What Happens If A Super Volcano Erupts? | The Yellowstone Super Volcano

Yellowstone, Wyoming, in the spring of 2003, strange things began to happen in the most famous national park in the United States, the tallest geyser in the world, which can go 50 years without erupting, came to life spraying columns of

super

heated water to Hundreds of feet in the air, new cracks formed in the ground. The ground warmed to the point that the National Park Service had to close some trails shortly after a group of bison collapsed and died from poisonous fumes underground. Satellite images revealed that something sinister was happening beneath the Earth on the Internet. Unfounded rumours. It was reported that a

super

volcano

, an eruption so large that it only occurs on average every 700,000 years, was about to erupt.

These things happen. You can look at the Earth and see the scars. They happen and will happen again. Now naked. science wonders if Yellowstone experiences another Super eruption could the United States survive the last Super volcanic eruption occurred 74,000 years ago an explosion so large it could wipe out a civilization but

what

makes a super

volcano

a super volcano generates the largest eruptions explosives we have seen The explosion of a supervolcano ever seen is a million times larger than Hiroshima. No ordinary volcano comes close. Normal volcanoes spew millions of cubic feet of ash and debris. Supervolcanoes expel billions.

Normal volcanoes can spew ash over an entire state. Ashes from a supervolcano could Half of the supervolcanoes in the United States are real events. More than 20 events have been recorded in Earth's history and more than half of them occurred in North America. Let's imagine a situation of world famine. People will literally be reduced to ashes. The results will be catastrophic. We could be looking at a billion people dead. We could be seeing the beginning of a rupture in the social fabric of the planet, but where will the next super volcano erupt? Many scientists now believe that an active supervolcano exists beneath Yellowstone National Park, which caused this. a not so trivial question if Yellowstone were to erupt today could we survive?

There is no technology that can stop a super eruption. It would be very difficult for the United States to survive like Yellowstone National Park is now. 3,400 square miles of largely protected wilderness areas. In northwest Wyoming, hot springs and geysers have been attracting tourists for over a hundred years, unknown to them. Beneath the beautiful landscape lies a hidden terror to discover

what

makes Yellowstone so potentially dangerous. Naked Science brought in geologist Bob Christensen, who has spent decades climbing. The rocks of Yellowstone discovering their secret past Yellowstone is a unique place in the world, it is best known for its hydrothermal characteristics, which is the name we give to the hot springs and its geysers and steam or wild vents, all these characteristics are indicative of the large amount of heat that spills out to the surface from the Earth's interior—30 times more heat from Yellowstone's soil than from anywhere else in the Rocky Mountains.

Scientists had always assumed that the heat came from an extinct volcano that died long before the last ice age. On August 17, 1959, a major earthquake changed that view forever. The earthquake triggered a giant landslide in Lake Heban, west of the park. 80 million tons of rock fell from a mountain and crashed into a camp. The earthquake killed 28 campers and 19 of their bodies. were never found it was the deadliest earthquake to hit the continental United States since 1933 since then Yellowstone has become a laboratory geologists covered the park with seismometers when they examined their data they found that Yellowstone had an average of more than 25 earthquakes per week it was the most seismically active area in the United States outside of California, but no one knew exactly why the U.S.

Geological Survey commissioned a huge study of the area. The man they chose for the job was Bob Christensen. His investigations first alerted people to the threat beneath the ground. Christensen and his team quickly realized that Stone was the sight of a large volcanic eruption, a thick layer of ash and debris covered the bedrock, it must have come from a volcano, so all of these materials erupted together in a volume that accumulated around 250 cubic miles. Now, that is an inconceivably large volume. enough material to bury all of Texas under 5 feet of ash, but Bob wanted to know where The Smoking Gun was, the huge volcano where the ash came from.

Common volcanoes are easily recognized by their distinctive cone shape, but Bob could find no sign of a cone in Yellowstone. For the next 5 years he carefully studied the terrain. What he found was not a cone but something more astonishing - a crater so large that It was impossible to see everything even from the air. Here it was the view of a super volcano, but how had it formed? Several kilometers below each volcano is a magma chamber an area of ​​molten rock in the case of a supervolcano the magma chamber is enormous tens of kilometers in diameter when the pressure in the chamber becomes too great the magma

erupts

and the The floor above collapses into the partially empty chamber, creating a giant depression in the ground.

The dimensions of the magma chamber caldera were at least 50 miles long by approximately 25 meters wide. The boiler was huge. The entire center of Yellowstone Park once exploded and rose to this location. It was the sight of an incredible eruption, so big that it must have affected the entire planet to understand how big this eruption was. We compare it to the largest volcanic eruption in the United States in living memory. Mount Saint Helens erupted in May 1980, with a 7 billion ton explosion. Of rock from the mountainside there was enough debris to bury Manhattan to a depth of 55 feet.

The eruption was equal to 500 Heroshima nuclear bombs, leveling an area of ​​forest three times the size of Washington DC and sending ash 15 million miles into the sky. By any measure it was large, but the eruption that created the Yellowstone Caldera was much larger, an astonishing 1,000 times G G, than the explosion at Mount St. Helens, but there was another surprise when analyzing the ash layers. Bob found two other giant calderas, one was even larger, 60 Mi long by 30 Mi wide the eruption that caused it was 2 and 1/12,000 times the size of Mount St Helens. This is the place where we first recognized the distinction between these two volcanic units and realized that Yellowstone has had a much longer life.

The complicated history of evolution was appreciated at the beginning. Bob had discovered three huge eruptions right in the heart of the United States. Yellowstone gave rise to several supervolcanoes, raising the disturbing idea that Yellowstone could erupt again. Geologist Bob Smith has been trying to answer that question. Smith grew up in Yellowstone. He had his first job in the park 50 years ago. He has gathered evidence that suggests our worst nightmares about Yellowstone could be true. In the 1970s he was revisiting Yellowstone Lake when he noticed that the landscape had changed since the last time he was there.

There, the trees right at the edge of the lake appeared to have water in their root systems and had been inundated by a few inches of water. Interestingly, this only occurred at the southern end of the lake. Bob came up with an extraordinary theory: he suggested that the entire north end of the lake had risen pushing water southward. To test his theory, he organized a new survey of land that had not been surveyed since the 1920s and addressed the old landmarks established along the highways by the original highway surveyors. The surveyor told me: Well, these people really made a big mistake in 1923 because I'm 18 inches to 2 feet away from them.

A thorough check revealed that the original study was correct. This meant that between 1923 and 1977 the center of La Calera had risen more than 2 feet, but that was not all. New studies conducted over the past 10 years revealed an additional surprise. Oh, and lo and behold, the ground was basically going down between 1995 and 2000, so we were really excited because he gave us this idea. that it is dynamic and that it is really alive, it is really a kind of era C that breathes life, it seemed that the volcano was still active, but could this surprising discovery be true?

Naked Science locates a scientist who has crucial evidence supporting Bob's theory that the evidence comes from people who died centuries ago for over 11,000 years Native Americans lived around the lake hunting bison who came here to drink the primitive weapons that they left behind reveal the position of their settlements archaeologists have collected these arroe heads and mapped their locations arrowheads show that the native villages moved back and forth six times over the last 15,000 years as the edge of the lake rose and fell. The rise and fall of the Caldera shows that the volcano is active, making it a huge ticking time bomb.

If it

erupts

, it could be the largest explosion in human history. For the first time, naked science can show you what will happen if Yellowstone erupts. It is a dramatic spectacle and the result would not be funny at all. Yellowstone National Park is sitting on a ticking time bomb, a supervolcano so large it could spew debris 15 Mi high, triggering monster avalanches and generally wreak havoc to see if the United States could survive a Yellowstone super eruption. . Naked science needed to know how big that eruption would be. We traveled to London to meet Bill Maguire, one of the greatest in the world. leading volcano experts a super volcano generates the largest explosive eruptions we have ever seen geologists measure eruptions using the volcanic explosiveness index it is a bit like a volcanic scale and goes from zero to 8 at level one they are small eruptions that yield 350,000 cubic feet of ash in the air Level two eruptions are slightly larger like this Mount Etna explosion in Sicily This volcano in New Zealand spews enough ash to fill 58 football stadiums is a level three The Katoa eruption in Indonesia in 1883 It was a level six a super volcano reaches level eight each point on that scale represents an eruption 10 times larger than the one beneath Mount St Helens it was a five a super eruption is at least one time larger, but what factors What makes supervolcanoes like Yellowstone so explosive? lies in the type of magma or molten rock that triggers the eruption.

Silent volcanoes like Kill Laa in Hawaii have a very liquid magma called basalt when the magma reaches the surface any gas trapped inside it gently escapes there is no violent eruption but the magma beneath Yellowstone is completely different it contains large amounts of a substance called silica that can bind large amounts of explosive gas to magma. If you combine that binding phenomenon with a lot of gas then you have a recipe for a really big explosion, a super volcano is not just the biggest bomb in the world it's a bomb that launches smaller bombs to see what kind of explosion it would make you have to compare it.

With the largest explosions ever created by man this is the most powerful bomb ever detonated by the United States is Castle Bravo The hydrogen bomb exploded at ATL Bikini in 1954, but at 15 megatons it is still 160 times smaller than the eruption of a super volcano. This is the largest bomb in the world in 1961. The Soviet Air Force dropped a 50 megaton bomb on Nova Zemlia in the Arctic Ocean. The mushroom cloud. It rose above the stratosphere and the shock wave traveled around the Earth three times. Imagine an eruption 50 times bigger than this and you have a super volcano.

No matter where you look at it. That kind of eruption would be a very unpleasant surprise. What will the emergency be like? The services know that a super eruption is coming. All volcanoes warn us that they are about to erupt. The first sign of a Yellowstone eruption would probably be the ground. Rising just before Mount St. Helens erupted, the mountain bulged, growing 5 feet per day, of a similar type. Uplift is likely to occur in Yellowstone as magma from far below the Earth's surface rises, splitting the rocks above in Yellowstone, likely uplifting the entire Caldera, an area the size of Houston and Dallas, 10 feet or more in the air for weeks or even months.

Before a super eruption in Yellowstone, these warning signs would trigger the mother of all evacuations, the 60 M areaaround the volcano would become a danger. Officials in the area would put the surrounding region up to 200,000 on alert, preparing people for a violent eruption that would last until people evacuated the area, geologists looked for new warning signs that an eruption was imminent. Swarms of earthquakes began to be seen as fresh magma moved into the system and broke through the rock above it and began to rise upward. These earthquakes produce distinctive. waveforms on seismographs the crunch of rocks fracturing creates a signal that begins with a sharp rise and quickly fades long before an eruption swarms of earthquakes would sweep through the danger zone and surrounding area just before a volcanic eruption signal produced by regular earthquakes would give way to a new signal, a long continuous vibration now, as the magmas opened a space for themselves, they will begin to move through that and as they pass through it quite quickly they will vibrate the walls of the crack or the conduit and that will give them a kind of rumble um signal it sounds like the vibration of a large organ pipe scientists call it harmonic tremor it is the last warning this is what magma rushing towards the surface could sound like to anyone brave or foolish enough to stay in the danger zone the chances of escape would be minimal, the Big Bang would be a few minutes away, the explosion of a super eruption would be pretty impressive, but it's nothing compared to what was to come Then, spreading out from Yellowstone, would come one of nature's deadliest forces, violent churning clouds of rock, ash, and gas.

Parastic flows, called pyroclastic flows, are the most unpleasant of all volcanic phenomena. They are explosions of incandescent gases of hot ash from fragmented magma that travel at hurricane speeds and cross the ground surface in all directions from the eruption. It's like an avalanche of steroids hidden underneath. The turbulent cloud of boiling ash is a mass of falling rocks at temperatures up to 1500° F and sweeps across the ground. mountain at high speeds destroying everything it touches there is nowhere to run and absolutely no place to hide death comes pretty fast no from the actual burning of the skin outside but from the inhalation of these very, very hot gases and they really destroy the lungs and the throat almost instantly um after that, the water in the human tissue is boiled, uh, and there are cases in some past eruptions in which people's skulls shattered because the brain essentially exploded for recent tangible evidence of the nasty nature of pyroclastic flows naked science visited the Caribbean island of Monserat hell came to this paradise in 1997 in the form of flows giant pyroclastics David Lee is a local filmmaker in 1995 he had a spooky career with a volcano exploding there's an eruption right now that's something hot going on there Rocks going up and I'm getting out of here he had climbed to the top of the volcano to film it when he came in erupting now I look scared I haven't gotten out of here yet I'm only down about 600 feet, if all this had gone there wouldn't be a chance up here, you could have seen pyroclastic flows running down those slopes at fantastic speeds, maybe 60 to 100 mph, maybe even more, they hurtle over the ocean and just float.

Over the sea it is somewhat surprising to see the power and fury of these pyroclastic flows. They're impressive, but they're nothing compared to what a super volcano would spew out to see what

happens

when a pyroclastic flow hits a major city. Naked science visited Plymouth. In Monserat, we have just arrived in the capital city of Monat, which was Plymouth and was hit by pyroclastic flows and devastated in 1997. David Lee witnessed the flows that hit the city. The experience is etched in his memory throughout the day. a gray mass, you wouldn't even think they were dangerous, although they move quickly at night, they are totally on fire, totally incandescent, they just glow and you could see them sweeping the city and everything they touch because they are probably 500°. or more it just bursts into flames uh most of the population was on the slopes as close as we could get and you could see the whole city burning once more than 4,000 people lived here today it's a ghost town the center of the city is buried in Ash a The current Pompeii Monat disaster was horrific, but its volcano was relatively small and life on the island has begun to recover.

If it had been a super volcano, we wouldn't see any life within an hour of a Yellowstone super eruption. Pyroclastic flows could run across the countryside and engulf the Jackson Hall Valley and the town of Livingston about 50 miles away within a 60 m radius. 90% of the remaining people would die. Some may be blown to pieces in the initial explosion. Most would suffocate. heat from pyroplastic flows, but this would be just the beginning, blowing across the states, it would be the mother of all ash clouds, an aerial mountain of deadly particles and debris. Yellowstone National Park is the site of a recurring supervolcano, an eruption so large that if this

happens

again, it would destroy almost everything within 60 miles, but what would happen next when a mountain of ash begins to spread and then falls, Yellowstone supereruption could spew ash 15 miles into the atmosphere.

Fallout could cover half of the United States 3 days after eruption skies would be dark and deadly according to scientists' predictions, Naked Science has put together a picture of the country after 3 days of a storm six times heavier than the wet snow. Wet ash would cause many roofs to collapse and clog filters on cars and ground planes. In much of the western United States, any aircraft in flight would be in danger of crashing, their engines clogged by fine particles when Mount St. Helens erupted. Ash particles swirling in the atmosphere generated lightning strikes that in turn sparked dozens of forest fires.

A super volcano could ignite hundreds. The most affected region would be the area downwind up to 500 M from Yellowstone, as far away as Salt Lake City and Denver, transported by normal prevailing winds, the ash would reach Denver in approximately 24 hours, when it finished falling it could be longer. deep More than 3 feet inside this zone no movement would be possible for 2 days, the roads would be invisible and people outside would not be able to see where they were going. Transportation would grind to a halt, winds kicking up ash would create clouds of dust, and people trapped in the open air would likely suffocate within hours.

Moisture Ash buildup on power lines would short out insulators and cut off power. If it happened in winter, the cold weather would claim more lives. The rain would wash the ash into the rivers, creating gigantic mud flows called lahars that would destroy everything in their path. Pumping stations on reservoirs would become clogged with ash, leaving many people without friends, fresh water, nuclear power plants dependent on Rivers cooling water would be forced to close as, following any catastrophe, anarchy could take over. of livestock, livestock could die from lack of grass and water hospitals could stop working, the elderly, the sick and the youngest would be even more vulnerable in this central area up to 10% of the population or half a million people could die 7 days after the eruption Yellowstone could still be pumping ash into the air a thousand miles away, in places like Santa Fe and Kansas City the ash would continue to fall and to kill, keep one under your head, the ash itself is deadly , anyone living under the path of the ash cloud would need to protect themselves, that's because it is volcanic.

The ash isn't really ash at all, it's rock that has been smashed into small pieces to see what makes it so dangerous. Naked science places it under a close-up electron microscope. The particles appear as tiny shards of glass with jagged edges if touched. in the lungs they can be fatal, but not in the way you would expect to find out what can happen to people who inhale this naked ash science traveled to Nebraska to meet Mike Vorhees, a respected American paleontologist in the 1970s, the Professor Vorhees made a surprising discovery. Prospecting for fossils here and I found this volcanic ash bed and right at the bottom of the ash bed there was a baby rhino skull sticking out.

It was the beginning of an incredible find. Beneath 10 feet of ash was an ancient waterhole filled with skeletons. of horses, camels and rhinos, the mass grave contained more than 200 animals, all died within a few days of each other. The scientists suspected that the killer was Ash, but they had no proof. When the ash was analyzed, they were surprised to discover that it had come from an extinct volcano almost 1,000 years ago. M away in Idaho Mike's discovery led him to conclude that volcanic ash can kill even 1000 thousand of its source, but I think I can prove how it did it.

The ash is so fine that it moves easily in the wind, so it probably took maybe six. or seven hours for the ash to reach Nebraska from the volcano. The fine ash hangs in the air, the same air we breathe. This ash is so far from the volcano that only the finest material was deposited here. It is so fine that it forms a uh, a powder that easily reaches the lungs in his laboratory. Mike and his team began to examine the bones. There was something unusual about them. Up here, at the front of the jaw, there is healthy bone.

This is what a fossilized camel jaw should look like, but. This one has something extra, it actually has symptoms of the disease that killed the animal, unlike normal fossils, every bone they found was covered in a strange white substance, the white spongy substance is a growth of new bone, it is a classic sign that an animal has died. the rare lung ailment known as Marie's disease when the lungs fail, the skeletal system goes out of control rapidly depositing new bone on top of the old, reveals that the animals died a slow and painful death when their lungs suffocated by Ash began to fail, what caused their bones became thicker racked by pain were drawn to the water hole where they all died within a month of the eruption if the Yellowstone super volcano erupted no one within thousands of miles would be safe from exposure prolonged to the fine ash would guarantee a prolonged death due to Marie's illness, the death toll from the immediate explosion of a Yellowstone eruption would be bad enough, but for those who survive the explosion and even the ahall it could get worse.

DNA evidence suggests that the last supervolcano eruption created a mini ice age that nearly led to the extinction of the human race; an eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano would cause widespread devastation across the United States on the first day. Those saved from the initial explosion would face pyroclastic flows that would erupt out of Yellowstone and destroy almost everything within 60 miles and 3 days. After the eruption, normal life 500 M from the volcano would be impossible. Within a week, the central US would be buried under a thick carpet of ash, killing thousands of people with the painful lung disease, but scientists now suggest the biggest impact would come months later.

The eruption believe that the deadliest part of a supervolcano eruption is not the ash that falls to the ground but the gases that remain in the air. Professor Mike Rampino of New York University investigates how past volcanic eruptions change the climate of the planet to find out what will happen if Yellowstone erupts naked science brought Professor Rampino to New England an old tombstone in a New Hampshire cemetery contains a warning of what a super volcano would bring records the events of 1816 a date that is Known as The Year Without A Summer, this is a monument to a farmer named Ruben Witten who managed to save the town of Ashlin New Hampshire in 1816 by growing enough wheat on his land to feed the community.

There was snow in June and frost in July and again in August. It killed most of the wheat in the lowlands, but Ruben Whitten managed to grow enough wheat in the highlands here to feed the city. They got lucky in 1816, the growing season in New Hampshire was shortened from 120 days to just 60, killing crops in the ground sooner. They could mature and it was not just the United States that was affected. Bad weather caused crops to fail in Europe. 1816 to 1817 witnessed the worst famine in over a century. It was believed that the cold weather was caused by a volcano to find out more.

Mike Rampino went. to the University of Har to search historical records, show that in 1815, the year before the cold summer, the Tambora volcano, atEast Java, exploded at its summit, although it was not a super eruption, this volcano, even 10,000 m away, had a powerful effect. our best clue as to what will happen when a super volcano erupts. Explosive volcanoes place material in the stratosphere and most importantly release sulfur dioxide gas that turns into sulfuric acid aerosols, tiny droplets in the Earth's atmosphere in the stratosphere. Scientists agree. that what made Tambora so murderous was the 200 million tons of sulfur dioxide he pumped into the air.

These small droplets spread around the world thanks to stratospheric winds and produce a veil that covers the earth and cuts off some of the incoming sunlight. that the sun actually appears dimmer and therefore less sunlight is warming the Earth and it is natural then the Earth cools down this dimmer effect caused the famine of 1816 according to some estimates Tambora killed 71,000 people, twice as many as Katoa, mainly due to starvation. It is the deadliest volcanic eruption. In recorded history, the effect of a supervolcano could be even greater, the effect it would have on the atmosphere is much more severe than any of the historical volcanic eruptions like Tambora and we estimate that the global temperature drop after a super Yellowstone sized eruption would be around 10° fah now, that's a very severe chill Frosts and snowfall, even in equatorial regions tropical vegetation has no resistance to cold, so a freeze in the tropics would kill all vegetation air and in that type of situation the weather affects the loss. of the growing season for one or two years, it is estimated that billions of people could be lost from the Earth's population.

Evidence suggests that this type of climate change has occurred before some scientists believe that the last time a supervolcano erupted nearly wiped out the human race 74,000 years ago a supervolcano erupted on the island of Toba in Indonesia. It's a high volume eruption, the same kind of thing we might see in Yellowstone and it's interesting to note that at that time there is genetic evidence that the human population through a bottleneck before the volcano erupted, the Scientists believed that humans were abundant throughout Africa at the time of the eruption, their numbers plummeted. The population of humans in that bottleneck was a few thousand, at most, 10,000, some people think as few as 3,000, so imagine the entire human population on the planet at that time was reduced to a few thousand individuals.

It is very close to an extinction of homo sapiens according to these scientists a super volcano almost ended human life once it could happen again and it is equally important for us when an active supervolcano is in Waiting under Yellowstone National Park, if If it exploded, it could plunge the world into a volcanic winter as global temperatures dropped, millions could die, it would be by far the biggest BG disaster to ever hit the modern world. It sounds scary, but if it happens in 500,000 years we're not so worried if it's 5 years, start packing, so when is the next Yellowstone eruption?

The scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory is Jake Lowenstern. If Yellowstone's phone is about to erupt, it's yours. work to see it coming using the latest technology you can tell what is happening underground at any time there are over 20 seismometers located within the park seismic data is continuously recorded sent to the University of Utah the key to knowing when Yellowstone what is going to happen to explode is to understand the composition of magma. Underground, the magma found deep in Yellowstone is made of three things: gas bubbles, crystals of cooled magma, and a certain percentage of molten or melted rock.

Before a volcano can explode, the magma chamber has to contain enough molten mass. To trigger the eruption it generally seems to take about 50% of the molten mass in a magma to reach a rock, so what percentage of the rock beneath Yellowstone melts? To find the answer, scientists have recently analyzed the seismic waves created by earthquakes like a giant ultrasound, allowing them to see inside the Earth and estimate the percentage of melting underground we do. I have some data that indicates that the magma chamber in the entire Caldera is only about 10% melted and therefore it doesn't seem likely at this time that the Yellowstone Caldera could have one of these really large caldera-forming eruptions; there simply isn't enough highly molten material. material down there, but in 2003 geologists monitoring the volcano saw unusual signs that Yellowstone was becoming more active Dan derish is a geologist with the U.S.

Geological Survey Volcanic Hazards Group. He was one of the first to see the Signs of increased activity at the world's tallest geyser erupted several times. The Steamboat geyser, a very rare event, there were new cracks in the ground. The ground warmed to the point where the National Park Service had to close some trails. We discovered that a different part of the area was rising and Frankly, the only thing we can think of that could be down there causing the rising is Magnum. It could mean that the system is approaching its next eruption and we are starting to see an intrusion of magma.

I don't know, what could these signs mean in the past? The Yellowstone supervolcano has erupted three times. These things happen. You can look at the Earth and see the scars. They happen and they will happen again. Yellowstone appears to be in a cycle where the last three super eruptions in Yellowstone occurred 2.0 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and 0.6 million years ago. Well, it looks like we are preparing for the next eruption, but these dates are not an exact cycle, the eruptions varied by more or less 100,000 years, this means that the next Yellowstone eruption might not occur for another 100,000 years.

Will the next one happen at zero or in 100,000 years? We don't know, according to scientists, Yellowstone is unlikely to cause a super eruption anytime soon, but one thing is for sure: super eruptions happen and, being a little cautious, we wanted to know if Yellowstone was about to explode. Is there any way to stop it? Some have suggested to Ed that the way to prevent a volcanic supereruption would be to drill hundreds or thousands of holes into the magma chamber to release the pressure of the gases. If it simply wouldn't work, first of all, it's a technological challenge to drill to the depths of these magma chambers, on the order of six miles, perhaps. in some cases, um, but even if you drill that far out, all you would do is stick a pin in a very large, very complicated system, it's not just a big balloon full of magma and you wouldn't realize there's no technology.

I can conceive of something I've ever heard of that could stop a super eruption, so we can't stop one with any known technology. If Yellowstone explodes, is there any way the United States can survive? It would be very difficult for the United States to survive. As it stands now, immediately after a super eruption in Yellowstone, the United States would be paralyzed. Thousands of people could die in the explosion. Millions more could perish from breathing ash or from the famine that many predict but recognize the danger and detailed disaster. Planning could still offer hope. Some scientists believe that preparing reinforced facilities would allow survivors to get out themselves and respond effectively.

The size of the underground threat means that Yellowstone will be watched 24 hours a day for centuries to come. Fortunately for us, supervolcanoes are extremely rare events: on average, one erupts somewhere on Earth every 700,000 years. The challenge facing scientists is to find where and when the next eruption will occur before it is too late.