Fr8monkey
Deity
What brings you to that conclusion? A massive cloud of vaporized ash and Sulfer Dioxide won't stop at the equator. The southern hemisphere is going to get covered too.
Effect of Erupting Yellowstone on civilization and climate
- Thread starter Archbob
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What brings you to that conclusion? A massive cloud of vaporized ash and Sulfer Dioxide won't stop at the equator. The southern hemisphere is going to get covered too.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
trader/warrior
Deity
They should poke a hole in it. Think of the geothermal power, dude!
That depends on how big it is. IF a supervolcano explosion was so large that it covered the whole world in a foot of ash, then only a handful of random survivors would live.
But I don't think Yellowstone is large enough to do that. IIRC, the last time Yellowstone blew there was several feet of ash for a long distance around it, but it tapered off and was not a globally catastrophic event.
That said, look at the prevailing winds across North America, the location of Yellowstone, the location of most US and Canadian population, and the location of the majority of our farms. Even if not a lot of people were killed directly, the breadbasket of North America would be out of production for years. And then there would be a couple of years of decreased production across the rest of the Northern hemisphere, and possibly the Southern as well. Meaning no way to make up for the loss.
Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1981, right? Well, you can see the massive blip in atmospheric CO2 caused by such a massive explosion. 10x that amount would be 10x as noticable.
Okay, I'm being sarcastic. Obviously there were more than just CO2 in the gases. But you'll notice that the CO2 change from Helens is virtually nothing.
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
Yellow Stone blowing up certainly seems to have the potential of wiping out humankind. But I don't see the reason to start building a bomb shelter in my backyard and place a hydroponics lab within it.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Wipe out? Nooooo, that would be a stretch. But it would reduce our numbers greatly, that's clear.
Which is no guarantee this time around. Geology has shifted things since then, and weather patterns are not the same. It doesn't take burying a place in a foot of ash to put the farms out of business for the duration. And Canadian farms are fairly far north if there's a nuclear winter event.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
1. Yellowstone in past eruption has spewed out 1000x to 2500x as much as St. Helens did, not a mere 10x.
2. Yellowstone, when it erupted 2.2 million years ago(before the Lava creek eruption) spewed out 2.5x the amount that the last eruption of 640,000 years ago.
The scariest thing isn't the immediate damage(although that would be pretty pwnage too, its the disruption to worldwide weather patterns for years. Thats why the Toba eruption was so dramatic on humanity 70,000 years ago.
St. Helens, a relatively minor eruption change worldwide temperates by around .3c for about a year or so. Toba changed it much more.
For Reference, Toba erupted with the force of 3000 Mt. St. Helens roughly 70,000 year ago. That force is equal to about 20 Soviet Tsar bombs. For those of you curious, the Tsarist bomb yielded about 50 megatons of TNT and was the most powerful nuclear weapon the world ever witness tested. By comparison, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of approximently 13 kilotons of TNT.
Toba erupted with the force of about 1 gigaton of TNT.
So 1 Tsarist bomb= 4000 Hiroshima bombs
1 Toba Eruption = 80,000 Hiroshima bombs.
Basically this blast is as powerful as 80,000 Hiroshima bombs going off at once without the nuclear fallout afterwards.
2. Yellowstone, when it erupted 2.2 million years ago(before the Lava creek eruption) spewed out 2.5x the amount that the last eruption of 640,000 years ago.
The scariest thing isn't the immediate damage(although that would be pretty pwnage too, its the disruption to worldwide weather patterns for years. Thats why the Toba eruption was so dramatic on humanity 70,000 years ago.
St. Helens, a relatively minor eruption change worldwide temperates by around .3c for about a year or so. Toba changed it much more.
For Reference, Toba erupted with the force of 3000 Mt. St. Helens roughly 70,000 year ago. That force is equal to about 20 Soviet Tsar bombs. For those of you curious, the Tsarist bomb yielded about 50 megatons of TNT and was the most powerful nuclear weapon the world ever witness tested. By comparison, the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of approximently 13 kilotons of TNT.
Toba erupted with the force of about 1 gigaton of TNT.
So 1 Tsarist bomb= 4000 Hiroshima bombs
1 Toba Eruption = 80,000 Hiroshima bombs.
Basically this blast is as powerful as 80,000 Hiroshima bombs going off at once without the nuclear fallout afterwards.
Yeah, the ash fallout is going to be much, much worse.
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
Yeah, but ash doesn't carry radiation.
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
Yeah, but they can choke you to death and burn your eyeballs if you are close enough to the volcano (assuming you haven't melted)
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Just a note, it's called simply "Tsar bomb", without the adjective
I thin volcanic eruptions of this magnitutde are much worse than nuclear bombs, as they release MUCH more dust and other bad stuf into the atmosphere (sulphur and carbon oxides, ash...).
Yellowstone explosion would be much more devastating than if you just exploded a nuke of roughly the same yield.
But
to your analogy anyway.
aelf
Ashen One
Archbob
Ancient CFC Guardian
Then why did they lose WW1?
Because they didn't have it until the Cold War?
aelf
Ashen One
The Tsar didn't survive till the Cold War. I thought it was zombie Lenin they had, not zombie Nicky.
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
I think they only named it "Tsar". Kind of like "Emperor of all bombs" I guess.
aelf
Ashen One
Seon
Not An Evil Liar
Yeah, but Choxorn said that it was "Tsar" bomb not "Tsarist" bomb 
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