The last time something like this happened, the Toba supereruption

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

was the biggest mass-extinction event in recent history, with release of toxic gases on a worldwide scale, ash clouds blocking most of the sunlight worldwide for nearly a decade, and a thousand-year mini ice age.

If I remember correctly, Yellowstone is a significantly bigger volcano than Toba. It hasn't gone off in more than 600,000 years. But that's bad news. It's behind schedule.

Today's news: the ground is shifting in the Tetons.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5965601/Is-Yellowstone-blow-Vast-fissure-sparks-URGENT-closure-Grand-Teton-National-Park.html

They should sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one

Now all I want to do is read about earthquakes, tsunamis, seismology.

"Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year. It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it cannot do so indefinitely.

There is a backstop—the craton, that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent—and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6. That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one."

Two fault lines on the west coast and a super underground volcano in the middle of the country. Could you imagine the damage if these two popped off at the same time during hurricane season? We're done.

I remember Joe Rogan ranting about this on more than one occasion about two years ago or so on various episodes of his podcast.

If Joe Rogan today said Fluoride in the water is a good thing should I start drinking stream water with sugar to spite my health?

Well, it will be very serious when it does go.

But for the record, yes, I'm aware of the vastness of geological timescales. And even if it is 10,000 years behind "schedule" (which, also, is a subtle thing to estimate), it could still plausibly be another 100,000 years before it actually explodes.

Still, the existence of a massive caldera, in the mainland US, that will eventually cause worldwide catastrophe, is an interesting story. As is news about unexpected motion of that ground.

If you thought I meant the post as some kind of warning of impending catastrophe, then you're gullible enough to, well, listen to Joe Rogan.

in roughly two or so years now. I mentioned his name because I remembered him ranting on different podcasts about Yellowstone at random times. Just something that stuck in my head since it isn't common for folks to talk about the dangers of Yellowstone Park.

Being likened to Joe Rogan is a major insult where I come from.

and it was Rogan. Sometime within the last couple months haha

Scientists cannot predict volcanic eruptions.

But the rockfalls are caused by fissures opening up, apparently due to ground being forced upward from the caldera.

If the caldera erupts, park closures will be the least of anyone's problems.

>Scientists cannot predict volcanic eruptions.

As I just said in post 6, I don't ACTUALLY think the world is gonna end today, and no experts are actually predicting that. I would have hoped that my sarcastic thread title would have made that clear.

However, the statement "scientists cannot predict volcanic eruptions" is simplistic and misleading. An enormous amount of effort has gone into studying the dynamics of the Yellowstone caldera in recent decades, and by now we know quite a lot about how it works.

https://www.dailydot.com/wp-content/uploads/228/6f/ab64a69d4cd848bad23ed0f9190a91eb.jpg

Is probably not the most important thing we should be worried about at any given moment.

We are always fighting our last war. Like people fear WWIII and we prepare to make sure it doesn't happen, but no one say WWI or WWII coming.

I could go on.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>but no one saw
>WWI or WWII coming.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? Or the invasion of Poland?

Or I guess I would rather say societies as a whole aren't perceiving the biggest disasters that are right around the corner that look kind of obvious in retrospect.


>>but no one saw
>>WWI or WWII coming.
>
>
>█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
>Big PEMFin H & z's
>"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1
>thing, a musician." � Miles
>
>"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

By definition the invaders knew it was going to happen

seems like a better explanation than "people never see it coming." selfishly disregarding legitimate risk is not the same as ignorance. the titanic was called "unsinkable" because sinking boats have killed a lot of people.

the civil war, world war i, all the proxy wars related to the cold war (vietnam included), etc., etc. surprised people, not because they were violent, but because they were *persistently* violent.

i'm sure a majority of Americans don't comprehend exactly how disastrous the invasions were in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those went exactly as we predicted.

same for mass extinctions, climate change, public health crises, bad loans, tax cuts, war on drugs, etc. etc. etc.

even with natural disasters (this, other earthquakes and volcanos, hurricanes, asteroids, em bursts from random stars, etc. etc.) it's just a matter of probabilities and uncertainties. the universe will always be interesting and weird and surprising, but we do live in a world where cardiovascular disease is 6 times more likely to kill you than an accident is.

bg's stance on this reflects plausible deniability when it comes to short term thinking and self interest.

... and no one's doing anything about it or even acknowledging it. So yea.

>Like people fear WWIII
>and we prepare to make sure it doesn't happen, but no one say
>WWI or WWII coming.

like niggas just woke up one day and bombs started dropping? lol.

were worried about, I bet it wasn't that they were on the precipice of a near global war that will ultimately have 50M casualties.

I bet the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand probably didn't even make front page headlines at the time.

We had been sending "advisors" for years to Vietnam for years before it grew into America's greatest military defeat.

Shit even with this Russian investigation, a lot of these stories aren't new stories. So many things have popped up and died down and the full significance wasn't known at the time (e.g., Hillary Clinton called Trump a Russian Puppet all the way back in the presidential debates).

My point is that the shit that will probably wipe us out won't even make headlines when it first starts being noticed, like this story.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

>I bet the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand probably didn't
>even make front page headlines at the time.

it definitely did.

>We had been sending "advisors" for years to Vietnam for years
>before it grew into America's greatest military defeat.

that just a shitty america-centric narrative and moving goalposts though. we were fucking up in korea when we were sending advisors, and france had already been embarrassed in vietnam.

>Shit even with this Russian investigation, a lot of these
>stories aren't new stories. So many things have popped up and
>died down and the full significance wasn't known at the time
>(e.g., Hillary Clinton called Trump a Russian Puppet all the
>way back in the presidential debates).
>
>My point is that the shit that will probably wipe us out won't
>even make headlines when it first starts being noticed, like
>this story.
>

i think there's a difference between disinformation/apathy and something not being noticed.

you're trying to spin "big things start small" into way more of a point than is merited.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Headline_of_the_New_York_Times_June-29-1914.jpg

>I could go on.

Given the choice, I'm more interested in being killed by the immediate eruption or, possibly, the toxic gas. My back's been bothering me lately and I don't think trying to survive in a world without sun is really going to be a great look.

On the other hand, if the answer is going to be within 500 miles I'll have to see a lot more of my wife's family while I'm waiting. That may not be worth it until we have a more certain doomsday.

>On the other hand, if the answer is going to be within 500
>miles I'll have to see a lot more of my wife's family while
>I'm waiting. That may not be worth it until we have a more
>certain doomsday.

These last two replies, damn.

we clearly dont care about this earth or the other people living on it.

It was kinda dumb...

but yea coulda been a caldera.... smaller than the Yellowstone one though

ash zone for yellowstone would be all of the US

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/942747/Yellowstone-volcano-eruption-death-zone-map

No

jesus

lol

Not on this scale, of course. But smaller amounts of particulate matter in the upper atmosphere could balance out the greenhouse gases.

They call it 'geoengineering.'

Super dangerous, extremely expensive, and would require major international cooperation. So I don't see it happening in our lifetime. But it might be the only answer.

>Not on this scale, of course. But smaller amounts of
>particulate matter in the upper atmosphere could balance out
>the greenhouse gases.
>
>They call it 'geoengineering.'
>
>Super dangerous, extremely expensive, and would require major
>international cooperation. So I don't see it happening in our
>lifetime. But it might be the only answer.

I'm moderately obsessed with this idea and the possible side effects (part of the reason I enjoyed the movie "Snowpiercer"). Any scientific solution to a serious problem that constitutes as "dangerous" always lights my fire of intrigue-- I love imagining the guys and girls who cook up these ideas and have to basically spend the next several years studying, "... can we make my idea reality without killing everyone on Earth?" ANY IDEA THAT REQUIRES THAT LINE OF THINKING GETS AN A+ MY BOOK (as long as they don't execute it before they have the answer, lol).

I actually *loved* the part of that article where they discussed dangerous ways to stop Yellowstone from going off.

Enormous amounts of clean, free energy, all while defusing this world-wide catastrophe. The closer you dig, the better it works, but also the higher the likelihood of triggering the catastrophe you were trying to fix.

I wanna work on THAT project.