Yellowstone Supervolcano

• Ashikoki wrote on 2014-04-12 04:08

  Quote from TLCBonaparte;1214397:

  Will we become like Mad Max the road warrior? Can I dress myself in leather and spike?

  
  
  Biohazard suits, rather. Not the Freeman kind.
• Ashikoki wrote on 2014-04-12 04:11

  Quote from TLCBonaparte;1214397:

  Will we become like Mad Max the road warrior? Can I dress myself in leather and spike?

  
  
  Biohazard suits, rather. Not the Freeman kind.
  
  

  Quote from Evaris;1214389:

  Meanwhile, depending on circumstances, much of Europe would be screwed and pretty much everyone would have to move down to the Mediterranean nations in the case it was propagating an ice age. Worldwide; martial law would be widely enacted by Governments due to the disaster in general. Given the scarcity of resources, one of two events would happen; either the UN would have to fuse into a true one-world government in order to control the flow of food and resources in order to sustain civilization via rationing, or the governments of the world decide to be greedy / distrusting, and we get a full on world war 3, with the possibility of nuclear warfare given the desperation some nations may feel.

  
  
  I mean, this is what I mostly meant.
  
  America becomes inhabitable, outskirts of the other continents become a problem as well, then the rest of the population fall in to panic and war for remaining land and supply as a long winter comes.
• Evaris wrote on 2014-04-12 04:56

  Quote from Ashikoki;1214416:

  Biohazard suits, rather. Not the Freeman kind.
  
  
  
  I mean, this is what I mostly meant.
  
  America becomes inhabitable, outskirts of the other continents become a problem as well, then the rest of the population fall in to panic and war for remaining land and supply as a long winter comes.

  
  
  
  Well my only issue with this statement is not all of America will be uninhabitable. California, Washington, the south, and parts of the midwest and east coast will be okay in the longrun. and I'd say 1/2 to 3/4ths will survive the initial eruption and ashfall. Farming of beans and potatoes will still be viable in the coming year.
• TLCBonaparte wrote on 2014-04-12 05:01

  Quote from Ashikoki;1214416:

  Biohazard suits, rather. Not the Freeman kind.

  
  
  
  Don't you mean.... the Freman kind? Ok that was terrible XD
  
  

  [Image: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/018/e/7/dune___chani_costumes_by_gorrem-d3737h3.jpg]
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-04-12 12:05
  The problem with comparing ash to snowfall is that snow is just water, and can even be useful (melt it to drink).
  Ash isn't just going to go away. It'll get into the water, clog up mechanical equipment, mess up the engines of vehicles. It'll get into pretty much everything that isn't hermetically sealed and fuck it up, including living things.
• Odin wrote on 2014-04-12 16:24
  Shouldn't mess it up any worse than existing dust does, aside from turbine engines.
  
  Gas Turbines can't handle volcanic ash, it melts and coats the internals with glass leading to flameouts and serious damage. You can find pictures on wikipedia of aircraft engines from craft that flew through volcanic ash clouds and had to make emergency landings from losing their engines.
  
  Piston engine powered equipment is amusingly tolerant of dust and dirt passing through it. Though it does eventually destroy it, the fitting of a proper air filter is sufficient to protect the device for long periods of time. Ash fine enough to pass through the engine air filter would be no more damaging to the engine than the ash generated by the lube oil burning- and all lube oil does this. During the combustion stroke the film of oil in the upper cylinder becomes an ash, which provides the lubrication for the exhaust stroke as the piston scrapes it off and replaces it with fresh oil.
  
  So all told, such an armageddon scenario wouldn't actually knock us back to the stone age by itself. We would just get sent back to the 1960s or so, with the rugged but effective machinery of the time being quite able to tolerate the volcanic ashfall with only minor issues. Possibly our electronics would survive a supervolcano eruption because they are inherently sealed. Of course people panicking would do far more damage than the eruption itself.
• TLCBonaparte wrote on 2014-04-12 16:57

  Quote from Odin;1214497:

  Shouldn't mess it up any worse than existing dust does, aside from turbine engines.
  
  Gas Turbines can't handle volcanic ash, it melts and coats the internals with glass leading to flameouts and serious damage. You can find pictures on wikipedia of aircraft engines from craft that flew through volcanic ash clouds and had to make emergency landings from losing their engines.
  
  Piston engine powered equipment is amusingly tolerant of dust and dirt passing through it. Though it does eventually destroy it, the fitting of a proper air filter is sufficient to protect the device for long periods of time. Ash fine enough to pass through the engine air filter would be no more damaging to the engine than the ash generated by the lube oil burning- and all lube oil does this. During the combustion stroke the film of oil in the upper cylinder becomes an ash, which provides the lubrication for the exhaust stroke as the piston scrapes it off and replaces it with fresh oil.
  
  So all told, such an armageddon scenario wouldn't actually knock us back to the stone age by itself. We would just get sent back to the 1960s or so, with the rugged but effective machinery of the time being quite able to tolerate the volcanic ashfall with only minor issues. Possibly our electronics would survive a supervolcano eruption because they are inherently sealed. Of course people panicking would do far more damage than the eruption itself.

  
  
  Then people would look back on the days when people worship Ipod, Iphone and say "What a bunch of douchebags."
• Osayidan wrote on 2014-04-12 17:10

  Quote from TLCBonaparte;1214503:

  Then people would look at of the days when people worship Ipod, Iphone and say "What a bunch of douchebags."

  
  
  I already do that though. Those crazy apple fanboys.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-04-12 18:13
  Apple gets my respect for their innovation in SoC designs. (Though technically, this is thanks to a company they bought.) Their A7 64-bit SoC was marketed as "desktop-class," and it's not too far from the truth.
  
  And as others have mentioned, the potential damage from such an eruption is over-dramatized indeed. The people in the immediate area would obviously be in trouble, but elsewhere, it would be more about how the public responds to it. The technology's there, but controlling crowds who could be provoked into lawlessness is more problematic.
• TLCBonaparte wrote on 2014-04-12 18:27
  I have been thinking, can we control the super volcano eruption the same we people use to control flood back in the days? By redirecting the magma pressure via man made smaller volcanos.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-04-12 18:46
  That may be technically possible with a deep-penetrating bunker buster bomb with a powerful nuclear warhead, but there are obvious problems with that: One being that nobody wants to nuke a national park if there's no proof that we need to, and the other being that we don't have the understanding to know if it will make the problem worse or not.
• Odin wrote on 2014-04-12 21:14
  Does it have to be a nuke? We already control pressurized underground fluids through oil and gas wells.
  
  That technology could let us puncture the hotspot and allow it to bleed in a controlled fashion, creating effectively ingots of material that could later be crushed and refined for the precious metals and ceramic materials found in volcanic material.
  
  I think the only real snag would be dealing with the intense heat, we would have to line the borehole with high temperature ceramics all the way up to make it stay properly contained. Once it reaches the surface we can easily steer it about by spraying water on it to skin the surface and make it self-containing.
• TLCBonaparte wrote on 2014-04-12 22:30

  Quote from Odin;1214543:

  Does it have to be a nuke? We already control pressurized underground fluids through oil and gas wells.
  
  That technology could let us puncture the hotspot and allow it to bleed in a controlled fashion, creating effectively ingots of material that could later be crushed and refined for the precious metals and ceramic materials found in volcanic material.
  
  I think the only real snag would be dealing with the intense heat, we would have to line the borehole with high temperature ceramics all the way up to make it stay properly contained. Once it reaches the surface we can easily steer it about by spraying water on it to skin the surface and make it self-containing.

  
  
  
  Did I just theoretically solve a doomsday crisis?
• Campylobacter jejuni wrote on 2014-04-13 08:35
  And aided the economy.
  
  
  Actually that would be a supercool scenario. Think about the dialogues. "What do you do for a living?" "Oh, nothin special, I control a doomsday supervolcano's lava flow to make sure it doesn't spill over and destroy society."
  
  Fuck Spice. This is where it's at.
• Yoorah wrote on 2014-04-13 17:11

  Quote from Odin;1214543:

  Does it have to be a nuke? We already control pressurized underground fluids through oil and gas wells.
  
  That technology could let us puncture the hotspot and allow it to bleed in a controlled fashion, creating effectively ingots of material that could later be crushed and refined for the precious metals and ceramic materials found in volcanic material.
  
  I think the only real snag would be dealing with the intense heat, we would have to line the borehole with high temperature ceramics all the way up to make it stay properly contained. Once it reaches the surface we can easily steer it about by spraying water on it to skin the surface and make it self-containing.

  
  
  Probably. [S]Because nukes are more fun.[/S] Controlling oil and gas wells is incomparably easier than controlling pressures caused by tectonic plate activity, man. If you weaken the layers of rock above a hotspot by drilling through it or fracking it, it would probably just explode. Not to mention that drilling through magma is essentially impossible, as drilling fluid tends to explode on contact with the molten rock. Extracting magma is also virtually impossible, as it would likely solidify on its way up and clog the well.
  
  In the end, controlling something like this is impossible. The only way to deal with it, as I see it, is to trigger an explosion when (hopefully) it hasn't built up maximum pressure yet and everyone is ready for and expecting the damage. But then the question is if it would perhaps be better to wait for it to explode on its own and give our technology more time to evolve. I mean, it probably won't explode in the coming thousands of years, anyway. Let someone else deal with it. :P