North America to drown under kilometre thick magma flow

[yellowdingo]

youse is doombed
Yellowstone is getting closer...pushing against California in its slow eruption.

[lucky7]

*loads shotgun*Ain't no lava gonna get past me.

[yellowdingo]

lucky7 wrote:

*loads shotgun*Ain't no lava gonna get past me.

no amount of taser rounds is gonna stop a wall of hothothotitfriknburnz.

So we can take your entire us budget and build a city of solar powered air conditioned shipping containers and put them on acre lots at the centre of Australia...should we evacuate you now or wait to see who lives?

[Sissyl]

Remember: Duck and cover! Chin up! You can all handle it! Lava has no chance against an orderly, prepared population!

[Krensky]

What dingo conveniently ignores in his mango fueled dreamland is that if the Yellowstone Caldera pops the whole world is screwed.

[Irontruth]

Can we petition the volcano to not erupt?

[KaiserDM]

@Krensky
Exactly. An extinction level event I believe it is called. You could insert the Bill Murray lines from Ghostbusters for that one.

@Irontruth
LAWL. Actually, we should petition to have all Tea Party members permanently moved to Yellowstone.

[Sissyl]

Good news is there is going to be a lot of time before global warming gets on the news again...

[Hama]

Well, the whole point is that us not in the U.S. Would survive. Mostly. I hope.

[zylphryx]

Nah, it won't be an extinction level event. It will effectively devastate everything within about 500 miles of the caldera. The ash from it will screw up the waterways in North America and pretty much wipe out any crops growing in the midwest.

As far as global impact, aside from the immediate effect of screwing up the flight paths over the USA, Canada and most likely Mexico, there would be a temperature drop worldwide that would last for a few years. The US would not be exporting any food for at least a couple years (we'd be importing for at least a year or two), so that would have an additional impact on the global scale. And there would also be all the rippling through other consumables (oil, etc).

A major disaster, definitely. Extinction event, not so much ... at least not for humanity. For any species unique to that area, definitely.

[Krensky]

KaiserDM wrote:

@Krensky

Exactly. An extinction level event I believe it is called. You could insert the Bill Murray lines from Ghostbusters for that one.

Nah. We (or are immediate evolutionary ancestors, anyway) survived the last one.

North America would be in serious trouble, probably enough to send the US, Canada, and Mexico back to being third or fourth world nations. Probably also enough to give a really good shot at all three winding up one nation after all is said and done if they and their citizens don't tear each other apart.

There's a massive likelihood that civilization the world over would collapse due to the damage to agriculture, loss of satellite communication, collapse o the global economy, loss of North American resources, etc.

But we and our various domesticated flora and fauna would in all likelihood survive. Some of it may need to be re-domesticated at a later date or reconstituted from heirlooms in seed banks, but we'd (as a species) make it through. So would most of our 'client' species.

[Irontruth]

Oh, also to cover the entire US in a km of magma would require a volcanic explosion over 3,000 times larger than the Huckleberry Ridge Explosion.

[DungeonmasterCal]

Huckleberry Ridge? Expand on this, please.

[TOZ]

Your facts have no place here.

[Krensky]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

Huckleberry Ridge? Expand on this, please.

The Huckleberry Ridge eruption is the oldest and largest eruption of the known 'recent' eruptions of super volcanoes created by the Yellowstone hotspot, forming the Huckleberry Ridge tuff and Island Park Caldera. It occurred around 2.1 million years ago and ejected some 2,500 km³ of material.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera is technically about the Yellowstone caldera which was forrmed by the Lava Creek eruption 640,000 years ago, but it mentions the other two big eruptions, discusses the hotspot breifly, and has links to all of it.

[KaiserDM]

Gosh, I am at work so I dont want to spend toooo much time researching, but if I remember correctly from that last show I saw on this on Discovery or NatGeo, they purported the amount of ash and CO2 emitted from the Caldera would blanket the earth's atmosphere and prevent adequate amounts of UV to reach the surface. It would become almost impossible to grow the sufficient amount of foodstuffs to sustain the world's population.

I could totally be talking out of my butt here. Can someone with more bonafides elaborate?

[Lamontius]

best part of that article is that I am pretty sure I am in that Disneyland picture

lol 'fleeing'

all the socal folks were just like herp derp that wasn't too bad

until

WHAT
ALL THE RIDES ARE NOW CLOSED FOR INSPECTION NOOOOOOOOOOO

then we all just kinda left

it was pretty orderly

then again I was pretty hammered so I don't know, maybe there was a stampede and I just did not notice

[C. Nutcase]

End of the world as we know it?

[Old Man Whateley]

I'm yo huckleberry.

[Irontruth]

Old Man Whateley wrote:

I'm yo huckleberry.

I was so waiting for that. Thank you.

[yellowdingo]

C. Nutcase wrote:

End of the world as we know it?

As long as it wipes north America out, I can claim the subsequent plateau of cooled magma as yellowdingo's holy land.

[Pan]

What is a kilometre?

[Matt Thomason]

Pan wrote:

What is a kilometre?

Metre - obviously a typo of "mitre", a hat used by bishops and popes.

Kilo - means 1000 of.

So it's a bulk delivery of religious headwear.

[LazarX]

KaiserDM wrote:

@Krensky

Exactly. An extinction level event I believe it is called. You could insert the Bill Murray lines from Ghostbusters for that one.

@Irontruth
LAWL. Actually, we should petition to have all Tea Party members permanently moved to Yellowstone.

The eruption itelf, while riduclously powerful, is not the main problem... it's all the secondary effects, such as the immense amount of dust that's going to be thrown into the atmosphere, probably enough to trigger an Ice Age, maybe even a Snowball Earth if we get really unlucky.

[Matt Thomason]

LazarX wrote:

KaiserDM wrote:

@Krensky

Exactly. An extinction level event I believe it is called. You could insert the Bill Murray lines from Ghostbusters for that one.

@Irontruth
LAWL. Actually, we should petition to have all Tea Party members permanently moved to Yellowstone.

The eruption itelf, while riduclously powerful, is not the main problem... it's all the secondary effects, such as the immense amount of dust that's going to be thrown into the atmosphere, probably enough to trigger an Ice Age, maybe even a Snowball Earth if we get really unlucky.

Obviously a self-defense mechanism built into the planet for use when infested by things intent on destroying it, if you ask me... :)

[The 8th Dwarf]

Matt Thomason wrote:

Pan wrote:

What is a kilometre?

Metre - obviously a typo of "mitre", a hat used by bishops and popes.

Kilo - means 1000 of.

So it's a bulk delivery of religious headwear.

Bloody hell mate I just snorted Chai all over my iPad. Please post a warning before writing hilarious posts.

;-)

[Matt Thomason]

The 8th Dwarf wrote:

Bloody hell mate I just snorted Chai all over my iPad. Please post a warning before writing hilarious posts.

;-)

Ack, my apologies, I hope that wiped clean okay! :)

[The 8th Dwarf]

Yep screen is all clean... I just had an image of trucks rolling up delivering 1000's of flaming bishops hats.

[Irontruth]

LazarX wrote:

KaiserDM wrote:

@Krensky

Exactly. An extinction level event I believe it is called. You could insert the Bill Murray lines from Ghostbusters for that one.

@Irontruth
LAWL. Actually, we should petition to have all Tea Party members permanently moved to Yellowstone.

The eruption itelf, while riduclously powerful, is not the main problem... it's all the secondary effects, such as the immense amount of dust that's going to be thrown into the atmosphere, probably enough to trigger an Ice Age, maybe even a Snowball Earth if we get really unlucky.

Snowball earth is doubtful. You'd see a cooling effect from the ash, but unless there's a massive removal of CO2 from the atmosphere that would quickly fade away over 2-3 years. This would of course be massively problematic to living things during that time, but the strongest effects would fade quickly on a global scale.

The volcano would actually pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere as well. Nothing compared to what we humans do over a decade though.

One example to learn a little bit from is the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event. During that period there was massive volcanic activity in the Iapetus Ocean, releasing large amounts of CO2. At the same time the Appalachian Mountains were newly formed and new mountains absorb CO2 as they begin to weather. The volcanoes stopped erupting, but the mountains continued to absorb CO2, this led to an ice age and the second largest extinction event of marine life. (this is only one theory of how that event played out)

One eruption, even a super volcano, is not going to cause an extinction event (in geological terms). It will be devastating locally and problematic globally, but most species would continue on just fine after a couple years. Extinction events take hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years to play out. The Ordovician mass extinction took place over 1 million years.

[Hama]

It would probably be a looong winter.

[LazarX]

Irontruth wrote:

LazarX wrote:

KaiserDM wrote:

@Krensky

Exactly. An extinction level event I believe it is called. You could insert the Bill Murray lines from Ghostbusters for that one.

@Irontruth
LAWL. Actually, we should petition to have all Tea Party members permanently moved to Yellowstone.

The eruption itelf, while riduclously powerful, is not the main problem... it's all the secondary effects, such as the immense amount of dust that's going to be thrown into the atmosphere, probably enough to trigger an Ice Age, maybe even a Snowball Earth if we get really unlucky.

Snowball earth is doubtful. You'd see a cooling effect from the ash, but unless there's a massive removal of CO2 from the atmosphere that would quickly fade away over 2-3 years. This would of course be massively problematic to living things during that time, but the strongest effects would fade quickly on a global scale.

The volcano would actually pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere as well. Nothing compared to what we humans do over a decade though.

One example to learn a little bit from is the Ordovician–Silurian extinction event. During that period there was massive volcanic activity in the Iapetus Ocean, releasing large amounts of CO2. At the same time the Appalachian Mountains were newly formed and new mountains absorb CO2 as they begin to weather. The volcanoes stopped erupting, but the mountains continued to absorb CO2, this led to an ice age and the second largest extinction event of marine life. (this is only one theory of how that event played out)

One eruption, even a super volcano, is not going to cause an extinction event (in geological terms). It will be devastating locally and problematic globally, but most species would continue on just fine after a couple years. Extinction events take hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years to play out. The Ordovician mass extinction took place over 1 million years.

Events that collapse Human civilisation or extinct the Human species need a lot less than a global event. We're inherently more delicate creatures than most of the lower order lifeforms. If something throws up enough junk into the atmosphere to cause even partial photosynthesis failure, we're in big trouble.

[BigNorseWolf]

Is this a petition for or against?

[Krensky]

People... Homo survived all of the three super eruptions, we'd most likely survive the fourth.

Current civilization might well not but the species almost certainly would.

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

yellowdingo wrote:

C. Nutcase wrote:

End of the world as we know it?

As long as it wipes north America out, I can claim the subsequent plateau of cooled magma as yellowdingo's holy land.

100,000 rednecks beg to differ.

[John Kretzer]

HA!!! You silly non-americans and your metric system...we be ok because you don't use that silly system of measurement.

[SnowJade]

Oh, for pete's sakes. Yellowstone isn't any big deal; Toba has at least two separate sub-chambers in its subsurface complex. And the area in which it's located is much more active. For that matter, the Long Valley caldera has shown a lot more recent (and more seismically significant) activity than Yellowstone. And it's right next door to the San Andreas Fault complex. YD, if you're going to obsess about global threats from VEI 8 or higher-level events, would you at least kindly please identify the most likely sites for potential eruptions?

EDIT: Oh. Oh, dear. Those are facts, aren't they. So sorry. Please, go right ahead with your obsessing.

[Krensky]

But the system at Long Valley, near as I can tell, has been cooling and selling down.

[Sissyl]

A massive volcanic eruption won't exceed the CO2 of human civilization in a decade? I would SO like to see some numbers for that, thank you. =)

[thejeff]

Sissyl wrote:

A massive volcanic eruption won't exceed the CO2 of human civilization in a decade? I would SO like to see some numbers for that, thank you. =)

Here's the results of about 2 minutes of searching.

Current vulcanism is less than 1% of human CO2 emissions.

Quote:

Interestingly, these calculations strongly suggest that present-day annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions may exceed the CO2 output of one or more supereruptions every year.

[chillblame]

Super volcano eruption. Hmmm.
I wonder what it would be like to play in a fantasy world when that happens. I feel a campaign idea fermenting.

[friluftshund]

Winter is coming...

[chillblame]

HAH!
working title
ASHFALL OVER GOLARIAN!

[Sharoth]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Is this a petition for or against?

Yes.

[Sissyl]

thejeff wrote:

Sissyl wrote:

A massive volcanic eruption won't exceed the CO2 of human civilization in a decade? I would SO like to see some numbers for that, thank you. =)

Here's the results of about 2 minutes of searching.

Current vulcanism is less than 1% of human CO2 emissions.

Quote:

Interestingly, these calculations strongly suggest that present-day annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions may exceed the CO2 output of one or more supereruptions every year.

Thank you, thejeff. I sincerely hope you are not implying I should be the one to carry the burden of proof here, hmmm?

If current vulcanism amounts to less than 1%, it does seem likely that even a massive event would not exceed it by much, but then, as your article states, we have really very little to compare it to, given that we have only had two super-eruptions relatively recently. I also find it interesting that 3500 cubic kilometers of magma was what they upscaled the Pinatubo eruption to, and someone above claimed that this was the amount of magma we'd see. All in all then, it sounds to me like it would match the output of an entire year.

[Krensky]

The biggest issue vis-a-vis agriculture isn't the ash dimming the sun, it's the ash itself. While volcanic soil can be very rich and beneficial to crops, the ash itself is basically sterile and as little as half an inch to an inch can essentially kill a field for decade unless its removed.

[Hagor]

yellowdingo wrote:

youse is doombed

Yellowstone is getting closer...pushing against California in its slow eruption.

FYI:

is not going to happen soon...

Sorry to spoil the party...

Press *HERE* when media reports about "supervolcano going to erupt"

[Spanky the Leprechaun]

Hagor wrote:

yellowdingo wrote:

youse is doombed

Yellowstone is getting closer...pushing against California in its slow eruption.

FYI:

is not going to happen soon...

Sorry to spoil the party...

Press *HERE* when media reports about "supervolcano going to erupt"

none of this really comforts me.

[Fabius Maximus]

Hama wrote:

Well, the whole point is that us not in the U.S. Would survive. Mostly. I hope.

Don't fear. We have our very own huge magma chamber right next door beneath the Mediterranean.

[Hama]

Fabius Maximus wrote:

Hama wrote:

Well, the whole point is that us not in the U.S. Would survive. Mostly. I hope.

Don't fear. We have our very own huge magma chamber right next door beneath the Mediterranean.

Naples? Possibly.

[High Pontiff of Canon]

Another doomsday thread brought to you by yellowdingo. Under researched and uncanon. Carry on.