Hawaii is on volcano watch after a series of earthquakes struck the island in less than 72 hours. Hundreds of quakes were reported before the Kilauea Volcano was put on watch as a volcano that could potentially erupt.
The Kilauea Volcano is located in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, which has since closed off nearly 15,700 acres due to “the possibility of a new eruption and unstable geologic activity.” But most of the park remains open, according to a statement released by the park.
Officials are now keeping a very close watch on the Kilauea volcano, which is one of the world’s most active while residents in the area are being urged to prepare an eruption and review emergency plans in case of evacuation, warned the Hawaii County Civil Defense Agency on Wednesday.
The tremors have been going on for days now, causing residents to fear an imminent eruption. Many residents have been reporting nearly constant ground vibrations in some areas. “It has now become unnerving,” Carol Shepard, a resident, told CNN affiliate KHON. She said the flurry of earthquakes seemed to happen every minute. “It’d be like the house would shake. It’d be like somebody that weighs 300 pounds came in my living room, and jumped up and down,” she said.
Although it’s impossible to determine if, let alone when an eruption would occur, scientists felt it was necessary to warn residents of the volcano’s recent activity.
The US Geological Survey said no steam or heat were seen escaping through the cracks. They added that the cracks were small, only about several inches across. These cracks are appearing from “deformation of the ground surface due to the underlying intrusion of magma,” which is the molten rock that is underground, according to the agency.
“An outbreak of lava from the lower East Rift Zone remains a possible outcome of the continued unrest,” according to USGS in a Wednesday night update. “At this time it is not possible to say with certainty if or where such an outbreak may occur, but the area downrift (east) of Pu’u ‘Ō’ō remains the most likely location.”
Scientists say that the Yellowstone supervolcano gets stronger every year, and they now think they know why. An 1,800-mile deep “hotspot” has been discovered under the caldera which scientists believe is the volcano’s heat source.
Yellowstone’s hotspot is situated within our planet’s mantle, and scientists believe it is part of a surge of atypically hot rock known as a mantle plume, according to a recent study. They are thought to begin some 1,850 miles below Earth’s surface at the boundary separating the mantle from the core.
Researchers and scientists have been studying Yellowstone in hopes of preventing or at least having some advanced warning when the supervolcano next erupts. “A supervolcano explosion is capable of “plunging the world into a catastrophe” and pushing humanity “to the brink of existence,” NASA researchers wrote in a 2015 study. The information we have on the rare eruptions today are estimates based on the geologic record and the massive deposits left behind by them.
The ash spewed by such an explosion could create a global “volcanic winter” by blanketing parts of continents with soot. Using prediction models from Yellowstone’s last major eruption 630,000 years ago, the researchers revealed Yellowstone could produce more than a meter of volcanic ash in its immediate vicinity. As you can see, the ash would blanket a vast majority of the United States.
But NASA’s plan to help “fix” an eruption could have the opposite effect. The space agency suggested drilling into the volcano to release heat, making it less volatile. But that comes with potentially humanity eliminating consequences. “It has been suggested that the hydrothermal circulation at Yellowstone may cool the underlying magma and may lead to decreased long-term volcanic hazards,” wrote the scientists.
More research needs to be done to figure out how to best protect the planet from a supervolcano eruption, the researchers also said. As of now, people would have mere minutes at most should the Yellowstone volcano erupt. That would not be enough time to save lives.
The Yellowstone region has seen three big eruptions, the first one 2.1 million years ago, the most recent 630,000 years ago. Contrary to Internet rumor-mongering, as well as conspiracy theories about government coverups, there’s no sign that a fourth cataclysmic event is about to happen. –The Washington Post
Mount Agung, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Bali, has begun spewing volcanic ash. Over 100,000 have been evacuated, but scientists fear that’s only the beginning.
Authorities are warning of the dangerous mudflows now that Mount Agung’s eruption is all but imminent. Since the end of September, the volcano has had people on edge, but many now say they are at least more prepared, as 100,000 flee their homes for safety.
Putu Sulasmi fled with her husband and other family members to a sports hall that is serving as an evacuation center. “We came here on motorcycles. We had to evacuate because our house is just 3 miles from the mountain. We were so scared with the thundering sound and red light,” she told Associated Press. The family had stayed at the same sports center in September and October when the volcano’s alert was at the highest level for several weeks but it didn’t erupt. They had returned to their village about a week ago. “If it has to erupt let it erupt now rather than leaving us in uncertainty. I’ll just accept it if our house is destroyed,” she said.
According to the Guardian, the airport has also been shut down, stranding tourists. Bali is one of Indonesia’s top tourist locations. Airport spokesman Air Ahsanurrohim said 445 flights were canceled, stranding about 59,000 travelers. The closure is in effect until Tuesday morning although officials said the situation would be reviewed every six hours. Instrumental measurement of Mt. Agung began after the last big eruption occurred in 1963, an event that lasted a year and killed more than 1,000 people.
Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency has strongly urged people to immediately evacuate the designated exclusion zone, which has been extended to an 8-10km radius of the volcano. “We ask people in the danger zone to evacuate immediately because there’s a potential for a bigger eruption,” said Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency (BNPB). Up to 40,000 people had been evacuated but a further 60,000 also needed to move, he said. The governor of Bali said later that 150,000 could be called on to evacuate.
“Not all residents have evacuated yet. There are those (who haven’t evacuated) because their farm animals haven’t been evacuated yet. There are those who feel they are safe,” Sutopo said, adding that security personnel were trying to persuade people to leave. If they refuse to leave their homes, they could be evacuated by force.
With the looming threat of a possible eruption at the Yellowstone super volcano, some preppers have wondered exactly how to prepare for such a cataclysmic event. Here is what would happen should the super volcano erupt right now.
Yellowstone’ssupervolcano is essentially a giant, lid-topped cauldron, and it’s so vast that it can only truly be seen from low-Earth orbit. Its crater is 45 miles (72 kilometers) across, and its underlying plumbing contains several tens of thousands of cubic kilometers of magmatic material. But if it were to erupt right now, we would have very little time to even know that it is happening.
IFL Science spoke to one of the country’s most respected volcanologists to get the most up-to-date low-down on the future of the world’s most famous supervolcano. Hopefully, it will give preppers and idea of what to expect in the unprecedented event that it actually explodes.
According to Yellowstone Volcano Observatory’s Scientist-In-Charge, Dr. Michael Poland, the super volcano may not have enough energy at present to produce a supereruption. “Right now, much of Yellowstone’s magma body is partially solidified, and you need a lot of magma to feed a large eruption.” The chances of a supervolcanic paroxysm are currently around one-in-730,000, which makes it less likely than a catastrophic asteroid impact.
A sudden injection of new magma from beneath the caldera, or a sudden weakening of the geological layers encasing it, as unlikely as this is, may be enough to trigger a sudden depressurization event, and the entire system would violently expunge onto the surface and up into the atmosphere. What would happen next is speculative, but it may be important to understand just how dire that could be.
Shortly before the hypothetical eruption, the ground around Yellowstone National Park would rise upwards somewhat. Hydrothermal system, including the geysers and geothermal pools, would rapidly heat to temperatures above boiling, and they’d likely become extremely acidic – more so than usual. A swarm of earthquakes would be detected making their way towards a central point, indicating magma rising rapidly through the crust. Then, the roof rock would fail and the eruption would begin. A vast column of ash and lava would shoot upward to heights of around 25 kilometers (16 miles). Sustained by both raw explosive energy and the release of heat through cooling lava blebs and bombs, it would sustain itself for days, pumping ash into jet streams that would transport it around the stratosphere. When the eruptive column or parts of the column fail, enormous pyroclastic flows would blast their way across the park.
Immediately, anyone within the park itself would perish. That’s roughly 11,000 on average (depending on the time of year). The air would heat up to 570 degrees Fahrenheit which would kill in seconds. When the pyroclastic flows and ash deposits settle and cool, they may seem harmless, but they’re not. If it rains heavily after the eruption, especially on any slopes, then these could mix with mud and turn into rapidly-moving, cement-like slurries called lahars. If you get stuck in one, there’s a good chance you’ll have a hard time making it out alive.
But the most dangerous aspect would be the effect of the fallout on the globe. If you breathe in the ash fallout, it’ll lacerate your lungs and form a glassy cement. It’s also about six times denser than water, which means plenty of architecture would collapse under its weight as it accumulates on rooftops. Poland points out that “even a few tens of centimeters of wet ash could cause weak buildings to buckle.” Roads and sewer systems would clog and break down, water supplies would be contaminated, and electrical grids would short out. Millions of homes would become uninhabitable. Those in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana would be at the highest risk for this.
The amount of ash fallout could be up to ten feet in the areas near Yellowstone but will spread across the entire continental United States and large parts of Canada.
A fine layer of volcanic ash would make it as far as Miami, New York, and Toronto within a few days, but it would still enough to cause vehicles to break down and water to become unpotable.
The ash’s injection into the stratosphere would cause it to darken the sky and cool regional, if not planetwide temperatures. If the eruption is particularly sulfur-rich – an efficient blocker of sunlight – then temperatures would plummet several degrees, to the point where the next few years will lack a summer. “It’s likely there would be significant cooling for many years,” Poland explains. “But how long it would last, and how much cooling would occur, I can’t say. I’m not sure anyone can.”
The USGS is keen to point out that “scientists at this time do not have the predictive ability to determine specific consequences or durations of possible global impacts from such large eruptions.” Whatever happens, though, it won’t cause civilization to come crashing down. “It would not mean the end of life on Earth,” Poland tells us. “In fact, this experiment has already been run, yet few people realize it.” He points to the Toba eruption, one that occurred 74,000 years ago, and one that “was larger than anything that Yellowstone has ever produced.” Evidently, humanity survived that, and “they didn’t have the benefit of technology back then!”
Humanity will survive, especially those who are well prepared for such a disaster, but it won’t be an easy road to have to walk when the time comes. Hopefully, this quick rundown will give preppers ideas if they want to prepare for a Yellowstone eruption.
Two weeks ago, we reported that Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, had shared a report on what the Space Agency considered one of the greatest natural threats to human civilization: the Yellowstone "supervolcano."
Following an article published by BBC about super volcanoes last month, a group of NASA researchers got in touch with the media to share a report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat Yellowstone poses, and what they hypothesize could possibly be done about it.
“I was a member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense which studied ways for NASA to defend the planet from asteroids and comets,” explains Brian Wilcox of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology.
“I came to the conclusion during that study that the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.”
Yellowstone currently leaks about 60 to 70% of its heat into the atmosphere through stream water which seeps into the magma chamber through cracks, while the rest of the heat builds up as magma and dissolves into volatile gasses. The heat and pressure will reach the threshold, meaning an explosion is inevitable. When NASA scientists considered the fact that a super volcano’s eruption would plunge the earth into a volcanic winter, destroying most sources of food, starvation would then become a real possibility. Food reserves would only last about 74 days, according to the UN, after an eruption of a super volcano, like that under Yellowstone. And they have devised a risky plan that could end up blowing up in their faces. Literally.
Wilcox hypothesized that if enough heat was removed, and the temperature of the super volcano dropped, it would never erupt. But he wants to see a 35% decrease in temperature, and how to achieve that, is incredibly risky. One possibility is to simply increase the amount of water in the supervolcano. As it turns to steam. the water would release the heat into the atmosphere, making global warming alarmists tremble.
“Building a big aqueduct uphill into a mountainous region would be both costly and difficult, and people don’t want their water spent that way,” Wilcox says. “People are desperate for water all over the world and so a major infrastructure project, where the only way the water is used is to cool down a supervolcano, would be very controversial.”
So, NASA came up with an alternative plan: the smartest people on earth believe the most viable solution could be to drill up to 10km down into the super volcano and pump down water at high pressure. The circulating water would return at a temperature of around 350C (662F), thus slowly day by day extracting heat from the volcano. And while such a project would come at an estimated cost of around $3.46 billion, it comes with an enticing catch which could convince politicians (taxpayers) to make the investment.
“Yellowstone currently leaks around 6GW in heat,” Wilcox says. “Through drilling in this way, it could be used to create a geothermal plant, which generates electric power at extremely competitive prices of around $0.10/kWh. You would have to give the geothermal companies incentives to drill somewhat deeper and use hotter water than they usually would, but you would pay back your initial investment, and get electricity which can power the surrounding area for a period of potentially tens of thousands of years. And the long-term benefit is that you prevent a future supervolcano eruption which would devastate humanity.”
“The most important thing with this is to do no harm,” Wilcox says. “If you drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this would be very risky. This could make the cap over the magma chamber more brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise not be released.”
Now, it is others" turn to slam the NASA plan: according to a geologist at Yellowstone national park, the proposal could have dire consequences, including killing countless animals.
According to the Star, Dr Jefferson Hungerford, who works at Yellowstone, has warned NASA scientists to stay away from the volcano. He said that: “messing with a mass that sits underneath our dynamic Yellowstone would potentially be harmful to life around us.
“It would potentially be a dangerous thing to play around with.” And he questioned whether the drilling could even work, saying “we’re not there scientifically”.
More importantly, Dr Hungerford said there is no need for anything to be done proactively at Yellowstone, adding: “We won’t see [an eruption]. Very likely we will never see it.”
Perhaps he is correct: the Earth has 20 known supervolcanoes, which if they erupt, would trigger planet-changing effects. Major eruptions are incredibly rare, with the last one approximately 26,500 years ago in New Zealand. But if a similar event occurred today, it would cause a nuclear winter with humans wiped out in just a few months from starvation.
For now, what some of the smartest people in the world disagreeing on what to do next, the increasingly more precarious status quo is the most likely outcome.
A NASA plan to stop the Yellowstone supervolcano from erupting, could actually cause it to blow... triggering a nuclear winter that would wipe out humanity.
As we have detailed recently, government officials have been closely monitoring the activity in the Yellowstone caldera.
However, as SHTFplan.com"s Mac Slavo details, scientists at NASA have now come up with an incredibly risky plan to save the United States from the super volcano.
Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, shared a report on the natural hazard that hadn’t been seen outside of the agency until now. Following an article published by BBC about super volcanoes last month, a group of NASA researchers got in touch with the media to share a report previously unseen outside the space agency about the threat Yellowstone poses, and what they hypothesize could possibly be done about it.
“I came to the conclusion during that study that the supervolcano threat is substantially greater than the asteroid or comet threat.”
Yellowstone currently leaks about 60 to 70 percent of its heat into the atmosphere through stream water which seeps into the magma chamber through cracks, while the rest of the heat builds up as magma and dissolves into volatile gasses. The heat and pressure will reach the threshold, meaning an explosion is inevitable. When NASA scientists considered the fact that a super volcano’s eruption would plunge the earth into a volcanic winter, destroying most sources of food, starvation would then become a real possibility. Food reserves would only last about 74 days, according to the UN, after an eruption of a super volcano, like that under Yellowstone. And they have devised a risky plan that could end up blowing up in their faces. Literally.
Wilcox hypothesized that if enough heat was removed, and the temperature of the super volcano dropped, it would never erupt. But he wants to see a 35% decrease in temperature, and how to achieve that, is incredibly risky. One possibility is to simply increase the amount of water in the supervolcano. As it turns to steam. the water would release the heat into the atmosphere, making global warming alarmists tremble.
“Building a big aqueduct uphill into a mountainous region would be both costly and difficult, and people don’t want their water spent that way,” Wilcox says. “People are desperate for water all over the world and so a major infrastructure project, where the only way the water is used is to cool down a supervolcano, would be very controversial.”
So, NASA came up with an alternative plan. They believe the most viable solution could be to drill up to 10km down into the super volcano and pump down water at high pressure. The circulating water would return at a temperature of around 350C (662F), thus slowly day by day extracting heat from the volcano. And while such a project would come at an estimated cost of around $3.46 billion, it comes with an enticing catch which could convince politicians (taxpayers) to make the investment.
“Yellowstone currently leaks around 6GW in heat,” Wilcox says. “Through drilling in this way, it could be used to create a geothermal plant, which generates electric power at extremely competitive prices of around $0.10/kWh. You would have to give the geothermal companies incentives to drill somewhat deeper and use hotter water than they usually would, but you would pay back your initial investment, and get electricity which can power the surrounding area for a period of potentially tens of thousands of years. And the long-term benefit is that you prevent a future supervolcano eruption which would devastate humanity.”
“The most important thing with this is to do no harm,” Wilcox says.
“If you drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this would be very risky. This could make the cap over the magma chamber more brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise not be released.”
The cooling of Yellowstone in this manner would also take tens of thousands of years, but it is a plan that scientists at NASA are considering for every super volcano on earth.
“When people first considered the idea of defending the Earth from an asteroid impact, they reacted in a similar way to the supervolcano threat,” Wilcox says.
“People thought, ‘As puny as we are, how can humans possibly prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth.’ Well, it turns out if you engineer something which pushes very slightly for a very long time, you can make the asteroid miss the Earth. So the problem turns out to be easier than people think. In both cases it requires the scientific community to invest brain power and you have to start early. But Yellowstone explodes roughly every 600,000 years, and it is about 600,000 years since it last exploded, which should cause us to sit up and take notice.”
