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Super Volcanoes A Means to an End

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By Duke Heath

The super volcano is the most destructive force on Earth. They erupt with tens of thousands of times greater force than the volcanos we are so familiar with. They often remain dormant for hundreds of thousands of years as tremendous pressure builds up inside of them only to be released in one catastrophic blast. They threaten the very survival of the human race.

Super volcanoes do not form the standard cone shape volcanos we are so familiar with. The super forms a deep depression called a caldera. As magma fills the caldera, it melts near by rock and fills huge reservoirs with super thick magma. The magma is so thick that the volcanic gases cannot escape, but build up tremendous pressures over thousands of years that culminate in one cataclysmal blast.

The interest in super volcanos increased dramatically in 1973 when water in Yellowstone Lake began to run over its banks at one end and disappear at the other end of the lake. Geologists soon discovered the cause. Yellowstone Park had suddenly developed a huge bulge which was lifting up one end of the take.

By 1984, the entire central region of the park was more than three feet higher than it was when the previous survey was done. In 1985, the swelling subsided by several inches. It is now swelling ominously once again.

Geologists realized that Yellowstone was not the site of an ancient super volcano. It was the site of an active super volcano. In fact Yellowstone Park is the largest active volcano in the world. The volume of magma beneath the Earth's crust in this region has lifted 300 miles of surrounding territory by about 1,700 feet.

We have examined the largest explosion in recent times, Krakatoa. The blast was so powerful that the shock wave reverberated around the world for more than a week. Tsunamis from the blast reached England.

So, how does the Krakatoa blast compare with Yellowstone in terms of magnitude? Well, if the size of the Krakatoa blast, that is, the volume of ejected material, were considered as being the volume of a golf ball, the size of the Mount St. Helens blast would be the size of a pea.

On this scale, the size of a Yellowstone eruption would be the size of a sphere an adult could hide behind. The Krakatoa caldera was about 100 meters in diameter. The Yellowstone caldera is 53 miles by 28 miles. Past Yellowstone events have been more than 8000 times larger than Mt. SE Helens.

The last major eruption of Yellowstone blew up miles of mountain range and the ash from the event covered all of the United States west of the Mississippi river including parts of Canada and Mexico. The ash was so thick 1,404 miles away in Kansas that it was mined in the 1930's and used to make a cleanser.


If Krakatoa lowered temperatures world wide by more than two degrees for several years, think what a Yellowstone event could do.

The last super volcano eruption was Toba in northern Sumatra. Toba was the largest explosion in the past two million years. Ice cores from Greenland show that the eruption threw the Earth into what amounts to a nuclear winter. Some estimates put the average world wide temperature drop to be about 21 degrees. An estimated 75 per cent of the northern hemisphere's plants may have died. Six years of this dramatic cooling triggered a thousand-year ice age.

Mitochondrial DNA studies have shown that the world population at the time of the "Toba blast was around 200,000 individuals. As a result of the Toba event, the population of humans fell to around 2060. Not only was the human race forced to the edge of extinction by this event, but they remained on the edge of extinction, with about the same total population, for the next 20,000 years.

In the past, Yellowstone has erupted like clockwork every 600,000 years. It has been 640,000 since the fast eruption. We are long overdue for the next catastrophic event.

As Dr. Ted Nield, of the Geological Society of London, states, "When a supervolcano 3 goes off, it is an order of magnitude greater than a normal eruption. It produces energy equivalent to an impact with a comet or an asteroid. You can try diverting an asteroid, but there is nothing at all you can do about a supervolcano."

Other than the ominous swelling of the earth under Yellowstone, there are several other strange signs occurring which could be waning signs of an impending earth shaking event. These signs include the ground itself heating up to over 200 degrees along many of the touring paths which has caused them to be closed to the public recently. The trees are dying in these areas as a result of the increased thermal activity. Dead fish litter the lakes and streams of the area.

The following page contains a letter from a brother, who lives in the Yellowstone area, to his sister telling her of the signs he has seen. He is very frightened and convinced the park is about to explode.

From what I can find out, much of what the brother says in his letter is true. The letter will be viewed by experts in the next generation in one of two ways. If the park has yet to explode in forty years, the letter will be viewed much as it is now, as an example of mass hysteria from the mass media misinterpreting the hydro-thermal cycles of the park. If the park does explode, it will be viewed as an ominous warning gone unheeded.