The Yellowstone supervolcano is believed to be a very possible apocalypse that the world discusses constantly. The supervolcano brings up rumors about being overdue and a threat of eruption that will be an end of the world situation. That the initial eruption will obliterate everything within a two hundred mile radius and the ash cloud will cool the earth by twenty-one degrees, leaving deposits of thirteen feet. Yellowstone has erupted before, three times in history, 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and 640,000 years ago. To define a supervolcano it “is a volcano that at one point in time erupted more than one thousand cubic km of deposits,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey. So the real question is how true is the idea about a possible eruption from the Yellowstone supervolcano? To quickly relieve you of the fear about a possible super eruption from Yellowstone, the U.S. Geological Survey believes that the chance of the Yellowstone supervolcano going off is very unlikely and the world should not fear the eruption. They believe that their is no way to predict an eruption from Yellowstone and if it did erupt the type of eruption would be different. They believe that if Yellowstone erupted it would most likely be a hydrothermal eruption, which is a release of water, steam, and gas from the earth’s crust. They believe this as Yellowstone already has hydrothermal eruptions all the time just on a smaller scale, such as Old faithful and other geysers. There is also a possibility of small lava flows occurring at the site, as history displays that Yellowstone had multiple lava flows. So there is doubt that a supervolcano eruption could occur at Yellowstone.

There was research done into the possibility of a hypothetical Yellowstone supereruption to see the impact it would cause. The same site U.S. Geological Survey did a focused study into how the ash would be distributed if Yellowstone supervolcano experience a month long eruption. Their study did not focus on the physical impact of the eruption such as the theoretical obliteration of a two hundred mile radius of the volcano site but specifically to the ash. A diagram was created to represent the amount of ash that would fall from the volcano and how it would distribute across the United States (Fig.1). This diagram displays that the immediate area around.

Figure 1.

Yellowstone would experience about three and a half feet of ash, Kansas City about an inch to a foot and New York would experience about a dusting of ash. This has huge implications as ash has many properties and with multiple feet of ash it could have devastating effects.

The ash contains multiple types of gas such as hydrogen chloride, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride and others. Most of these chemicals are irritants to humans and also have the ability to react with other compounds which may cause harm. Some of the chemicals such as carbon dioxide are known compounds that cause global warming and with such a huge release of gas possible, the effects of global warming could be greatly increased. There is also implications of groundwater contamination, huge changes of pH in bodies of water and changes in soil pH the ash falls on. This would be very harmful to animal life, crops in fields and threaten many cities that depend on water from areas away the metropolis. Another property of ash is that it builds electrical charge as it leaves the volcano and travels over distances. This could be very intimidating to many areas as ash clouds have the ability to temporarily block out the sun and can cause a lightning storm which also has the ability to start fires. The destruction would greatly increase due to these fires and raise panic during the apocalyptic situation.

This event is not believed to end the world but may cause a huge stress on the United States of America and cause it’s collapse. This is believed as the ash would compromise many U.S. farmers west of Yellowstone (Fig. 2). It can be seen that a good

Figure 2.

Majority of farmers are within a close area of the immediate ash cloud and could receive heavy amounts of ash. This has the possibility to cripple the agricultural economy in the United States which is tied to many other aspects of the economy.

From the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. agriculture contributes $835 billion to the gross domestic product, which is 4.8 percent of the overall gross domestic product. Agriculture affects more as it is applied to sectors of textiles, forestry, fishing and the food processing industry. With understanding this information it could be seen that with a huge decrease in the output of agriculture goods, the overall economy could take a hit that stretches farther than just farmer’s products. When also looking at this catastrophe from a personal point, households use about 12.6 percent of their expenditures on food. So as food decreases, the desire for the resource of food will increase along with the price which will lead to a greater percentage of expenditures spent on food. Another view to look at is the employment of agriculture in the country and how it would be affected. 9.3 percent of the working force is in or related to the agricultural sectors of the United States. With a possible collapse of the economy in the agricultural world our current approximate five percent unemployment could see a significant rise to the upwards ten to twelve percent, in very dense farming areas, such as the midwest U.S.

There is hope that if this super eruption did occur at Yellowstone that it would have short term effects and that the U.S. could survive the catastrophe. From the Huffpost Green they theorize that if international aid intervened effectively by helping with a clean up program and supplying food/water resources the damage of the volcano will be minimal. This makes sense as many countries try to intervene and help other countries in the middle of natural disasters such as tsunamis or earthquakes. Countries such as Mexico, Canada, Australia and China are world figures that are the leading importers of agricultural goods to the United States as the United States Department of Agriculture states. So hopefully these countries could be leading figures in the world to come to the U.S.’s service in a moment of catastrophe. One issue further research displayed is that these countries are the main countries that the U.S. exports their agricultural products too. So these countries would probably be facing a limit on agricultural products and may not be able to assist the U.S. to a level that could help the United States to sustain itself. The catastrophe could lead to long lasting issues such as a economic depression and a movement of farms around the country.

Therefore it can be seen that the supervolcano in Yellowstone is not a world ending apocalypse and if the event was to occur there is hope that it would be a short term event in history. It is clearly expressed that Yellowstone would at most have a hydrothermal eruption or lava flow if it did erupt. Hypothetically if it had a month long eruption the ash would have a huge impact to the U.S. but has the possibility of recovering from the event in a small ecological time span.