Interested in advertising on Derpibooru? Click here for information!
Help fund the $15 daily operational cost of Derpibooru - support us financially!
Description
I don’t know how she knew, but she knew. Rock. Oatmeal.
Policy Update - Rules changes incoming for AI content - Read Here
and i though you were exagerating at first…
but yeah, military powers would go ballistic in a heartbeat.
It probably wouldn’t directly hurt anything further south than Mexico City unless there were some freaky El Niño conditions, but the knock-on effects of the United States being effectively removed from the global import/export economy would no kiddin’ almost certainly wreck civilization. We export hundreds of millions of tons of wheat, corn, rice, and other staple food crops all over the world every year, almost all of it grown in the areas that would be rendered unlivable by a Yellowstone super eruption; that means that literally billions of people would be going hungry in short order, because China, India, and the EU just do not have anything like the capacity to make up for such a huge shortfall. Fully 25% of everything that is bought and sold in the entire world is bought/sold in the U.S.; you can’t knock out most of that without causing a massive global economic depression.
Environmentally, massive ash plumes move West->East with the Jet Stream, and some of that is going to end up in the Gulf Of Mexico and western Atlantic, where it will play havoc with vital fisheries; some of it will also carry over into Europe, and the following winter(s) will be absolutely brutal. They called the year 1816 “Eighteen Hundred And Froze To Death” because year-round temperatures plummeted after a series of major volcanic eruptions culminated in a huge eruption (but much smaller than a full scale Yellowstone event) in what is now Indonesia and caused a volcanic winter in the Northern Hemisphere; it was a global disaster, leading not only to massive crop failure and widespread famine, but several major disease outbreaks. Several European nations were on the verge of collapse from food rioting and internal unrest. It snowed in Taiwan.
All of this would be happening, mind you, in a world with nuclear weapons and several economic and would-be military rivals to the U.S. just waiting for an excuse to go expansionist. Russia hates China hates India and Russia, and all three are nuclear powers; Russia would quickly move into Eastern Europe and China would try to move into eastern Russia and northern India. If israel definitively lost the military and economic support of America, it would start nuking the entire Arab Middle East at pretty much the first sign of aggression from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, or Iraq.
The United States is the living definition of “too big to fail”; we represent too large a portion of global everything for the rest of the world to maintain business as usual without us. We are absolutely screwing over everyone else when we go, which is a big part of why I get so furious about U.S. politics and the tendency of idiot politicians and their idiot supporters to adopt policies that weaken our ability to withstand crises, because it’s not fair that everyone should have to suffer because we can’t keep our own house in order.
well, fuck.
say, how much harm you think it would cause to northen south america?, as in venezuela…
“when we go down, we’re takin’ the rest of the world with us.”
i know its not meant to be anthing like it, but that sounds so ‘MURICA! LOL’D
Oh no, the Yellowstone Supervolcano is very real; it’s not especially likely to have a “super eruption” any time soon, but if it does, that’s pretty much the end of civilization for a while, because it’ll kill tens of millions of people across North america and render the entire Great Plains Region unlivable and unfarmable for many years. The last time it erupted FOR REALZ, highly toxic ash– as in “kills you slowly and painfully by filling your lungs with microscopic glass”– covered everything from southern Canada to northern Mexico and from California to the Mississippi River. That’s the end of the United States as a functional nation, and we’re not only 1/4 of the entire world economy, we’re also by far the largest exporter of food and the third largest exporter of everything else; when we go down, we’re takin’ the rest of the world with us.
TL;DR: The Yellowstone Caldera is real, and it would suck real bad for everybody in the world if it erupted full scale.
Volcanoes are neither. While active volcanoes do tend to build to an eruption over time like a solitaire deck, it’s a comparatively short-lived pattern. Yellowstone used to blow up every ~250,000 years. However, it’s been ~400,000 years since it last blew. It has never had a 400,000 year interval between eruptions before. So that doesn’t mean it’s 150,000 years overdue. It means 400,000 years ago, it was a good bet that it would blow ~250,000 years later. Or that 150,000 years ago, there was a good likelihood of an eruption very soon. And for about 50,000 years after that, it would have been a good bet that it was overdue. However, the odds of it erupting now are much lower than they were 150,000 years ago when the eruption was actually due. When it didn’t erupt on schedule, or even 50,000 years later than due, the chances of it ever erupting again turn out to be falling. Magma plumes run out or move. And the crust moves too, so the same magma plumes are no longer under the same weak points they used to be under. The longer it goes without erupting, the greater the likelihood that it’s dormant or extinct. Not the greater the likelihood that it’s going to blow soon.
But now we die.
Also the whole food production thing could be a problem.
We knew this was gonna happen one day. Just never suspected it’d be this soon.