Mt. Rainier disaster
Posted: Aug 14 2003 1:21 pm
At least that's whatthis article suggests may be in the near future.
This could make Mt. St. Hellens look like a backyard cookout.
Of course - even Mr. Rainier blowing its top would look like a firecracker going off compared to what might happen if this warning and this article are harbingers of things to come.
Yellowstone is essentially one of the world's largest calderas (I think one in Russia is the only one that is larger) - it covers virtually all of the park territory. The Yellowstone Caldera blows once every 600,000 years or so and geologists have proof of several different erruptions to document the time frame. It's been 630,000 since the last one. So, give or take a few thousand years, we could be due for another soon. Nobody knows when it will blow, but when it does, it will be the largest natural disaster in human history, dwarfing events like Mt. St. Helens, Krakatoa or Pinatubo by orders of magnitude.
It may not kill that many people directly (perhaps just a few hundred thousand), because the region is sparsely populated, relative to the rest of the country, but it would probably wipe out Gardiner and Boseman, Montana, and perhaps some towns in eastern Idaho. It will produce a bang that would, literally, be heard round the world. The ash would probably wipe out crops in the US for at least a year or so, and it could even kick off a new glacial advance if it cuts off the sunlight for a few years.
Global nuclear winter would have nothing on what this baby would produce.
This could make Mt. St. Hellens look like a backyard cookout.
Of course - even Mr. Rainier blowing its top would look like a firecracker going off compared to what might happen if this warning and this article are harbingers of things to come.
Yellowstone is essentially one of the world's largest calderas (I think one in Russia is the only one that is larger) - it covers virtually all of the park territory. The Yellowstone Caldera blows once every 600,000 years or so and geologists have proof of several different erruptions to document the time frame. It's been 630,000 since the last one. So, give or take a few thousand years, we could be due for another soon. Nobody knows when it will blow, but when it does, it will be the largest natural disaster in human history, dwarfing events like Mt. St. Helens, Krakatoa or Pinatubo by orders of magnitude.
It may not kill that many people directly (perhaps just a few hundred thousand), because the region is sparsely populated, relative to the rest of the country, but it would probably wipe out Gardiner and Boseman, Montana, and perhaps some towns in eastern Idaho. It will produce a bang that would, literally, be heard round the world. The ash would probably wipe out crops in the US for at least a year or so, and it could even kick off a new glacial advance if it cuts off the sunlight for a few years.
Global nuclear winter would have nothing on what this baby would produce.