As if preparation for the supereruption would not tap off the public and private spending that benefits corporate welfare, the superrich, and the central banking war profiteers most of all.
Cooking for the next supereruption has not been going on for 10,000 years. It has been going on for about 640,000 years. The source is a relentless "mantle plume" hot spot, continually feeding new magma upward.
When the cooking breaks through to the surface -- by earthquake, cap rock melted away until it's too thin and weak to hold the pressure from below, space rock impact, al Qeada suitcase nuc, or whatever -- about 1200 cubic miles of molten, explosive rhyolite could blow up in our faces.
For the past fourteen years at least -- since NASA infrared scanning discovered the true extent of the Yellowstone Caldera in 1993 (doff of cap to Lawrence Joseph in his excellent 2007 book, Apocalypse 2012) -- any responsible government representing all the people would have been prepping citizens to survive the coming supereruption.
Stockpiling safe and renewable sources of food, water, and medicines; building disaster-proof communications; defining self-sustaining communities, and building underground shelters for them that are under survivable above-ground structures (the Swiss style, in poured and reinforced concrete, with blast doors at least 8 feet thick); and providing incentives for relocation out of Area One's 600-mile radius would be just the tip of the preparation iceberg.
But, noooooo. We've got to have an unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous invasion of Iraq. We've got to have aggressive, internationally criminal warfare in the Middle East forever, so that the global billionaires can war-profiteer off the backs of dead and maimed US soldiers. We've got to bankrupt the US for war-profiteering so that low-income social programs can be tossed into the Reagan-Bush voodoo-economics toilet. No fair spending public money for the public. That money belongs to the billionaires.
Outside Area One's 600-mile blast-kill area -- the first ring of doom (with apologies to L. Joseph in A-2012) -- ash fall will be the second ring of doom. Well, if it's not overmatched by the radiation ring of doom. Radioactive minerals, such as uranium U-235, are a natural part of the Yellowstone's mantle plume heat. They're not likely to step aside so that the supereruption can go on without them.
We should expect 6-foot radioactive ash depths 1000 miles downwind from Yellowstone 4. An eruption at Bruno Jarbridge, in SW Idaho, about 10 million years ago -- fueled by the same hot spot that is now under Yellowstone -- buried hundreds of pre-historic animals in 6 feet of ash at present-day Orchard, Nebraska. Orchard is about 1000 miles away from the volcanic source.
(Relocation of the hot spot is no puzzle. The North American Plate moves southwest. The hot spot stays put. The 16- to 17-million-year geologic record of the hot spot's caldera and eruptions shows new caldera forming from southwest to northeast.)
According to the USGS site, a cubic meter of wet ash, stacked on top of another cubic meter of wet ash, could weigh up to 8,800 pounds -- over 4 tons. Deadly weight, for 6 feet of depth. Because it is electrically conductive glass, volcanic ash causes thunderstorms. Volcanic ash almost always falls in a rain. Figure on most of it being wet-weight.
Just the pyroclastic flows near Yellowstone 4 will be capable of killing thousands, tens of thousands, or millions. We've all seen images of the open-mouthed gasps frozen into the Roman corpses at Pompeii, buried in 20 feet of pumice and ash carried by a pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius, August 79 CE.
As with St. Helens, the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius was just a volcanic hiccup relative to the American supervolcanoes.
The no-worries-pap predictions are for Yellowstone 4's pyroclastic flows to take out a 100 km -- 60-mile -- radius. St. Helens' pyroclastic flows took out a 28-km -- 17.4-mile -- radius. It seems pretty dumb to say that a caldera producing 1000 to 4800 times St. Helens' ejecta will collapse into its own giant, miles-deep hole and blow out pyroclastic flows of less than 4 times those of St. Helens.
Seems prudent to me to expect much larger pyroclastic flows at the end of a Yellowstone supereruption. But then, Area One will be pretty much dead already.
Still, a 60-mile radius is 11,304 square miles (area = pi times radius squared). Pick it up to a 100-mile radius and you've got 31,400 square miles. Either is unimaginable to the kid who once cut corn out of half-mile bean rows for weekend work.
Then there's the volcanic winter. It'll last some years or decades, depending on how big the supereruption is and how long it lasts. The planet, scientists say, will be completely encircled with volcanic clouds within two weeks after a supereruption. All ecosystems will be adversely affected. The Asian monsoons will be disrupted, adding the loss of that world's breadbasket to the loss of the US breadbasket.
Cooking for the next supereruption has not been going on for 10,000 years. It has been going on for about 640,000 years. The source is a relentless "mantle plume" hot spot, continually feeding new magma upward.
When the cooking breaks through to the surface -- by earthquake, cap rock melted away until it's too thin and weak to hold the pressure from below, space rock impact, al Qeada suitcase nuc, or whatever -- about 1200 cubic miles of molten, explosive rhyolite could blow up in our faces.
For the past fourteen years at least -- since NASA infrared scanning discovered the true extent of the Yellowstone Caldera in 1993 (doff of cap to Lawrence Joseph in his excellent 2007 book, Apocalypse 2012) -- any responsible government representing all the people would have been prepping citizens to survive the coming supereruption.
But, noooooo. We've got to have an unconstitutional, felonious, and treasonous invasion of Iraq. We've got to have aggressive, internationally criminal warfare in the Middle East forever, so that the global billionaires can war-profiteer off the backs of dead and maimed US soldiers. We've got to bankrupt the US for war-profiteering so that low-income social programs can be tossed into the Reagan-Bush voodoo-economics toilet. No fair spending public money for the public. That money belongs to the billionaires.
Outside Area One's 600-mile blast-kill area -- the first ring of doom (with apologies to L. Joseph in A-2012) -- ash fall will be the second ring of doom. Well, if it's not overmatched by the radiation ring of doom. Radioactive minerals, such as uranium U-235, are a natural part of the Yellowstone's mantle plume heat. They're not likely to step aside so that the supereruption can go on without them.
We should expect 6-foot radioactive ash depths 1000 miles downwind from Yellowstone 4. An eruption at Bruno Jarbridge, in SW Idaho, about 10 million years ago -- fueled by the same hot spot that is now under Yellowstone -- buried hundreds of pre-historic animals in 6 feet of ash at present-day Orchard, Nebraska. Orchard is about 1000 miles away from the volcanic source.
(Relocation of the hot spot is no puzzle. The North American Plate moves southwest. The hot spot stays put. The 16- to 17-million-year geologic record of the hot spot's caldera and eruptions shows new caldera forming from southwest to northeast.)
According to the USGS site, a cubic meter of wet ash, stacked on top of another cubic meter of wet ash, could weigh up to 8,800 pounds -- over 4 tons. Deadly weight, for 6 feet of depth. Because it is electrically conductive glass, volcanic ash causes thunderstorms. Volcanic ash almost always falls in a rain. Figure on most of it being wet-weight.
Just the pyroclastic flows near Yellowstone 4 will be capable of killing thousands, tens of thousands, or millions. We've all seen images of the open-mouthed gasps frozen into the Roman corpses at Pompeii, buried in 20 feet of pumice and ash carried by a pyroclastic flow from Vesuvius, August 79 CE.
As with St. Helens, the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius was just a volcanic hiccup relative to the American supervolcanoes.
The no-worries-pap predictions are for Yellowstone 4's pyroclastic flows to take out a 100 km -- 60-mile -- radius. St. Helens' pyroclastic flows took out a 28-km -- 17.4-mile -- radius. It seems pretty dumb to say that a caldera producing 1000 to 4800 times St. Helens' ejecta will collapse into its own giant, miles-deep hole and blow out pyroclastic flows of less than 4 times those of St. Helens.
Seems prudent to me to expect much larger pyroclastic flows at the end of a Yellowstone supereruption. But then, Area One will be pretty much dead already.
Still, a 60-mile radius is 11,304 square miles (area = pi times radius squared). Pick it up to a 100-mile radius and you've got 31,400 square miles. Either is unimaginable to the kid who once cut corn out of half-mile bean rows for weekend work.
Then there's the volcanic winter. It'll last some years or decades, depending on how big the supereruption is and how long it lasts. The planet, scientists say, will be completely encircled with volcanic clouds within two weeks after a supereruption. All ecosystems will be adversely affected. The Asian monsoons will be disrupted, adding the loss of that world's breadbasket to the loss of the US breadbasket.
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