February 25, 2008
Very few people may survive the next blast from the Yellowstone volcano. It is so huge and due to blow in 160,000 years (+ /-) that soon, geologically speaking, anytime really, all of humanity will probably be fighting for its very existence, and all our petty squabbles and wars and weapons and silly ideas will show themselves up for what they really are, trivial pursuits.
Nature will once again set the agenda and remind us who is boss and we will be fully engaged in the age old Darwinian struggle for survival. Respirators and firewood and canned food and shotgun shells to fight off Desperados for ten years or perhaps much longer and stored seeds and agricultural and hunting skills and tools for scavenging will determine who lives or dies and who emerges to repopulate the planet. Low tech and animal behavior will again be in vogue. Nuclear winter is a nice model for this one.
Those without the basic animals skills required to survive will perish. Bin Laden types have a small chance to survive because they know how to live in caves. The guys living underground in Australia might make it. What are your odds of survival? If you don't mind eating cave cockroaches and could catch and eat raw rats you might make it. The last blast some 640000 years ago covered all of Eastern North America (at least) with ash and changed weather dramatically for years and may have wiped out the enormous diversity of our early human ancestors. It probably took a big bite out of the animals that vanished during the so called Pleistocene extinctions. The explosion will make the Soviet Tsar H-Bomb look like a firecracker. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming will be incinerated by the blast in a pyroclastic flow by ash temperatures of 1000 celsius.
There is one small ray of hope with enormous ramifications. Perhaps we can use our brains and technological wizardry to figure out how to tame the tempermental beast lurking just below the surface and turn it into one of the biggest most reliable geothermal hydroelectric generators on earth. The DOE better get some resources on it. The US would be the first to go the way of the DODO.
Alternatively, we could reduce the human casualties by setting the thing off in a planned nuclear detonation and have control over its timing and plan ahead for what is to come, ie stockpiles of food for ten years etc and do it while we have fuel oil. After the no oil-era comes its a no brainer that we won't have as easy a time of it. We could time it to coincide with the hot sun cycle and la Nina' and with favorable Pacific Decadel Oscillation timing. Then we could move people out of the dangerous countries and into optimum places for survival and have those places fully stocked with long term provisions and clothing and shelters after which we get the Russians to bomb Yellowstone with the Tsar and watch the fireworks.
Check out this site for more info. http://people.uwec.edu/ERICKSKM/hazards.html
If your ancestors live in the BIG circle on Erickson's Zone of Total destruction or downwind of the site when she goes, they will need to practice advanced Yoga so you can kiss their butts goodbye. Canada's Prairie Provinces as far north as Edmonton will probably be frickaseed. Regina and Saskatoon are in the zone of total destruction. The US Montane region will by roasted and people as far away as Portland are not safe. What is clear is that America as we know it is a temporary phenomenon.
Please not that all of my articles are DRAFT and subject to changes with more and better information and so should be quoted with extreme skepticism and only after researching peer reviewed journals. You are my only peer.
© 2008 Jorma Jyrkkanen
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