MovieChat Forums > Supervolcano (2005) Discussion > Yellowstone Facts

Yellowstone Facts

posted 19 years ago by IWishIDid
23 replies | jump to latest

It was sometime in September 2004, when I got home from school, my sister was wathcing I think it was the discovery channel, when I heard something about Yellowstone and a supervolcano, which was all new to me, before that, I used to think it was just some national park with areas of hot water spewing upward. So, I Googled the words Yellowstone Supervolcano, and found just a few links, and clicked the most informative one. Thats where I found out all this stuff about how Yellowstone was a caldera that had catastrophic eruptions every 600,000 years, and the last one was 640,000 years old, so it went on to how it was 40,00 years overdue, and how the ground was showing movement and stuff. I also read how the effects of a supereruption could be catastrophic, and thats where I started to freak out and not be able to get it out of my mind for a while, which didnt help me in school. Eventually I started to forget about it though, thanks to school. Then I saw that docudrama and my fear came back even worse. I then decided to just not worry about it until a warning was issued. The other day I went to some geology or science site to find out if anything was happening, I then just found some facts about the caldera and stuff. They said nothing about an overdue eruption, they just said that the last two catastrophic eruptions were on an estimated timescale, and a geologically active area like Yellowstone has always been a restless area of ground cuz of fault lines, earthquakes and hydrothermal stuff. They said that the chances of another caldera forming eruption in the near future are exceedingly low, and that the hazards should be limited to the quakes and hot water their, but if some sort of eruption should occur, it would just be a lava one, so people around the park should get outta there if they dont wanna get burned up. I also saw how Supervolcano was a docudrama just poining out a worse case scenario, and how things would be should an eruption like that occur. Was I the only one worried about this who isnt a geologist?

[–] baba44713 19 years ago

Here are some helpful tips for you:

- wear asbestos suit. It will lessen the chances of you getting hit by lightning.

- get yourself a big titanium umbrella and find a way to carry it around with you always. Have you seen the state of those russian satellites? Those buggers are just begging to fall down, possibly right on your face.

- don't eat anything other than things you grow for yourself. Everything else will have GMO in it, and you can die from it. Possibly.

- throw away the TV. 98% of the time it shows stressful things like "Supervolcano" which can induce stress, and of course, stress can kill you.

There. Hope that will help you stop worrying about SOMETHING THAT HAS LESS CHANCES OF HAPPENING THAN YOU WINNING A NATIONAL LOTTERY THREE TIMES IN A ROW!!!!!

[–] Jasonvorhees87 19 years ago

thats true

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[–] chris_scott7-1 19 years ago

I read on a site somewhere that the volcano is due to erupt in 2010 i'll add the link. http://exodus2006.com/yellcode.htm

[–] tintower 18 years ago

We're also overdue for a VEI8 eruption, we get two every 100,000 years, and the last one was in Toba, 74,000 years ago

[–] Jasonvorhees87 18 years ago

you actually believe that?

[–] nick_popka 18 years ago

Im just going to say this, Stop comforting yourselves.

The Magma chamber under Yellow stone park is the biggest known one in the world, there are more frequent earthquakes, and the hot jets of water spray more often than they did 10 years ago. The eruptian is also over due. And if you are expecting this to be a lava eruptian oh dear are you wrong. The who caldera will erupt which is very very wide, basically a volcano thousands of times the size of St. Helens eruptian.

Some things to note out from previous eruptians:

-Pumice and Rock has been found at the bottom of the gulf of mexico, and this has been tested and the results have shown that they were from around the area of yellow stone, which means no where in the U.S. will be safe,

-last time there was eruptian on this scale man kind just survived with only thousands surviving.

What to do and not to do if it dose erupt:

- Move as far away from the caldera as possible

- Dont! try to sit it out, this is the mistake the 2,000 people of Pompeii made.

- If you live nearby the volcano running is pointless, you will then end up like the other 18,000 people of pompeii

basically if you live in america, and dont have a viable way of getting out of the country, E.G. Boat or Airplane, then you are pretty screwed, but im not complaining i live in europe ha ha ha

[–] javigameguy199311 18 years ago

I was pretty scared when I saw this docudrama, but after collecting information on the supervolcano, I forgot about it.

[–] jeff-1250 18 years ago

Clearly you missed the two part BBC documentary which followed SV. The verdict, no the volcano is not going to super erupt anytime in the near future. The drama was a drama nothing more, nothing less. Even though it was based on real science, the makers simply went with "what would happen if", rather than what the current evidence points to.

For the person above the last SV eruption was Lake Taupo in New Zealand 23k years ago.

www.mangogals.com - film review, discussion, and articles.

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] dw2000 18 years ago

the whole planet can expect some ash, not just the us

[–] nianechole 18 years ago

Another thing that affects the volcano is the amount of rock it has to break through this time around...I don't remember the movie addressing this, I think the disc. Channel documentary did...but this time around, due to plate tectonics(sp?) the caldera is under considerably more rock than during the other eruptions...meaning that the eruption may be smaller...I've even heard people go as far to say that this may be the last yellowstone eruption...but that's just from facts I've gathered from internet articles/disc. Channel specials and the movie...and to the poster: you can take the information in whatever way you need to...read two articles and you'll hear contradictory things...at this stage no one really knows...

"Like A glove!" -Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls

[–] eragon565 18 years ago

I know a guy who studies Yellostone, and he said it has a 1% chance of erupting within the next 10,000 years.

STOP WORRYING DAMMIT

Its more likely that youll get crushed by a falling piano.

[–] mesp_12 17 years ago

no the first guy was right. the last supervolcanic eruption was at the site of the present Lake Toba about 71 thousand years ago.

[–] timgdx 15 years ago

Yellowstone has erupted about every 600,000 years therefore we are "overdue" for an eruption. But three instances is not enough of a series to make a reliable prediction. Maybe were overdue, maybe not. But if we are all going to die eventually anyway (and several billion people over the course of recorded history IS enough of a series to make an accurate prediction) I'd have to say that this would be one of the more interesting ways to go.

[–] rockhound-1 18 years ago

First of all, let me say that I am a geologist. As others have noted, this movie portrays a worse case scenario. The fact of the matter is that the "average" time between eruptions that people quote for the Yellowstone area is based on THREE eruptions. That really is not much of a sample from which to draw a statistical average. The eruptions occurred 2.1, 1.3, and 0.6 million years ago. So, this is actually a patter of one eruption about every 700,000 years, not 600,000 years. Therefore, we are NOT over due for the next one. We actually have about another 100,000 years, assuming that Yellowstone continues to follow this pattern.

This assumption is not guaranteed. The hotspot that created Yellowstone is not moving under the Rocky Mountains. The crust in this area is much thicker than anywhere else that it has had to burn through to create volcanism. It may not be able to do this. So, the hot spot may not be able to create the condition for an eruption again until it get under the plain on the other side of the Rockies.

Finally, don't get so complacent about the fact that you live in Europe. The next time one of these supervolcanoes erupts, it is going to affect the whole world. Those people who die immediately may come to be considered the lucky ones. Ash will burry everything for well over a thousand miles around the volcano. More ash and gasses will be through high into the atmosphere where it will block out the sun causing a drastic drop in global temperatures. (You may have noted that the scenes from the moving in question here that are post cataclysm are set in the summer. Yet they are moving over areas Colorado that are covered in snow.) This will cause crop failures and mass starvation. So, just because you are in another part of the world is no guarantee of surviving a supervolcano.

Now then, once again, this is a worst case scenario. We don't know when the next one will be. Spending your time worrying about this is just going to give you ulcers. So, don't worry. Be happy. The odds of one of these volcanoes erupting within our lifetime are really quite low.

[–] Reaper11787 17 years ago

yah we're overdue on the eruption, we're also overdue on a comet colliding into earth. the solar system passes the danger zone(with lotsa comets) every million years and the last time was 1 million years ago and still no comet. so yeah be scared, we're all gonna die. the supervolcano is gonna erupt, at the same time the comet will strike earth. the Earth will split into 2 halves and the core will be blown into The sun which will explode and destroy the whole solar system.

"We will rule over all this land and we will call it... This Land" -Wash

[–] kmaikell87 17 years ago

Thank you :) This scenario is always possible, but USGS has addressed questions that surfaced after this movie came out, and they've basically said don't lose sleep over it. The chances of a volcanic eruption happening at Yellowstone (in our lifetime) is very little.

----
The greatest achievement is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.

[–] grooonk 17 years ago

yah we're overdue on the eruption, we're also overdue on a comet colliding into earth.

So basically, The comet will hit Yellowstone, plug the hole, kill all life in America, and the rest of the world will live happily ever after.

[–] Spudofgun 17 years ago

I'll just say this, there are many things all over the world that could happen, there's some island off the coast of Spain that at some point is due to split in half and fall into the ocean, at that point it will create a massive tidal wave that will wipe almost everything off of the eastern Seaboard of the united states.

There's avian flu, the last one in 1918 killed off more people than WW1 did, about 18 million people or so. Then there's always been the threat of nuclear war, and yes comets, and also George Bush and Vladmir Putin.

But as far as i'm concerned the world's population of human could do with a bit of culling, we're overdue a culling to keep our numbers down. Don't care what either of things are, just so long as they cull 2-3 billion people, then there'll be more space for the rest of us to live and give the human race a better chance of survival, right now the world is too over-populated.

So i'm just gonna enjoy my life, travel the world and make my life as pleasurable as possible and wait to be culled.

Oh and that link from chris-scott "http://exodus2006.com/yellcode.htm ", at the bottom it says it's from the bible code, which is an absolute load of
$h!t, you could type in anything you want into that code in order to find what your looking for, hell i'm sure if you wanted to you could've made it predict that you were gonna see transformers at the cinema. There are more apocalyptic dates in that book then there are grains of sand in the world, in fact there's one for every day of the week and every week of the year etc etc.

[–] CGMCC 17 years ago

Spudofgun is very correct... tho he barely mentioned the ever possible meteor/asteroid/comet that could hit the Earth. That's a lot more likely to happen sooner than the other events, which WILL happen eventually. I plan on just keep on being aware of the world and space around us and have as much fun as I can while I'm here!

[–] Fifty-Two-Eighty 16 years ago

Very cute, grooonk, but if a comet ever hits the Earth, it's gonna make a supereruption look like a walk in the park. Unless, of course, you're prepared to survive 2-3 weeks of 10,000-degree-plus Fahrenheit temperatures, followed by at least a few years of dark skies and freezing temperatures. Nothing to joke about.

"Keep your screwdriver far, far away from the buss box."

[–] pastorjwallen 9 years ago

I read on a site somewhere that the volcano is due to erupt in 2010 i'll add the link. http://exodus2006.com/yellcode.htm

I'll say this much: You're pretty safe until at least 2015.

signed, Future guy

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-= J =-

[–] Vic Vega-4 17 years ago

Whoa! Dude! I'm sooo not a geologist and I totally thought it was true. The dude with the long hair seemed like he was a real smarty, and no one believed him. Too bad, it got real messy for EVERYONE!!!!!

I thought it was a good movie. An exciting one!

late.