Just what nobody needs: unusual seismic activity under Yellowstone Lake for the past three days, coming right after the new moon on Saturday. For those of you who don’t know, the Moon’s gravitational pull is strongest at these periods. The official earthquake data isn’t particularly alarmist, as there are frequent clusters of quakes in the area, but some folks are watching this one very closely.
This would be a good time to ask if you’ve ever heard of the Yellowstone Supervolcano (info here, or just google and scare yourself silly).
Like clockwork, the data says…
I apologize for having to shrink the JPEG and reduce the font size in that image, but the important thing is the size of the areas affected by two known past erruptions. Some sources have calculated that an explosive erruption of the Yellowstone Supervolcano would devastate everything within a 600-mile radius. That even takes in most of Taos County, not to mention virtually everything west of Omaha. And this says nothing about the humongous ash plume that could hypothetically blanket the East as well and affect the Earth’s climate for the rest of our foreshortened lives.
Wild, huh? The thought that natural (emphasis on natural) cataclysms of this scale could occur in the midst of highly-developed civilizations seems impossible, due mostly to our arrogance and short memory, but don’t you think that every other time this has happened on the planet, people were just as surprised? And yet, such things have happened, and there’s no way in hell to ever prepare for them.
Kind of puts “bailouts” and a few other things in perspective, I’d say.
Exciting times!
UPDATE: This Scientific American article (conventionally reassuring provenance, what?) approaches the Yellowstone quakes from a much more entertainment-oriented perspective and ends up essentially dismissing all concern. But be sure to read the comments, where authors of varying degrees of expertise either chime in with snark or anxiously refute the feel-good conclusion of the post…
Related posts:
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello John and all,
The Lady of the Lake burns brightly !! This time She means business. Walk the perfect path, or else…
Most people thought it was cute to ridicule my warnings and prognostications over the last three-plus years. Now the tables have turned and dramatically so. Help people understand the truth, while there is still time…
Peace and Wisdom, or else…
-& the feds,knowing That,still persist in detonating undergnd atomic bombs in the desert.our dollars at work
but there’s no cash for education:
http://arizona.typepad.com/blog/2009/01/we-had-to-destroy-california-schools-in-order-to-save-them.html