Yellowstone Caldera Swells – Is This The End?

Is the US on the verge of a catastrophic and apocalyptic event?  60,000 years ago when the Yellowstone super-volcano erupted it enshrouded the Earth in ash so thick it covered the majority of the US and sent ash clouds into the sky that blacked out the sun for several days.  Scientists say it erupts every 60,000 years or so and has been as reliable as Yellowstone’s own Old Faithful.  But now as we reach 64,000 years with no eruption the ground is swelling up and threatening to create massive devastation that could change the world forever.  Just how serious is this event?

The events relating to the volcanic eruption are said to be responsible for some of the most massive extinctions in the world’s history ever known, but they only happen once in a great while.  With the country still remembering the massive devastation of Mount Saint Helens in 1993, geologists are warning that a similar eruption from the Caldera would be thousands of times more destructive.  It could essentially change life on the planet all over for decades to come.  And now with Mount Etna in Sicily once again erupting for the first time since 1992, volcanic activity is sure to be on everyone’s mind.

And yet the story of an erupting Caldera has come up several times in recent years.  In 2008 a cluster of earthquakes around the Caldera reached headlines suggesting the super-volcano was about to blow its top.  And while the world watches, the ground swell from the volcano has been rapidly increasing since record keeping first began in 1923.  And now with speculation running rampant that the next volcanic event could take place as early as this year, the threat is becoming very real to concerned geologists who warn it could be the single greatest catastrophe mankind has and conceivably could ever survive.

The geological activity would result in the ground bursting up and layering most of the western half of the United States in air-born glass-like dust which could prove deadly to those who inhale it and devastate populations trapped within.  And with such tremendous amounts of glass particles even vehicles attempting to traverse the glass clouds would find it impossible to reach most survivors in time.  Low visibility would make even aerial drops of supplies virtually impossible in population centers and the rest of the country would simply have to look into the cloud as darkness descended on the Earth and wait to see who survived.

And now with the recent swelling of the Caldera proving to be only the latest warning sign, we can only hope geologists and others have misinterpreted this ground swell incorrectly.  Even though it may very well happen today, there’s a chance we could get lucky again and not see another caldera eruption for another hundred or even thousand years.