignored by the world’s governments, scientists said yesterday.
Vast volcanic blasts that cause global devastation occur on average every 50,000 years — and, as the last one struck 74,000 years ago, at Toba, Indonesia, another may be overdue.
The scale of such a cataclysm would dwarf that of the recent Asian tsunami: the eruption could kill millions and the final death toll could reach a billion as dust thrown into the atmosphere triggers a natural “nuclear winter”.
Among natural disasters, only the impact of an asteroid a kilometre (0.6 miles) or more across would be comparable, a new report from the Geological Society has found. Asteroids big enough to cause global effects strike at intervals of 400,000 to 500,000 years. Super-eruptions happen about ten times more frequently.
The new report, presented to the Government’s Natural Hazard Working Group, was published as the BBC prepares to screen Supervolcano, a two-part factual drama that charts the effects of a super-eruption at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.
Yellowstone has produced three super-eruptions in the past — 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago — the first being the second-largest known to science. A similar event today would lay waste to most of the continental US.
In the BBC film, which strictly follows scenarios presented by expert scientific advisers, the eruption causes more than 25 million deaths in the first week alone. Eighty per cent of the US is covered in volcanic ash and 20 per cent, including most of the rich agricultural lands of the Great Plains, becomes uninhabitable.
Emissions of ash and sulphur dioxide bring global temperatures down by between 5C and 15C (9F and 27F), leading to the failure of the Asian monsoon and millions more deaths from famine.
Steve Sparks, of the University of Bristol, a lead author of the report and an adviser to the BBC film-makers, said that governments needed to make contingency plans. “This is not just a scientific curiosity,” he said. “These events are rare on a human timescale, but in geological time they are common. The issues involved are similar to preparing for a nuclear war. Countries will have to make plans for food, shelters and evacuation. These sorts of events are extremely rare, and would require enormous investment of resources if we are to have any hope of coping.”
The dangers from a super-eruption are also greater than those from asteroids as there is no conceivable method of preventing the event.
“Humankind might develop the capability to deflect an asteroid, but we will never develop a way of averting a super-volcano,” Stephen Self, of the Open University, another of the report’s authors, said. “Damage-limitation is the only way forward.”
Super-eruptions are different in scale from ordinary eruptions: the first Yellowstone event ejected 2,500 times more gas and molten rock into the atmosphere than the Mount St Helens eruption of 1980.
None has taken place during recorded human history, though the Toba eruption may have come close to driving early Homo sapiens to extinction. The human population is thought to have dwindled to a few thousand soon after Toba, and some scientists think that climate change provoked by the volcano was responsible.
About 40 supervolcano sites are known, but most are extinct. Yellowstone is the site with the greatest lethal potential because of its position on a heavily populated continent.
Supervolcano will be shown on BBC1 at 9pm on Sunday, March 13 and Monday, March 14.
Supervolcano predicted....women and minorities to suffer worst.
Greta will report....
I for one would like to see the funding behind the world's biggest cork.
So let's see ... eruptions happen every 40K years and we're long overdue ... I'd say let's really crank up this global warming thing and raise the average temps by at least 5C, maybe 10C to be safe, so when the big one does happen, it will restore things to normal. Heck, maybe we can get Ron Silver to construct another one of those global warming dohickeys and keep it on standby for just such an emergency.
Whoops, I'm repeating bikepacker67's comment. Well, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery ...
Thanks for the tip...sucker! This is gonna advance my DoomsDay project by ten years! With proper Federal funding, too.
For those of you who want to save the world, I suggest that you just use some big duct tape.
Evidently the Discover channel (or something similar) had a show on the caldera. My mother saw it, and said she was deeply disturbed by it. I haven't seen it, but am interested in this. Nothing we can do about it, so I certainly won't waste time worrying...
This would make a good suspense novel- yellowstone erupts taking half the continent, the chinese seize an opportunity and overrun the land with 1 million troops.
Iran, Syria, Libya join forces and take over Iraq AND Iran with help from Russia (who needs the oil), which quickly realizes it is a mistake as muslim decide they no longer need them and turn to Sharia law partly to control their own masses and partly to motivate the extremists.
Then, when urged to do so, the muslims in Germany and France stand up and those two countries finally realize too late how many muslims are within their borders and how firmly entrenched as massive work strikes, along with strategic and plentiful suicide bombings, paralyze them into submission.
With China taking over the US and Muslims taking over Europe, India and Pakistan -fearing for their lives, join forces and threaten nuclear stikes within their own borders for any troops that think to try to enter.
This temprarily stuns both muslim europe and china, but then China realize this sounds like a good idea and nukes them first- India and Pakistan capitulate and surrender to China. The muslims freak out and order Russia to support them in all-out war with china
ummm..
Then the anti-christ comes from a rocketship launched from Nibiru (Planet X) which approached unnoticed during all this commotion.
Boy someone is really eggin on for a grant.
Plus, "..a natural “nuclear winter”. Environmentalists(hippies) ought to be happy about this, its natural so has to be good for ya...
We do have a device that will allow us to go to anohter planet in case something like this happens...
If it happens, its Bush's fault.
"Women, children and minorities hit hardest. Literally."
I saw something on the NG Channel the other night that they're predicting Yellowstone is gonna blow sometime soon, too.
I'm with the poster that said he's not starting any new projects, LOL!
All right, everybody. Let's get onto this right away.
“Humankind might develop the capability to deflect an asteroid, but we will never develop a way of averting a super-volcano."
Oh don't be so sure about that, Stephen. If we put our minds to it...you never know.
Maybe we could make something like a gigantic cork to stop it up like a wine bottle.
Or maybe the eruption will coincide with an asteroid collision, and we can deflect the asteroid right into the volcano and plug it up with that--kill two birds with one stone.
Or--I've got it! We could construct a gigantic generator around it and harness its energy to serve mankind until the next super-eruption!
You've gotta think positively, Stephen. No wonder you're in such a panic.
What the "H" do these phonies know? They spit this crap out as though it were documented fact when in reality they don't know their "A" from second base.
So does this mean I don't have to replace my piece of crap printer that broke down last night?
You might want to do a little research of your own before you belittle geologists. Volcanic ash of that age is pretty easy to date through potassium-argon analysis.
I considered writing a Sci-Fi story based on that long before this series came out, based on a group of survivors clustered around a dam which provides the energy for them to survive and grow crops. Meanwhile, the rest of the human population continues to cannibalize itself and drops 60 percent each year.
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