What will you do if Yellowstone erupts?

[muto]

I think a lot of people will die, but it won't be as bad as if we didn't know it was about to erupt. There's geologists monitoring it constantly. We'll be fully aware when it's about to go down. Maybe not down to the day, week, or year, but we'll be able to get a lot of people out of the kill zone.

[cubby]

I'm not in the the Americas, so power will be fine. We'll probably be food safe for a couple years at least as well too.

Harvests might fail, but over all we'd probably still be fine

I'm not entirely sure you understand the phrase "[h]arvests might fail" - that means no food for anyone. I don't mean that snarkily, even if it sounds like it - I swear. I just mean that a lot of people don't realize that most of modern society are about 30 days away from starvation. Even farming communities - and most of those are going to be covered from ash releases when the circle of fire cooks off.

[Shadowferal]

I think you raise a good point that most don't seem to realize; Food is grown and harvested. The local market doesn't magically produce...produce. No harvests = no food.

[cubby]

Jump in my time machine and come back to the present day since there are something like 26 volcanoes more likely to erupt in the next 1000 years.

- - - Updated - - -



It’s a good thing there’s nowhere near the conditions required for what you describe.

Care to explain?

- - - Updated - - -

I think you raise a good point that most don't seem to realize; Food is grown and harvested. The local market doesn't magically produce...produce. No harvests = no food.

Exactly. And the complicated items like most processed food still take those initial harvests to create the more complex ingredients. Of course there will some pockets of people that will be able to hoard and survive from cans/boxes stashed away. And some growing areas will continue to be viable. But if Yellowstone goes up, we're gonna have to almost restart society.

[Shadowferal]

Just thinking of spices and herbs that might not make it...although plenty of salt I should think.
No cacao...yeah...doomed.

[zorkuus]

Guess I'll try to find out where I can get hookers and cocaine.

[cubby]

It’s got more sensors monitoring the caldera than any other volcano in the world. Here’s what we know.

https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/volcano.htm
https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/yellowston...ience_products
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...d-kill-us-all/

People need to stop watching sensationalized tv shows and thinking they’re based on science.

Good info - I don't think anyone really expects it go any time soon, but it's an interesting question nonetheless.

[Doctor Amadeus]

I can answer this for everyone. You're going to die, along with almost all life as we know it on this planet.

[Thekri]

Supervolcanoes are not what you think they are. They don't explode instantly like Mount St. Helens x 1,000,000. Well, theoretically they can, but usually they don't.

The Yellowstone Caldera actually erupts ever year or so, in small Hydrothermal eruptions, that mostly manifest as increased geyser activity that builds over the course of a couple weeks and then dies off. What actually happens there is that the main magma chamber emptied into another pocket that shifted a lot of heat into the ground water. It is a real eruption, with rock and magma being pushed around, but it isn't that dramatic.

A major eruption would probably look more like Moana Kea more then Mt. St. Helens. A massive amount of lava pouring out of the ground, but relatively limited explosions and ash. Yellowstone is not linked to a single mass extinction or major climate event. Such an event would wipe out the park... and not much else. It would definitely make the air over Wyoming smell really bad for a while, and probably kill a lot of birds.

Yellowstone IS capable of an explosive eruption, but it has a fraction of the energy of a lava flow eruption, and it would have pretty similar effects to when that Icelandic Volcano erupted a few years ago. IE, it would mess up air travel really bad, and cause health hazards as the ash crossed populated areas. However it would miss pretty much all major populated areas except Denver. Its most serious effect would probably be substantial crop loss in the great plains, but even that wouldn't be a total loss, and it wouldn't lead to starvation or anything.

So what would I do? I would go to work, and watch news articles as FEMA screwed up the response. Same as they always do on natural disasters. This wouldn't be dramatically worse then many other natural disasters we deal with all the time.

- - - Updated - - -

I can answer this for everyone. You're going to die, along with almost all life as we know it on this planet.

Yeah. No you aren't. Unless you live in Jackson Hole, and refuse to leave when they give you a 3 month notice to go.

[WhoCares]

A huge party!

[CloverJeweler]

What's left to do?.. either survive, or enjoy the last minutes of life