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.
I should know better than to be drinking my coffee when reading replies on these kinds of threads...I gotta change my shirt.
Well there you have it, the real research here is trying to find the right virgins that can calm the beast.
clickfinger trauma?
Ooops. Thought this had something to do with Ted Kennedy.
sorry 'bout that...........
In other news, we are due for Mount Vesuvius to explode again too.
Have that extra glass of wine this evening, you may regret not doing so later.
Regards, Ivan
Thanks! Turns out I had read it long before and posted on it.
Better yet! The Bahamas.
Actually the problem is we have a "natural" cork in the bottle already. What we need to do is release the pressure before it can blow. I suggest we drill down to the magma and let it ooze to the suface before it reaches critical pressure. Of course drilling might be a problem what with the drills melting before we can get deep enough, but what the hey, americans are inventive I am sure we can figure it out!
In reality if this is on the menu of the future there isn't much we can do about it and if it happens, well it just will.
Besides, there are other places in the world where volcanos are building up to blow their stacks and it has happened before. Part of nature that the lefties are so fond of.
Witness Mt. St. Helen letting off a little steam yesterday and blowing it's top a few years ago.
So, lets all worry about this and start running in circles, like the old chinese proverb says, "when in danger, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!".
You are taking this very lightheartedly in an age when certain cities are cancelling their Christmas pageants/posadas, because they can't find three wisemen or a virgin.
My solution is to use the ilegal immigrants to dig down to the magma level to ease the presure and forestall a volcanic eruption! Brilliant idea. We can give them amnesty and send them all to Yellowstone and pay them to work on the dig, we may lose a few million of them but so what, there are more where they come from, Right? We would be Solving two problems at once!
See? There is always a way if you just think hard enough.
That reminds me of a scene in Spike Milligan's war memoirs, I think it was Mussolini - His Part in My Downfall, I wonder if you have read it?
Spike was in a hospital camp for psychiatric patients in Italy in 1944 when Vesuvius erupted. He describes how, sat in a comfortable vantage point with several bottles of his favourite wine, he watched the eruption and enjoyed the surreal scene as assorted loonies from the camp ran around screaming with their pants on their heads. Hilarious.
"Then the anti-christ comes from a rocketship launched from Nibiru (Planet X) which approached unnoticed during all this commotion."
You don't think an advanced race such as the Nephilim still use rockets do you? HAH!
Oops, make that Sicily.
Doh! That's Etna... Geography, who needs it!
We are now being told that Yellowstone was created by a super volcano.
Was the Grand Canyon created by glacier movement or super volcano?
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