From ancient times, volcanoes attracted people. They considered them gods, worshiped them and made sacrifices, including human ones. And this attitude is understandable, since even now the incredible power of these natural objects simply amazes the imagination of even trained researchers.
But among them there are those that stand out even against such a noticeable background. This is, for example, the Yellowstone Caldera in the
National Park of Wyoming, USA. The power that slumbers in this supervolcano is such that it can very well contribute to the complete destruction of our civilization in the event of its awakening. And this is not an exaggeration. So, the Pinatubo volcano, which is several times weaker than its American “colleague”, during the eruption in 1991 contributed to the fact that the average temperature on the planet dropped by 0.5 degrees, and this went on for several years in a row.
What is characterized by this natural object?
Scientists have long assigned this object the status of a supervolcano. Known around the world for its megalithic dimensions. During his last large-scale awakening, the entire upper part of the volcano simply collapsed down, forming an impressive failure.
It is located right in the middle of the North American plate, and not on the border, like its “colleagues” in the world who are concentrated on the edges of the plates (the same “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific Ocean). Since the 80s of the last century, the Geological Survey of America reports that the number of tremors, the strength of which so far does not exceed three points on the Richter scale, has been steadily increasing every year.
What does the state think?
All this is far from fantasy. The seriousness of the statements of scientists is confirmed by the fact that in 2007 an emergency meeting was created, which was attended by the President of the United States and the heads of the CIA, NSA, FBI.
Study history
What do you think when the caldera itself was discovered? At the beginning of colonization of America? Yes, no matter how! We found it only in 1960, exploring aerospace photographs ...
Of course, the current Yellowstone Park was investigated long before the advent of satellites and aircraft. The first naturalist to describe these places was John Colter. He was part of the expedition of Lewis and Clark. In 1807, he described the current Wyoming. The staff struck him with incredible geysers and many hot springs, but upon returning the "progressive public" did not believe him, mockingly calling the scientist's work "Colter's hell."
In 1850, hunter and naturalist Jim Bridger also visited Wyoming. The staff met him just like his predecessor: puffs of steam and fountains of boiling water that burst directly from the ground. However, no one believed his stories.
Finally, after the Civil War, the new US Government did fund full-scale studies of that region. In 1871, the area was studied by a scientific expedition led by Ferdinand Hayden. Just a year later, a huge colorful report was prepared with many illustrations and observations. Only then did everyone finally believe that Colter and Bridger did not lie at all. Then Yellowstone Park was created.
Development and study
The first head of the facility was appointed Nathaniel Langford. The situation around the park at first was not too optimistic: the leader and a handful of enthusiasts were not even paid a salary, not to mention some kind of scientific research of this territory. Everything changed after a few years. When the North Pacific Railway was commissioned, a stream of tourists and people who genuinely were interested in this natural phenomenon poured into the valley.
The merit of the park’s leadership and the government of the country is that, having contributed to the influx of curious people, they still did not turn this unique area into a cluttered tourist attraction, and they also constantly invited eminent scientists from all over the world.
Small volcanic cones, which in this area from time to time continue to form in our days, were especially attracted to pundits. Of course, the Yellowstone supervolcano (then they didn’t know such words) brought the most fame to the national park, but huge, incredibly beautiful geysers. However, the beauty of nature and the richness of the animal world also did not leave people indifferent.
What is a supervolcano in the modern sense?
If we talk about a typical volcano, then most often it is a rather ordinary mountain in the shape of a truncated cone, at its top there is a vent through which hot gases pass and molten magma flows. Actually, a young volcano is just a crack in the ground. When molten lava flows from it and solidifies, it quickly forms a characteristic cone.
That's just supervolcanoes are such that they do not even look like their "younger brothers". This is a kind of “abscesses” on the surface of the earth, under the thin “skin” of which molten magma seethes. On the territory of such a formation, several ordinary volcanoes can often form, through the vents of which from time to time the accumulated products are released. However, there is even no visible hole there most often: there is a volcanic caldera, which many people mistake for a normal dip in the ground.
How many of them exist at all?
To date, at least 20-30 such formations are known. Their relatively small eruptions, which most often occur through the “use” of conventional volcanic branches, can be compared to the release of steam from a pressure cooker valve. Problems begin at the very moment when the steam pressure is too high and the "boiler" itself takes off into the air. It should be noted that the volcano in the USA (like Etna, by the way) belongs to the "explosive" category due to extremely dense magma.
That is why they are so dangerous. The power of such natural formations is such that they may well have enough energy to erase the whole continent into powder. Pessimists believe that if a volcano in the United States still explodes, 97-99% of humanity could die. In principle, even the most optimistic forecasts do not differ too much from such a gloomy scenario.
He is waking up?
Increased activity has been recorded over the past decade. Many people in America do not even realize that one to three underground rumors are recorded annually. So far, many of them are fixed only with special equipment. Of course, it is too early to talk about the explosion, but the number and strength of such shocks are gradually growing. The facts are unfavorable - the underground reservoir is probably filled with lava.
In general, for the first time, scientists drew attention to the national park in 2012, when dozens of new geysers began to appear on its territory. Just two hours after the scientists’ visit, the Government banned tourists from accessing most of the national park. But seismologists, geologists, biologists and other researchers have become tens of times more.
There are other dangerous volcanoes in the USA. In Oregon, there is also the caldera of the giant Crater Lake, which also formed as a result of volcanic activity, and it can be no less dangerous than its "colleague" from Wyoming. However, literally fifteen to twenty years ago, scientists believed that supervolcanoes needed centuries to awaken, and therefore you can always predict the catastrophe ahead of time. Unfortunately, they were clearly mistaken.
Research Margaret Mangan
Margaret Mangan, one of the prominent scientists of the Geological Survey of America, has long been closely monitoring the manifestations of volcanic activity around the world. Not so long ago, she told the international community that seismic researchers had completely revised their views on the timing of the awakening of the largest volcanoes on the planet.
But this is very bad news. Our knowledge has expanded significantly in recent years, but there is no relief from this. So, a large volcano in the USA constantly demonstrates increasing activity: there were times when the land near the caldera was heated to 550 degrees Celsius, a lava dome began to form in the form of a hemisphere protruding upward from the rock, and the lake gradually began to boil.
Just two years ago, some seismologists vied with each other to assure everyone that no humanity was threatened by volcanic activity over the next couple of centuries. Really? After the grand tsunami, which literally washed away Fukushima, they stopped issuing their forecasts. Now they prefer to get rid of annoying journalists with meaningless terms of general significance. So what are they afraid of? The advent of a new Ice Age as a result of a grandiose eruption?
First worrying forecasts
In fairness, it is worth noting that scientists knew about the gradual reduction in the time between cataclysms before. However, given the astronomical dates, humanity did not care much. The initial eruption of the Yellowstone volcano in the United States was expected in about 20 thousand years. But after working through the accumulated information, it turned out that this would happen in 2074. And this is a very optimistic forecast, as volcanoes are extremely unpredictable and very dangerous.
A researcher from the University of Utah, Robert Smith, said in 2008 that "... while magma is located at a depth of 10 kilometers from the vent (with its constant rise of 8 centimeters per year), there is no reason to panic ... But if it rises at least up to three kilometers, we all can’t do well ”. That's the danger Yellowstone is. The United States (more precisely, the country's scientific community) is well aware of this.
Meanwhile, back in 2006, Ilya Bindeman and John Valley were published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science, and in the publication they did not indulge the audience with comforting forecasts. The data for the last three years, they say, indicate a sharp acceleration in the rise of lava, new crevices are constantly opening, through which hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide come to the surface.
This is a sure sign that some major nuisance is certain to happen. Today, even skeptics agree that this danger is real.
New signals
But why did this topic become the “trend” of last year? After all, people already had enough hysteria with the year 2012? And all because in March there was a sharp increase in seismic activity. Even more often even geysers, who were considered long asleep, began to wake up. Animals and birds began to migrate en masse from the territory of the national park. But all this is real harbingers of something very bad.
Following the bison, deer escaped quickly leaving the Yellowstone Plateau. In just a year, a third of the livestock migrated, which even Native American indigenous people have never experienced. Especially strange all these animal movements look in the light of the fact that no one hunts in the park. However, since ancient times people have known that animals perfectly sense signals foreshadowing major natural disasters.
Available data further aggravate the anxiety of the scientific world community. In March last year, seismographs recorded tremors up to four points in magnitude, and this is no longer a joke. At the end of March, the district shook significantly with a force of 4.8 points. Since 1980, this is the most powerful manifestation of seismic activity. Moreover, unlike the events of thirty years ago, these tremors are strictly localized.
Why is the volcano so dangerous?
For decades, during which at least some study of this area was carried out, scientists for a long time assumed that the Yellowstone Caldera is no longer dangerous: the volcano, allegedly, has long been extinguished. According to new data from geodesic and geophysical exploration, in the reservoir under the caldera of magma is approximately two times more than indicated in the most pessimistic reports.
Today it is known for certain that this reservoir extends as much as 80 kilometers in length and 20 in width. Robert Smith, a geophysicist from the city of Salt Lake City, found this out by collecting and analyzing a huge amount of seismological data. At the end of October 2013, he made a report about this in the city of Denver, at the annual scientific conference. His message was immediately replicated, almost all the leading seismological laboratories in the world became interested in the research results.
Opportunity Assessment
To summarize his findings, the scientist had to collect statistics on more than 4,500 thousand earthquakes of varying degrees of intensity. That is how he determined the boundaries along which the Yellowstone Caldera passes. The data showed that the size of the “hot” area in previous years was underestimated by more than half. Today it is believed that the volume of magma is within four thousand cubic meters of hot rock.
It is assumed that “only” 6-8% of this amount is accounted for by molten magma, but this is also very, very much. So Yellowstone Park is a real time bomb on which the whole world will someday explode (and this will happen anyway, alas).
First phenomenon
In general, the first time the volcano showed itself brightly about 2.1 million years ago. A quarter of all North America at that time was covered with a thick layer of volcanic ash. In principle, nothing more ambitious has happened since then. Scientists believe that all supervolcanoes manifest themselves once every 600 thousand years. Given that the last time the Yellowstone Super Volcano exploded more than 640 thousand years ago, there is every reason to prepare for trouble.
And now everything can be much worse, because in just the last three hundred years, the planet’s population density has increased many times over. An indicator of what happened then is the caldera of the volcano. This is a cyclopean crater that arose as a result of an earthquake unimaginable in its strength that occurred 642 thousand years ago. How much ash and gas was emitted then is not known, but it was this event that greatly influenced the climate of our planet for the next millennia.
For comparison: one of the relatively recent (by geological standards) Etna eruptions, which occurred six thousand years ago, and which was hundreds of times weaker than the ejection from the caldera, caused a tremendous tsunami. Archaeologists find its traces throughout the Mediterranean. It is assumed that it served as the basis for the traditions of the Bible flood. Apparently, our ancestors really experienced many tragic events at that time: hundreds of villages were simply washed away in a few moments. Residents of the settlement of Atlit Yam were more fortunate, but even their descendants continue to talk about the grand waves that crushed everything in their path.
If Yellowstone behaves badly, then the eruption will be 2.5 thousand (!) Times more powerful, and the ash will be released into the atmosphere 15 times more than it got there after the last awakening of Krakatoa, when about 40 thousand people died.
Eruption is not the main thing
Smith himself repeatedly emphasized that the eruption is the tenth matter. He and his fellow seismologists say that the main danger lies in subsequent earthquakes, which will be clearly more powerful than eight on the Richter scale. On the territory of the national park, even now, almost every year, minor tremors occur. There are also harbingers of the future: in 1959, an earthquake occurred with a power of 7.3 points at once. Only 28 people died, as the rest managed to evacuate in a timely manner.
All in all, the Yellowstone Caldera is sure to bring many more troubles. Most likely, lava flows will immediately cover an area of at least one hundred square kilometers, and then gas flows will suffocate all life in North America. Perhaps a grandiose ash cloud will reach the shores of Europe within a maximum of a couple of days.
This is what Yellowstone Park hides in itself. When a global catastrophe occurs, no one knows. It is hoped that this will happen very soon.
An approximate model of disaster
If the volcano explodes, then the effect can be compared with the detonation of a dozen powerful intercontinental missiles. The earth’s crust over hundreds of kilometers will rise tens of meters up and warm up to about a hundred degrees Celsius. Pieces of rock in the form of volcanic bombs will bombard the surface of North America for several days in a row. In the atmosphere, the content of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and other hazardous compounds will increase by a thousand times. What are the other effects of the Yellowstone volcanic eruption?
Today it is believed that with an explosion an area of about 1000 km 2 will instantly burn out. All of the northwestern United States and much of Canada will become a hot desert. At least 10 thousand square kilometers will immediately be covered with a layer of hot rock, which will forever change this world!
For a long time, mankind believed that today civilization is threatened only by mutual destruction during the atomic war. But today there is every reason to believe that we have forgotten in vain about the power of nature. It was she who arranged on the planet several Ice Ages, during which many thousands of species of plants, animals and birds became extinct. You can’t be so self-confident and assume that a person is the king of this world. Our species can also be wiped off the face of this planet, which has repeatedly happened over the past millennia.
What other dangerous volcanoes are there?
Are there still active volcanoes on the planet? You can see the list of those below:
Lulhaillaco in the Andes.
Popocatepetl in Mexico (last eruption in 2003).
Klyuchevskaya hill in Kamchatka. Erupted in 2004.
Mauna Loa. In 1868, Hawaii was literally washed away by a giant tsunami that arose due to its activity.
Fujiyama. The famous symbol of Japan. The last time "pleased" the Land of the Rising Sun in 1923, when almost 700 thousand houses were destroyed almost instantly, and the number of missing people (not counting the victims found) exceeded 150 thousand people.
Shiveluch, Kamchatka. It erupted simultaneously with Sopka.
Etna, about which we have already spoken. It is considered asleep, but the calm of the volcano is a relative thing.
Asso, Japan. Over the entire known history - more than 70 eruptions.
The famous Vesuvius. Like Etna, he was considered "dead", but suddenly resurrected in 1944.
Perhaps this should end. As you can see, the danger of an eruption accompanied humanity along the entire path of its development.