This is some scary shit

Captain Kruger · Post by **Captain Kruger** » 2002-12-24 08:40am

Last night I watched a special about supervolcanoes. Instead of being mountains, they're basically big craters. No one is exactly sure how to predict when they'll erupt because the last one to erupt did so 74,000 years ago. This event had nearly the same effect as an asteroid impact, as in ash spreading through the ENTIRE WORLD. This event also corresponds with a massive drop in the human population between 70 and 80 thousand years ago. (There were only a few THOUSAND of us left!)

Now here's the scariest stuff (for me, anyway). It's been discovered that the largest supervolcano in the world, measuring 45x30 kilometers (28x18 miles) is right here in my home state of California. It's called Yosemite National Park. It's eruption cycle appears to be roughly every 600,000 years. Guess what? The last time it blew was 600,000 years ago. An eruption from this bugger is expected to devastate everything in a 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometer) radius.

No one knows if it will take another 10, 100, or 1,000 years for this baby to blow. But when it does, it's expected to be 10,000 TIMES AS POWERFUL as Mt. Saint Helens.

Mother Nature is a bad bitch with a lot of firepower. These things appear to be her biggest gun.

I'm thinking we'd better make it a priority to make our species spread beyond this planet.

C.S.Strowbridge · Post by **C.S.Strowbridge** » 2002-12-24 01:43pm

The odd it's will blow in your life time is tiny. Worry about your cholesteral instead.

Morning Star · Post by **Morning Star** » 2002-12-24 02:13pm

C.S.Strowbridge wrote:The odd it's will blow in your life time is tiny. Worry about your cholesteral instead.

Cholesteral? Where?! Aggghhh!

*runs*

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-12-24 02:42pm

In reality, this eruption will be a million times more dangerous to you than the Y2K bug. Of course, the Y2K bug had zero effect, and sero times a million is still zero, so don't worry. You'll probably be dead either by the time it erupts, or after it erupts.

If it's going to erupt, I'm sure people would notice it bfore it erupts, and people could evacuate in time.

meNNis · Post by **meNNis** » 2002-12-24 03:01pm

coulda sworn that it was Yellowstone park? thats not california buddy

yes actually i just watched that the other day its Yellowstone.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-12-24 04:51pm

I saw that show. It was pretty impressive. They said they thought humanity got down to something like 5,000 people. Anyway, it was Yellowstone not Yosemite. Although, CA does have volcanoes.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2002-12-24 04:55pm

"I don't know
where I'm a gonna go
When da volcano blow!"
[/jimmybuffet]

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2002-12-24 05:09pm

Watch out for the super tsunamis too. There was a similar TV special about how large landslides were causing waves that were several hundred feet high. According to the show there's an volcanic island in the eastern Atlantic ocean somewhere that could potentially trigger a 1000'+ wave that would swamp the entire eastern coast of North America. I think that island was off the coast of Spain or Portugal, but I can't remember. Apparently the entire western half of the island is hanging by a thread and could collapse into the sea at any moment, setting off the monster wave.

Howedar · Post by **Howedar** » 2002-12-24 05:29pm

I'm not real worried.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2002-12-24 05:43pm

The island in question is La Palma in the Canary Islands. A 1949 eruption of the islands volcano destabilized island and part of it sank a few meters. It's expected that another eruption may destroy the island. However it is not a sure thing.

If and when the island is destroyed about 500 billion tons of rock will fall into the sea. A wave a kilometer high going 500 mph would be created, heading west. Lesser waves would hit Europe and North Africa

By the time it reached America it would be much lower, but would still sweep 20 miles inland. Warning time would allow for some of the tens of millions of effected escaping inland but damage and loss of life would be extreme.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2002-12-24 06:04pm

You wanna know some REALLY scary shit? Scientists at the Brookhaven supercollider are trying to produce quark-gluon-plasma which may possibly result in the production of a Dangerous Strangelet. Incase you dont know what this is, a DStrangelet is a particle which, by coming in contact with other matter, produces electron-positron pairs as well as MORE DStrangelets. That means that if a single DStranglet is produced, it will start a chain reaction which will convert 1/4000 the mass of the earth into antimatter, and the rest into DStrangelets which will be dispersed in the resulting M/AM explosion. The entire solar system would be destroyed in little more then a few years and theres no way to stop it.

Luckily, the DStrangelet is probably not really that dangerous, since in the very beginning moments of the big bang the entire universe was solid Quark-Gluon-Plasma which would have produced DStranglets, and since we're still here I think it's safe to say that Dangerous Strangelets arent.

Post by **Zaia** » 2002-12-24 06:17pm

TrailerParkJawa wrote:I saw that show. It was pretty impressive. They said they thought humanity got down to something like 5,000 people. Anyway, it was Yellowstone not Yosemite. Although, CA does have volcanoes.

Eh, that's probably the best thing for the planet anyway; get rid of as many goddamn humans as possible. We're always fucking things up for good ol' Ma Earth. 'Bout time she got some retribution, says I.

TrailerParkJawa · Post by **TrailerParkJawa** » 2002-12-24 06:23pm

Eh, that's probably the best thing for the planet anyway; get rid of as many goddamn humans as possible. We're always fucking things up for good ol' Ma Earth. 'Bout time she got some retribution, says I.

Yeah but if you are one of the survivors its gonna be hard to find a good mate. Plus, I cant imagine what such an event would do to lower the value of my property.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2002-12-24 06:26pm

No. Fuck Mother Earth. I much prefer humanity to the ecosystem.

Captain Kruger · Post by **Captain Kruger** » 2002-12-24 06:49pm

meNNis wrote:coulda sworn that it was Yellowstone park? thats not california buddy
yes actually i just watched that the other day its Yellowstone.

Oh...my bad. But still, if it's that powerful, I don't like the fact that it's even in the western United States at all.

Zaia wrote:Eh, that's probably the best thing for the planet anyway; get rid of as many goddamn humans as possible. We're always fucking things up for good ol' Ma Earth. 'Bout time she got some retribution, says I.

WTF???? How did you get so cynical at 24? I thought I was a cynical bastard; even I don't want more than 3/4 of the world population taken out.

You feeling alright, Zaia?

SWPIGWANG · Post by **SWPIGWANG** » 2002-12-24 06:53pm

You wanna know some REALLY scary shit? Scientists at the Brookhaven supercollider are trying to produce quark-gluon-plasma which may possibly result in the production of a Dangerous Strangelet. Incase you dont know what this is, a DStrangelet is a particle which, by coming in contact with other matter, produces electron-positron pairs as well as MORE DStrangelets. That means that if a single DStranglet is produced, it will start a chain reaction which will convert 1/4000 the mass of the earth into antimatter, and the rest into DStrangelets which will be dispersed in the resulting M/AM explosion. The entire solar system would be destroyed in little more then a few years and theres no way to stop it.

Luckily, the DStrangelet is probably not really that dangerous, since in the very beginning moments of the big bang the entire universe was solid Quark-Gluon-Plasma which would have produced DStranglets, and since we're still here I think it's safe to say that Dangerous Strangelets arent.

Sounds like a nice sci-fi weapons

Drewcifer · Post by **Drewcifer** » 2002-12-24 06:55pm

Don't forget about planet killing asteroids, the collapse of the Antartic ice sheet, and the New Madrid fault in the bootheel of Missouri: the most active earthquake fault in the US after the San Andreas fault. (The last major earthquake on the New Madrid fault changed the course of the Mississippi River [it even flowed backwards for a bit] and rang church bells in Boston.)

In other words, there are some things you can do to lower your overall risk from natural disasters (don't buy a house beneath the 500 year flood plain etc.), but you'll probably have more problems from stress-induced diseases than anything else if you worry too much about your death instead of what comes before it.

Trust me, I'm a worry wart myself.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2002-12-24 06:56pm

Bah, this is horrible.

I am sorry, but Santa is dead, there is scientific evidence for this.

We'll start of softly by making these following points:

1. No known species of raindeer can fly. But there are atleast 300.000 other living organisms that are yet to be classified and even if the majority of these are insects and bacteria this does not rule out flying raindeers.

2. There are 2 billion children(people under the age of 18 ) on this planet. BUT, since Santa doesn't seem to serve children of muslim, hindu, jewish and buddisth religions, the workload is reduced to only 15%, that is 378 million. By speculating upon an average figure of 3.5 children per household we get 91.8 million homes, we'll have to assume that there is atleast one good child in every home.

3. Santa has 31 christmas hour to work on thanks to different time zones and the rotation of the Earth, and if one assumes he travels from east to west(which seems logical). This results in 822.6 visited homes per second. This means that for every every Christian household with good children Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, get out of the sleigh, get down the chimney, fill the stockings with presents, leave the rest under the tree, eat possible left-over candy, get back up the chimney again, get back in the sleigh and start moving for the next house.
We will now assume that each of these households are evenly space out over the planet(which, ofcourse, we know to be false, but for the sake of the calculation we accept this), and this gives us 1.2 km per household, a total journey of 120,8 million kilometers, excluding stops for what most of us has to do atleast once every 31th hour, plus feeding of animals and so on...
This means that Santas sleigh moves at a speed of 1045km/sec, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest humanbuilt vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a speed of 43.8km/sec - a conventional raindeer can run at most, 24 kilometers a hour.

5. The load of the sleigh adds another interesting addition to this debate. If we assume that every child doesn't get anything more than a LEGO box of reasonable size and mass(about 1.5kg), this means the sleigh masses 321.000 metric ton, not incliding Santa, who is mostly described as overweight. On the ground, a conventional raindeer cannot pull more than 220kg. Even if you can accept that flying raindeer(see point 1) can pull more than ten times that of a conventional raindeer, this is still not enough with eight raindeer. We need 214.200 raindeer. This increases the weight of the sleigh - to 353.430 tons. Again, for purposes of comparison - this over four times the dead-weight of the ship Queen Elizabeth.

6. 353.000 ton travelling 1045km/sec creates enormous air-resistance - this will heat the raindeer in the same way as a spaceship returning to the earths atmosphere. The lead raindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillon joules of pure energy per second!

To put it bluntly, they will go up in flames almost immediatly and will expose the raindeers behind to a ear-shattering sonic boom in their wake. The whole group will be vaporized in 4.26 thousanths of a second. In this moment Santa would still have been able to deliver presents to 4 different hoseholds, later to be distintegrated on his way to the fifth household, assuming he is on schedule that is.

Santa will during this time be exposed to enormous forces equalling that of 17.500 times the earths gravity, a 182kg Santa(which is really little) will then be pushed against the back of the sleigh with a force no less than 31.2 meganewtons. (standard acceleration: g = 9,80665 m/s^2)

Therfore the conclusion is: If Santa ever delivered presents on christmas eve, it's over, because he's dead now.

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2002-12-24 08:22pm

I believe 20/20 did an entire segment on that, HDS.

Once you see the science behind it, there's reason to believe there's no Santa Claus. It's king of like the Great Flood for kids. And I'm sure some kids out there are hypothersizing how Santa can do it, kind of like how YECs think up of ways of whwere the water came from, adn how NOah got the animals.